Low voltage resitance, impedance checks around the circuit may have more quickly pointed to the cause.

I work primarily in software, and just play with hardware, but I’ve been bitten many times by the same sort of troubleshooting issues when debugging software. It can be frustratingly difficult to troubleshoot your own work. When you first measured the wrong resistance, you attempted to explain it away by thinking there were other things in parallel, rather than probing deeper to recognize the problem. I’ve made similar rationalizations many times when confronted with evidence of a problem. You concentrated on the chip itself, where you expected to see the problem, rather than the other components, which you assumed were good.

Often it helps to have another set of eyes look at a problem. I can’t count the number of times I’ve helped colleagues by merely standing over their shoulder and letting them explain their problem to me, and watching them come to the solution themselves during their attempt to explain. Sometimes I help by asking the right question (did you think of checking … ?), but other times I help by merely listening, without necessarily coming to understand their problem at all.

Heh, I noticed that C26 error instantly first time you tried to probe between that and the other resistor.