Choo choo! All aboard the Complain Train!

[Worgen]

Gather round children, and let me tell you the story of some fucking bullshit with regards to my new PC build in 3 acts.

This reminds me of when a service pack upgrade to windows XP worked with the drivers from a gaming mouse to destroy my hard drive. I was testing out a gaming mouse from a friend and updated windows XP to service pack 3 and the machine wouldn't boot. This was before I was a tech and the days of google so I ended up having to take my machine to a local shop. Computer worked fine as long as my data drive wasn't hooked up, but as soon as it was, no boot. Still have the drive but its long dead.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Gather round children, and let me tell you the story of some fucking bullshit with regards to my new PC build in 3 acts.

Act 1

Our story begins last week. I had planned to do a computer upgrade on Sunday. It was going to be simple, just update my bios, slot in a new CPU (5700x3rd upgrading from a 3600x), and a new GPU (7800xt upgrading from a 5700xt). On Saturday before I've had a chance to touch any components my PC dies while just watching youtube. Blue screens and tells me that there's a hardware issue. I try rebooting a couple of times and continue getting the bluescreen error. I think it's the SSD, but I hope that it's the RAM. I leave for the day as I had previous plans, and decide to troubleshoot on Sunday.

On Sunday I start trouble shooting. First thing I do is try booting the computer, it still blue screens with the error message telling me it's a hardware issue. I have an extra kit of ram, so I decide to swap out the ram. The computer boots to blue screen again. I restart the computer, it doesn't boot, won't even go to bios.

I check the debug lights on the motherboard, it's telling me it's a CPU error. I try swapping the ram back to the original kit, it's still telling me there's a CPU error.

I decide that there's 3 things that could potentially be wrong. Either the CPU is dying, the CPU socket on the motherboard isn't providing power to the CPU correctly, or the PSU isn't supplying power to the motherboard correctly. I don't have another CPU to test with on hand, but I do have an extra power supply at my parent's house, so I go and grab it (they only live 25 minutes away). I come back with the power supply and try to run the CPU with its own power supply dedicated to it, still nothing.

At this point I can't tell if the issue is the CPU or the mobo, and in order to get the 5700x3D like I'd planned I need a working 3000 series CPU to update the bios on my mobo, which I don't have. I decide to take the easy way out and throw money at the problem, and just buy a new mobo, cpu, and ram.

I go to microcenter and pick up the parts. I consider also buying a new CPU cooler, but they don't have the one I want in stock, so I decide to chance that maybe the cooler I have will be AM5 compatible. I bring home the parts and start building. My cooler is not AM5 compatible, I order a new cooler from Amazon and have to wait until Friday because of the Holidays.

End Act 1.

Intermission.

Begin Act 2.

It's Friday, the CPU cooler arrives, and I put together the system. I try to get it to post. It manages to go to BIOS, but boot message tells me that there's something wrong with the SSD.

I start doing research about the error message and find out that Crucial SSDs (which I have) have a problem with ASUS motherboards (which I also have). Apparently there's some faulty firmware with the SSDs that prevents the mobo from being able to read the temperature of the SSD, and shuts it down to prevent overheating. This can be solved with a firmware update. The problem is that I only have one SSD, my boot SSD, and I can't boot into windows to be able to download the firmware.

I reach out to a friend of mine, and ask him to make me a windows boot drive, and he also lets me borrow an external SSD.

I pick up these items, and I give him a 16 gig kit of DDR4 ram, which I no longer need as I've switched to DDR5. This kit of ram is the exact same speed and manufacturer as the ram that he uses in his computer already, and will give him 32 gigs total.

I return home and try to boot my PC from the windows boot USB. Windows will not install to an external SSD. I take apart the external SSD (with my friend's permission), take out the M.2, crack open my computer, install it. Windows refuses to install to that drive. I remove the old M.2 that I have and put the new M.2 into that slot. Windows refuses to install to that drive. I try reformating the drive. Windows refuses to install to that drive.

