Is this the world's dirtiest PC?
Reader snap reveals Quatermass-style horror
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We're obliged to reader Danny Lee for forwarding evidence of what appears to be a Quatermass-style lifeform, which has attached itself to a PC and pretty well explains why the thing had ceased to function:

Chilling stuff indeed. Anyone out there who has experienced The Invasion of the Ventblockers is urged not to approach the creature without first firing up a flamethrower, and to forward photographic proof to me right here. Be vigilant. ®
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COMMENTS
@Aaron
Err.. no, the question you should ask is how many i's are in Alumin_i_um...
Yank! :P
That's nothing, my friend's..
computer was emitting a foul smell. Seems the hard drive was full of shit.
So I removed Vista...
Smoke gets in your device
I had a contract job to clean up a bunch of second-hand rack-mount server boxes that were being recommissioned into a Shiny! new datacentre. They were generally filthy inside which puzzled me; rack-mounted kit doesn't usually suffer from dirty environments. It turned out they had previously been installed in an Irish company's datacentre where the engineers smoked.
I had an intermittently-functioning keyboard in for repair a while back. The usual trick of turning the keyboard upside down and giving it a good shake didn't help much so I opened it up to be met by the smell of fragrant "herbs". I vacuumed out the crumbs and refrained from suggesting to the customer that he didn't roll-up at his desk.

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