Please, DON'T TOUCH

I want to thank everyone for all of their insight! I am not in the financial position to absorb the cost of repair or replacement. I'm going to follow some of your advice and dismantle the system entirely for 1 week. That way, nothing gets damaged and I won't offend anyone. This will also allow me to clean IC's, the rack, etc. when I reassemble the system.

Thanks again!

Portugal ... I think a very good move.

After reading the thread I agree with Bombaywalla's statement that as a society we are wedded too closely to our posessions.

Hey Portugal11, another positive in the dis-assemble and re-assemble of a system is that it affords a great opportunity. To clean all connections and re-arrange cables and etc. And Bombaywalla we in the western world also shamefully share a sense of humor and do not judge an entire social hemisphere by what we read on a website forum.

Theo, Chadlinz,

I have lived in Germany, my home country & now the USA. Spent a -l-o-t- of time in Western Europe. If I add up the years spent in the Western world & in my home country, it works out to be a 50-50 split. With that experience in mind, I wrote my original comment. I did not pass my comments by merely reading "what we read on a website forum".
The suggestions made by people here are EXACTLY what I wrote in my original post. It mirrors the society at-large even tho the sample in this thread is really very small.
FWIW.

Bombay, I agree that we, in the west, are too wedded to our material posessions (and I can only speak of us westerners having only lived in Europe (27 years) and the US (10 years)).

However I am firmly of the belief that people the world over are fundamentally the same, and the only reason that westerners appear to be more materialistic, is because we have the opportunity to be materialistic. As the opportunity opens up in India and China so will those people become more materialistic and fall into the same trap as us westerners.

Westerners spend their entire lives surrounded by advertising, that, from a young age, is devoted to persuading you that you are defined by what you buy. Is it any wonder that we're a bit screwed up !?