How long has your PC gone with out breaking down?

[rod]

Well it's been an eventful bank holiday weekend I went to switch on the PC on and nothing not a peep first think checked the fuse no luck so I phoned a friend who said "power supply get a new one unplug your PC and makes sure you earth yourself" .so I got a new power supply and spent hours trying to install it.
I dropped a screw into one of the fans and spent hours trying to retrieve it there are three screws visible on the power supply and one is covered with a label saying removal of label voids warranty! I finally got the screw out and reconnected everything up and switched on and it all worked. Well my question how long has your PC gone with out breaking down and have you had any fun and games trying to repair it yourself?

[smorodina]

You shouldn't need to take the screws out of the power supply. Just four screws on the back of the computer case and the old one comes out complete and the new one goes in is place.

[rod]

The new power supply has two fans. The screw fell in the power supply through one of the fans so I had a new power supply with a screw loose inside I was not prepared to take the chance that it could cause any damage to the new supply.  No one wants a screw loose! smorodina -:)

[jake-the-peg]

Very wise a power supply is the last place you wan't a screw knocking around!

I work with computers, there are probably a couple of hundred in my lab and power supplies seem to be the most common source of failure - I suppose they are the most susceptible to getting dust and dirt in them - strangely though it's the unbranded ones that always seem to fail so I suspect there's some corner cutting going on with some of the box shifters.

I did once go up to a regional office to do some work and found a server that had been running continuously without a restart for nearly 5 years (it wasn't windows).

That's my record

[Rhort]

My current computer has been on just about constantly, 24/7 since May 2002 with the CPU at 100% usage for all that time, and I�ve had no major problems with it whatsoever.

I should add that I�m a PC Support Engineer, and I built the machine myself specifically for the purpose of achieving as little downtime as possible whilst running 24/7.

I use an Enermax power supply and I always say that the PSU is the �engine� that makes your PC go, so if you must save money somewhere on your PC, don�t save it there. Enermax (together with the other two makes I�d recommend, Antec and Sparkle) PSUs cost a bit more (okay, two, or three times what you�d pay for even a descent �other� make), but �if you�ve got a ten dollar head, buy a ten dollar crash helmet� ;)