dead Dell

Received a second hand Dell laptop. I was interested in turning it into a backup or spare unit in case the main telescope control machine goes down. But it has a dead battery. Tried cold soaking it, twice, to no avail. Not a deal breaker. Found the power cord flaky. So weird. Almost exactly the issue with my Dell... Again, not catastrophic; can always get a new cord.

But the Blue Screen of Death? That's not good. They persisted even after two factory restore attempts and three wipe-erasure attempts. Overheating?

Possibly. But even after de-linting the innards, it was still not working right. Looked deeper into the BSOD coding. Network equipment? Huh. Disabled the wireless circuitry and the machine stabilised! All right. We can live without wifi. But then I couldn't get the onboard ethernet board to function! Crikey. Doesn't look like I'm any further ahead...