The computer was built for me by the chief engineer of the radio station group where I worked in Alaska, strictly piecemeal with parts off the shelf of the local computer store. That includes the non-OEM end-user-licensed copy of Windows Vista for, if I recall correctly, about $180. I have the installation discs.

The idea of a motherboard swap intimidates me. The possibility of buying the same motherboard after eight years is pretty slim, and finding a different motherboard of the same form factor to go with my case would probably be difficult as well.

I suppose what I would do would be buy new case, motherboard, and CPU and move the rest of my stuff (hard drives, power supply, CD burner, RAM, video card, etc.) over to the new system. I would replace my C:> drive (an 80GB IDE) with a 128GB SSD, but keep the other three SATA drives, 4TB worth, maybe replace the two 1-TB drives with a single 2-TB split into a pair of 1-TB partitions.

But unless I see evidence of continued failure(s) in my existing system, I'll just keep plugging along with it.

tanstaafl.