h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*mumble grumble* <--(just so you know what kind of journal this'll be )

It was delivered to a minimarket not far from where I live, so I wheeled it home in one of their trolleys

And of course it had to be one of the hottest days so far this year when I tried dragging the boxes two floors up to my flat.

Carefully reading the instructions, I tried to put all the pieces together - but found out my new flat screen wouldn't talk to the hard drive.

Plugged in my old bulky screen, which worked just fine.

Spent ages checking out cables and googling. Started all over again, one thing at the time - and found out that the most obvious contact to stick a blue square formed cable into didn't work.

Fortunately, there was some kind of cable adapter that came with the hard drive, so that I could plug the blue squary cable into another contact. Phew - finally, a working screen.

Then, I tried to get my new PC to recognise my broadband connection.



Sure, I'm connected - after all, I'm typing this on my new wireless keyboard, right?

But the connection speed - not to mention the download speed - is soooo slow - much slover than on my laptop.

So I try to check the modem setup - which wants me to specify my modem. But when I tell it to look it up itself, it fails to find one...

So I don't have a modem according to the PC, but I have a connection?

I can't remember installing anything on my laptop when I got the broadband - just plugged it in and hey presto.

Tried to look for clues on supplier's internet page, discovered that I've forgotten my password, asked them to e-mail it to me, was told it had been sent, but I'm sat here rolling my thumbs (see photo supplied by me here A597170) looking at an empty in-box.

So far, I've managed to download and install Opera, download WoW classic and am now waiting for the Burning Crusade download to finish (2 more hours - what the ?)

Laptops tend to come with everything already installed (or at least, that has been my experience), whereas a computer you have to assemble ... probably doesn't, precisely.

That makes sense Yar - my laptop was full of all sorts of things right from the start including everything needed for an iPod - so I ended up buying one and just needed to plug it in to start downloading music...

How frustrating
Hope you get it to behave itself.
Computers which do not co-operate have reduced me to tears of rage and frustration in the past.

I - hate - patches! *breathes deeply*

So if the original version of a software needs a couple of patches to fix all the bugs in it, why - oh WHY - is it not possible to include said patches in a version.2?

And I'm not just talking WoW here - the situation is, currently, even worse at w*rk where we just updated a system, and it turned out to be filled with bugs, for which there are something like 10 patches or more...

We have yet to find out - the system is still not performing correctly...

Right, managed to download WoW and Burning Crusades and am currently waiting for yet another patch to download *rolls eye* - but I have no sound!

Bugger, bugger, bugger - and not even when I plug in my headset...

er do you have the volume swich in a loud posistion

All volume settings set to max - but still no sound in headphones nor in the built in speakers in flat screen.

Sound? This happened to me twice whenever I reinstalled things on my desktop. The first time I fiddled and it came back. Did I remember what I'd done? sSlly question. The second time it stayed dumb, and I gave away the speakers in disgust. People said something like 'the soundcard?' ?

So I started buying laptops(sic)....and stopped needing to reinstall. Reinstalling is a Bad Thing. None of which helps Titania. But you could look at your hardware, and see if it claims to be functioning. Does the supplier have a helpline? They're not always terribly helpful, but you could always swear at them.

I didn't think a modem was mentioned in setting up broadband? That could be why they didn't show it...

Hope you get fixed soon. I can't bear your gloom and despo.

LadyDig
'venerable' as per one of the definitions in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary:

*more mumble and grumble*

OK, so I've got sound in the loudspeakers of my flatscreen - now to figure out how to get sound in my headphones...

Pffffft!!!

Managed to get sound in my flatscreen *and* my headphones but can't have one without the other! *tears hair*

Oh - I can turn off the sound directly on the flatscreen so that I only have sound in my headphones - about time!

You're getting there!

Keep us posted. I wanna a Smiley of a letter-box. Please. Who does them? And how do we ask prettily?

Gone off the thread again. Put it down to

LadyDig
'venerable' as per one of the definitions in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary:

Dare I ask what model of computer this is?

This is the computer I bought (site only available in Swedish):

http://www.boulevard.se/dator.aspx?ID=132

...but with a Nvidia 8800GT instead, and OS Windows XP. See, one of my favourite MMORPGs doesn't support Vista (yet) which limited my selction a bit.

I also got myself a AOC 19" screen, and a Logitech® Cordless Desktop® EX110 (keyboard and mouse).

I had forgotten I had a PC game lying in a drawer that my laptop never managed to handle - so yesterday I installed on my new desktop and stayed up half night playing!

Oblivion from the Morrowind series - I had forgotten how exciting it was!

Yet another one I was completely oblivious to

*more mumble and grumble*

When I got home from w*rk yesterday and turned on the computer, it had 'forgotten' the sound settings! Mute screen, mute headphones.

Fiddling around with the controls I used before didn't help - and then I discovered that, for some reason, some of the options currently have opposite functions of what they're supposed to have.

Example: 'turn off backpanel sound if plugin detected in frontpanel'.

My headphones are plugged in in the front, so of course I had checked this option - but to get the sound to work, I had to uncheck it, which doesn't make any sense.

When I finally got the sound to work, I only had sound in one of my headphones - while the day before yesterday, I had stereo sound.

ARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!

OK, tonight, I plugged the earphones into the BACK panel, and everything worked just fine.

Don't know why the sound card doesn't recognise a front panel at all...

Doesn't give me much room to move around though, since cable is rather stretched - there's GOT TO BE another way to fix this!

The first thing that enters my head is to rearrange the insides of your computer so that the proper sound card is in the front. However, even *I'd* be hesitant about trying without professional assistance ...