Ooops.

I recently found a computer that had been tossed in the garbage. The motherboard was dead, some of the RAM was bad, the power supply weak, but the graphics card was fine! Free case, free graphics card! Since the card was better than some I'm already using I've been swapping graphics cards among my systems: my daily driver, my editing rig, one I planned to flip but found no buyers, and my basement spare which was once my daily driver.

Everything was going well when until I was pulling the graphics card out of my basement spare when one of the screws holding the card in place slipped off the screwdriver and fell... somewhere.

Ooops.

Thinking that it had fallen into the case I turned it upside down, shook it, started removing cables, shaking it some more, removing the power supply.... eventually I had the motherboard half unplugged and still - nothing. The screw had completely vanished. I decided I needed a small break and cleared some more space on the table. I moved the graphic card I just removed...

*rattle rattle*

...it was in the graphics card all along.

Ooops.

I removed the long lost screw, put it safely aside and began reassembling the system.

I'm still not done - I need to reconnect all the power supply cables - but I need a break. I just hope I didn't break anything horsing the system around. It's not a new system or a great system, but it has worked just fine for 14 years in one configuration or another and I'd hate to lose it.

UPDATE:

It's all re-assembled and back in action. The motherboard layout wasn't designed to take larger graphic cards and the RAM slots are too close to the graphics card for comfort. It's too easy to unseat the RAM which happened multiple times. The card swap failed as it needs an eight pin power connector and my power supply only has six.

I think I'm going to avoid trying to upgrade this old box - it's a pain in the neck.