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

**** WARNING - (VERY)GEEKISH RANT ****

Here we go...

Yesterday morning I was quite happily typing away and all of a sudden my PC died...
Completely and utterly dead... the computer was no more... it was a late computer...

(you get the message )

After several attempts at a re-boot, a couple of kicks and a lot of swearing I finally came to the conclusion that something serious was wrong...

So, first move... take out the cards, one at a time to see if that makes a difference.
Nothing!
Take out the hard drive and install that in another machine... works fine so the hard drive aint kaputt!

Call our IT consultant, drag him away from whatever seedy internet site he'd been looking at (knowing him it was probably www.microsoft.com ).

Together we completely disassemble the computer... kick the guy in the next office off his machine and try out every single component, one at a time, in his machine...

The final result was that the only thing wrong with my system was the motherboard had gone to meet its maker...

So, no problem, buy another motherboard and away we go...

WRONG...

The only motherboard in this entire city (believe me I know, I visited every single shop in a 10 mile radius this morning) compatible with my CPU didn't have enough PCI slots!

So, the only alternative is to buy a CPU as well...
Oh, and of course if you buy a new motherboard and CPU, the RAM you're currently using might as well be thrown in the dustbin as well!

Ok then, so I tell the boss I'm going to spend around £300 of her money and she hasn't a choice in the matter!
I go out and buy the pieces and start fitting them...
Only then do I discover that the Power Supply Unit I've got isn't compatible with the new motherboard!

Back to the shop for a new motherboard... finally decide if I'm going to do all this work I might as well install a new hard drive and be done with it!

Fit the new Power Supply, fit the hard drive as a slave and decide to worry about formating it later as I've quite enough to do trying to get the rest of teh computer working.

Spend 2 hours putting the whole thing back together again, turn it on... Great, beeps and lights, a picture on the screen and it starts to boot...

Then grinds to a halt telling me there's a bios problem...

Spend the next hour going through the BIOS to figure out what's wrong there... can't find anything, but everytime I quit the BIOS the computer seizes up and the only way to restart it is physically pull the plug on the thing...

Eventually give up, take it back to the shop I got the motherboard from and scream for help...

2 hours later, I go back into the shop and the engineer's finally found out what was wrong - the CPU he sold me six hours previously is defective... (so Intel's just as bad as Microsoft then!!!)

He's changed the CPU, and nice guy he is, he's formatted the new disk and installed my OS on it for me...

Unfortunately, I can now no longer get anything off the old hard drive... so I'm now sat with a 'working' computer with just windows on it and a six foot high pile of software boxes, slowly reinstalling everything!



I really think I should go back to using pencil and paper

awww...poor Whisky

translates in morse code so Whisky can understand

Well, not quite as funny as Alfie Moon trying to buy a condom, but nearly...

You have my sympathies, Sir.

.. .... .- - . -.-. --- -- .--. ..- - . .-. ...

(I hate computers)

I think it the people to hate micros..uhm...their computers!

Whisky, have you tried to install the old disk in the new computer?
You may have to change the jumpers, so the old disk becomes slave, or set both to CS(cable select) and put the old one on the other slot in the same IDE cable. If the disk is correct, you should at least be able to copy the data.

To be perfectly honest, the state the old disk was in I'm probably better off starting from scratch...
Between the amount of errors due to conflicts in software versions, missing or damaged dlls and the amount of junk/spyware corrupted files there were on the old disk I'm tempted to stick the thing under a large magnet before doing anything with it (it's going into another machine tomorrow)

Oh, and I systematically set all disks to CS anyway... saves messing around later

And for some reason Dell machines only accept CS.

I keep all downloaded installfiles on a separate logical disk, so it is relatively easy to reinstall the stuff. It only needs lots of nested directories, as the name not always says which program it is

And I found it safer to pay a bit more and let the shop install the whole thing. That makes them responsible to get it all working before I accept it. It costs a bit more, but saves a lot of irritation (as you found out the hard way).

True... the trouble with the company we generally use is that they don't build computers... you want a computer, they'll sell you an HP.. end of story - if HP don't make the model you want, tough...

Normally not a problem with office computers, but HP have got to be the most impossible machines to upgrade in existance, the motherboards are non-standard, the graphics cards are built in and impossible to disable, as are the sound cards, even the floppy drive is unique to HP, you can't change it...

I'd deliberately avoided that as I needed a much more powerful graphics set up than HP could supply.

The machine I actually work on is such a mish-mash of various components that our consultants run a mile every time I mention it

Whisky,
maybe you can ask for one of these HP's if thats the only acceptable brand:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/51/31547.html

A Linux desktop instead of micro$oft.

Heyla Whisky

Never mind...at least Royal Mail didn't put a forklift truck through your tower...as they did with mine a couple of months ago..

Zantic