TDiRonson

As Aspman suggests, I think your best option here is to take the side off and reseat all the cables and cards in case something has been knocked or vibrated its way loose. While it's open, use compressed air and a soft bristled paintbrush to clear out as much dust as you can - it may well be caked all over heatsinks, fan grills etc and be causing overheating. Also see if any fans are failing to spin up when you hit the power button (if the bearing has gone on the CPU heatsink fan that could cause rapid overheating and shut down). You could also see if there are any unused things draining PSU power that you could unplug (extra hard drives, PCI cards, modems etc.) as computer PSUs deliver fewer and fewer watts as they age, and your supply marked 500w might now only be delivering a fraction of that. If none of that works it could be pretty much anything on the mainboard, like Scribbler says. If it's a fair age then I wouldn't bother troubleshooting further personally, unless you've got a lot of patience. If you're just doing basic desktop and internet stuff with it a £30 Raspberry Pi will handle most of the tasks that a 10 year old PC that cost £800 at the time will, with the added benefit of super low power draw, silent running and instant boot up.

Since my car doesn't have daylight running lights, for a while now I've been switching on my dipped headlights during the day to make myself more visible in less-than-ideal conditions (like low glaring sun or a gloomy day with drizzle/light spray, rather than the sort of heavy rain when you're an idiot not to have your headlights on). To my eyes cars with DRLs are a little more noticeable in the mirrors in those condtions, and I'm trying to achieve the same thing - make myself a bit more noticeable to people with dirty windows, dodgy eyesight etc. so they're less likely to fail to spot me and pull out on me. Headlights do feel like overkill sometimes though. Especially so since I switched from standard H4 bulbs to Nightbreakers, seeing as they're a hell of a lot brighter and also have a shorter lifespan. I often see people without DRLs put on their sidelights in those conditions, but the majority of cars you see driving around on a gloomy day with sidelights on... well, they might as well not bother as they're so dim. It barely makes them any more noticeable at all. My thinking is to upgrade the bulbs in the sidelights to something brighter than the current feeble yellow glow, but I can't find much good info out there as most people swapping sidelights mainly seem to do it to improve the looks. Ideally I'd like something that's a lot more powerful than the current bulbs so I can be seen, but is still road legal and doesn't dazzle other drivers. I don't want to go down the route of fitting aftermarket DRL kits. There are LED sidelight bulbs but I've read bad things about the internals melting from the heat of uprated headlights. And I don't want bulbs that have to be swapped out at MOT time because I know I'll forget! Any thoughts or ideas, guys?

Big thanks everyone, just done them and it turned out to be a nice easy job. Wanted to be prepared after hearing so many horror stories of bulb changes needing contortionist skills, ramping and pulling bits of bodywork off, spring clips flying off and getting lost on the engine bay etc. On your recommendations I decided to ditch Halfords and make a trip to Eurocarparts instead, plus spend a little extra and go with the Philips +130%. Although after waiting in the massive queue and handing over my cash found that their stock numbers are buggered up and the part number for the +130% gives you a different Philips xenon effect bulb at my local place, which baffled the sales guy. So had to get those refunded and ended up going with Osram Nightbreakers. And they wouldn't do the click and collect price so paid over the odds for them, bah! Still, very impressed with the Nightbreakers now they're in. In the end it took just a few minutes each side to do the job... plus a good half an hour faffing about at eurocarparts!

Does anyone have any hints or tips on changing headlight bulbs on the Mk1 Octy? I've got to do my first one but since I don't have a garage or driveway to work in off the road I want to get things right first time. The handbook makes it look straightforward, but is there anything to watch out for in your experience, like clips prone to springing off? I'm a bit of a novice so no tip is too basic! It's my dipped beam on the passenger side that's out (full beam is fine, so is sidelight) so I need an H4 - that's right isn't it? I'll do both sides at once, though. I don't do much night driving on unlit roads so don't need anything too powerful. Are these basic Bosch ones a fair choice for the money? http://www.halfords.com/motoring/bulbs-blades-batteries/car-bulbs/bosch-car-headlamp-bulbs-472-h4-x-2

Some really good ideas mentioned already - thorough virus and malware scan first, and then an update or ideally fresh install of flash player (YouTube still generally uses flash). If still no joy install another web browser like chrome or Firefox and see if you still get problems when using YouTube through that. It could even be a driver issue - I had problems with my web browser locking up randomly that vanished when I installed a new driver for my graphics card... Weird thing was I could run graphics intensive games no problem, it was just the browser that had problems so a graphics driver update was not at all what I expected to fix it.

We knew it was coming but it's still so cruelly young to lose him... I was very late in discovering him but it only took one book for him to become my favourite author and I immediately devoured everything of his I could find. It's all great but the discworld series is his masterpiece, it's going to be painful finishing the last book when it comes out and knowing that it truly is the end. There are some suggestions that his daughter might carry on his work though, as she's a talented author in her own right. I really hope she does.

Great stuff. I can think of a few other little jobs around the house where they'd come in handy too now, I'm going to be gluing these things all over the place! Thanks for the inspiration and the excellent guide.

Excellent idea, I might need to do this soon as the mechanism on my ashtray hasn't appreciated it being heavily used as a change tray and general stowage bin. Where did those particular magnets come from, have you got a source or were they something you had knocking around?

If you get into using photoshop but don't want to pay stupid money for the software when your trial ends, you can try out GIMP instead. Does most of what photoshop does but it's free and open source. Shame about the name though... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP

I've been using that model of Sansa for years and it's performed very well for me. If you're looking for a simple mp3 player that has reasonable capacity, good battery life and a small screen so you can navigate your files easily the Clip+ is pretty much 'last man standing' now - other manufacturers have moved on to much flasher and more complex media players with large full colour screens and other gubbins you don't need when all you want to do is listen to audiobooks or a bit of music. Biggest plus for me is you don't have to use iTunes to load your files to it, unlike many Apple devices. You can also slap a microSD card in it to boost the capacity even more. And if you're feeling techy you can use 'Rockbox' to customise the firmware, which isn't possible with a lot of other players.

A couple of moisture traps in the cabin and boot would be a good idea since it will be sitting idle into late autumn and winter - they'll help to stop it getting too damp and musty inside. Personally I use them all year round and find they also make a big difference to the amount of misting and condensation I get on the inside of the glass. You could go further while you're not driving it and get a tub of Kilrock moisture absorbing crystals for about a fiver and leave trays or dishes of it throughout the car. The aircon may well get pretty musty in that time so you could treat yourself to a can of aircon steriliser/deodoriser ready to run through the system on your return... why suffer through the sweaty foot stink of mouldy aircon on your first day back in the driving seat! Good luck with the surgery, take it easy and don't be tempted to rush back to anything.