The saga of the new PC continues.

The new Dell Optiplex 5040 arrived yesterday a little after 1 PM. I opened it up to proceed with my plan to replace the 500 GB HDD with a 2 TB I already had data on and had to give myself a crash course in modern PC parts, because at first I couldn't find the SSD, and the HDD looked like what I expected an SSD to look like. After I got that figured out, I closed it back up and went on to setup.

Setup went fine, though I was disappointed to find out that I could not move the taskbar. I got it where I wanted it through manipulation of which monitor was my main, though I wasn't entirely happy that that meant some games would automatically load on the wrong monitor. I figured it was a problem for future me.

However, the PC did not recognize the HDD. I turned it off to do some fiddling, and when I turned it back on...

TPM not found. And it wouldn't let me boot.

A couple *hours* of fiddling and searching for solutions didn't fix anything, so in desperation I cracked the case again, unseated and reseated what I could... and promptly lost the hold-down screw for the M.2 SSD somewhere in the case. Tried to shake it out, and somehow it just completely vanished. Put some tape on it in hope, turned the PC back on... wouldn't boot.

I lost all patience, took my HDD out of it, put the 500 MB back in, and packed it all back up for a return. However, after some sleep I was able to calm down, and this morning I ordered some M.2 mounting screws from Newegg. They'll be here next week. I don't like having to wait, again, but it's the best I can do.

Whose bright idea was it to make an M.2 mounting bolt with no hole in the top, so you have to reach down into the case and use your fingers on such a tiny piece? Anyway, I really want this thing to work, because returning it involves two things I can't do on my own: printing a return label, and finding the nearest UPS dropoff (I don't have a car). If getting the SSD properly secured still doesn't work, though, I'm screwed.