What ever you elect to do be sure the hard drive remains in your possession! You need to stop the tech methinks, the motherboard is toast and nothing will revive it so no point in adding more to a bill to achieve nothing. The motherboard is a socket 775, those are readily available from CAN$60 to over CAN$100 from Tigerdirect in Burlington just behind Costco. But you need to affirm that a standard motherboard will fit that case, it might be Dell specific. They also still have XP (only one copy according to the web site for $110. Check your tech for his prices, you now have something to compare with his prices. A Dell motherboard is available here and if you go that route I strongly suggest you get it shipped to a UPS Store in Buffalo, Naigara Falls or Tonawanda, NY and pick it up yourself Stateside. Costs $5 to use the UPS store on top of shipping of course but with our dollar almost ahead of theirs life is looking sweeter all the time. Picking it up avoids brokerage fees but the PST and GST will probably be charge as you return. You are sadly between a rock and a hard place financially because none of the components will readily migrate to a newer computer. But, taking a different angle you can watch the Government Surplus online auctions for a bargain. The link is to the recent results and as you will see Niagara Region recently auctioned off a bunch that went from $75 to $100 for a working tower. The only thing missing is the operating system BUT it comes with a license sticker so you can borrow a copy to install but remember to use the key stuck to the tower. You old hard drive can be slaved if you wish, all your peripherals will work and it will give you a good computer. There are currently none for auction but we never go more than a few days before some durisdiction lists old equipment they need gone.

zep - I did google it, copied to a doc and saved it for reference. I check out a few things about changing the battery and what can happen. It said you can lose your custom bios settings. I have no idea what those would be - will look that up later. hmmm... I guess I could shut it down and see what happens... it'd have to be off 24 hrs to lose a day on it - right? so it'd take a few nights off to lose a day... I'm not sure how that'd work since the time on it was correct. maybe I should ask Dell that question!

The problem is with the approach. Adding steel at the BOTTOM of the joist THEORETICALLY increases the area moment, ONLY if the steel is jointed intimately to the wood, thereby putting x-section of the steel in pure tension. The problem is that, in practice, joining the steel intimately to the wood is not really doable, no matter how many nails you used. The nails are put in a shear loading, the wood is not stiff enough, and metal just slides on the surface of the wood and never gets put into a tensile load. The better approach would be to install steel on the SIDES of the joist, oriented vertically. The taller the piece of steel, the greater the area moment, and the more it will resist bending ONLY if it is kept from buckling. This is where the wood comes in. Fastening the steel securely to the sides of the wood will keep the steel from buckling, and thereby increase the stiffness of the joist by an amount equivalent toe the area moment of the steel multiplied by the modulus of elasticity of steel, divided by the same for wood. The fastening system works here because the fasteners are put in a tensile load, and very little at that since the steel does not buckle. For example, a wood 2x4 (actually 1.5 x 3.5) has a modulus of around 12.5 and a area moment of around 5.36 inches cubed. Steel strap 3.5 inches wide and only 0.095 inches thick has an area moment of only 0.338 inches cubed, BUT steel has a modulus of around 200. So, if you use the formula for simple deflection, it turns out that steel that is only 0.095 inches thick and 3.5 inches wide is just as stiff as a wood that is the same height, but 2 inches thick. The trick is to keep the steel from buckling, which can be avoided by fastening every few inches with nails, screws, or bolts. The fasteners are under practically no load as long as the steel does not buckle, and of course it will not under such small deflections. Yours truly, S. Lucas Valdes, PEME, Cal Poly, SLO, 1984

I was an AW service tech for 16 years, but have been out for 2.5 years. I seem to remember that art glass itself had essentially no warranty after delivery due to its nature & fragility. But when they started offering the art glass inside the airspace of insulated glass, I believe that had a warranty against seal failure or other manufacturing defects for ten years. Like I said, though-I've been out for a while so I looked it up. According to the warranty listed at this link, it is indeed a ten year warranty against seal failure. What you're describing sounds like a seal failure if the haze is in the airspace. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.andersenwindows.com/-/media/aw/files/technical-docs/warranty/warranty-windows-patiodoors--artglass--400series--200series.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjisNf7xdfsAhVUGM0KHQ9xCK0QFjABegQIDxAF&usg=AOvVaw1WaFG9vGQAxQo-1zHABQEY With all that said-is the art glass indeed in the insulated space? Can you post a picture of the haze you're referring to? Do you know the Product ID number?