It's dead Jim, PC help required, others may also opine.

[monster]

Originally Posted by tw

No software can cause hardware damage. Swapping parts is a many times greater threat to hardware.

1. Note the past tense.
2. Note that he wasn't saying he blamed the hardware failure on that, but the sluggishness prior to the hardware failure.

The rest of it seems sound advice to me, shame you have to coat it with this sort of stuff. If I'd been in, I'd've baulked at him pulling it apart. But I wasn't.