How sad... My Old PC Converted to a Media Center Edition PC just died...

There I was listening to music streaming from my Media Center PC when I suddenly stopped. Then a warning that the source file could not be read...

"Okay, time to reboot the MCE PC, I guess..."

Power down, wait, power up and... and... and... err... and... um... and... crap.

Won't boot, won't POST, won't do anything. Power light comes on, drives spin, fans whirl and that's it.

Crack open the case, blow out the inches of dust (err... um... heat build the root cause? Ya think?) check all the cabling, RAM seating, etc. No joy. Pull some RAM DIMMs, no joy. Let it cool off for a while. No joy.

GRRRR

And the family and I were really enjoying having a MCE PC. I had learned the joy of TV time shifting and the XBox360 streaming with very cool.

Now I'm going to have to watch TV on their schedule? Oh no, that's just not going to fly... ;)

Of course, the converted PC was VERY old (1 ghz Compaq Presario ;) so it was only a matter of time I guess.

Now comes the decision time. Rent a box from Time Warner (and finally get digital cable, HD, etc), build another cheap MCE PC, or buy an uber MCE PC?

I'm probably going to go with a Time Warner box (yeah, I know). But it's a "good" excuse to upgrade to Digital/HD and it's a much lower up front cost...

But I'm going to miss my MCE. :(

sigh...