The new Athlon XP chip arrived today. After spending two hours trying to get the original fan off the motherboard, I managed to install the new chip. Satisfied, I reconnected everything, and switched the machine back on.

Nothing.

When I say nothing, I mean Nothing. Everything was happily whirring away, but I wasn't even getting the BIOS POST on the screen.

I then tried to get the new fan off, so I could replace the new chip with the old one. But this fan was twice as big. And impossible to get off.

This is where I went a little crazy. The computer has all my work. Everything. It's also my way of communicating with people, my TV/Video/DVD/Music system, it houses all my scripts and ideas - in short, this was a Bad Thing. I apologise for the babbling phone call home, but you should have seen me twenty minutes beforehand, when I had given up hope of the machine ever working again.

In the end, I was able to prise off the fan by stripping the case down, taking everything out of the motherboard, removing the motherboard, and using a big screwdriver to lift it off, only being slightly terrified about cracking the processor housing.

Everything is now back to normal. Except the power LEDs aren't working. But I can live with that. Of course, I now have a Athlon XP chip gathering dust in a box, but hey....