I call my friend to let him know of my issues. A new plan is set. I'm going to take my old M.2, put it into the external M.2 enclosure, bring it to my friend's house tomorrow morning, and try to see if it's readable, and if it is maybe update the firmware or at least download any data on it.

An hour later my friend reaches out to me, he has installed the ram I gave him into his computer, his computer now no longer works. The debug LEDs on his motherboard are flashing a CPU error.

End Act 2

Intermission

Begin Act 3

I arrive at my friend's house the next day, Saturday, at 11am, SSD in hand and hope in my heart. He invites me inside and offers me chicken soup. He has spent the morning fixing his computer. It is now operational, but only with the new RAM that I had given him, his RAM is borked, but he's figured out that his RAM works in certain single channel configurations, so it seems like one of his sticks is bad. We futz around with it for a while and figure out that his RAM will work if it's overvolted. His PC is working fine again. We try to read my SSD and are unable to. It's either corrupted or dead. We try to boot from my SSD. This results in a blue screen.

More money will be thrown at this problem, we go to Micro Center. I buy a 2TB Samsung 990 EVO SSD for more than 50% off, and my friend buys himself another 32 gigs of RAM, on sale for 40% off (for the sake of system stability to replace the RAM with a faulty stick).

We go back to my house, rebuild the computer again, add in the new SSD, install windows, everything works.

My simple upgrade of a CPU and GPU turned into a full system rebuild where the only thing left from my prior computer is the case and PSU. But...given that the problem was apparently a dead SSD, and a faulty stick of RAM causing an error to read as a CPU issue I may still basically have a fully functional second computer. I need to reassemble the old computer and test it with the SATA SSD I have. (I was unable to use this SATA SSD for testing prior because I can't find the SATA cable for my power supply, but I do have a second power supply from my old computer that I grabbed from my parents' house, and can use that for testing.)

Now I'm redownloading all my games and testing for system stability and temps, and benchmarking.

Also, when testing the M.2 SSDs I basically had to take apart and rebuild the computer like 7 times because the CPU cooler i bought is so massive that it makes it impossible to get to the primary M.2 slot, and also makes it very difficult to unlock the GPU from the mobo. I actually ended up ripping the GPU lock off the mobo because it was so annoying to have to unlock it each time.

Now the mystery, how the fuck did a stick of RAM cause both mine and my friend's computers to register massive CPU errors? We both did research and it shouldn't be possible. We need another sacrificial PC to test things on...for science.

I'd be more wondering why Windows wouldn't install to the SSDs. You didn't have any normal desktop/laptop HDs laying around? Or if you have a laptop, just take the drive out of that and it should boot Windows from that (to install the firmware). All my computers use the same image of Windows that I installed on this cheap Dell laptop that I gave to my friend after getting an ASUS Vivobook. Windows doesn't really care if you change the hardware, it'll still boot. My desktop and the Vivobook have the exact same install of Windows on them as the Dell laptop because I ain't debloating Windows 10 again and changing all the settings and disabling all the services (like Windows Defender/Update and several others). The CPU error is probably like a false positive or something, it's extremely rare for the CPU to be bad (when you eliminate everything but the mobo and CPU, it's like 99.99999% the mobo), once your friend also got that error, then you know it's a bullshit error (no way both your CPUs got issues at the same time).

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I'd be more wondering why Windows wouldn't install to the SSDs. You didn't have any normal desktop/laptop HDs laying around? Or if you have a laptop, just take the drive out of that and it should boot Windows from that (to install the firmware). All my computers use the same image of Windows that I installed on this cheap Dell laptop that I gave to my friend after getting an ASUS Vivobook. Windows doesn't really care if you change the hardware, it'll still boot. My desktop and the Vivobook have the exact same install of Windows on them as the Dell laptop because I ain't debloating Windows 10 again and changing all the settings and disabling all the services (like Windows Defender/Update and several others). The CPU error is probably like a false positive or something, it's extremely rare for the CPU to be bad (when you eliminate everything but the mobo and CPU, it's like 99.99999% the mobo), once your friend also got that error, then you know it's a bullshit error (no way both your CPUs got issues at the same time).

Yeah, when I got the CPU error I thought it was the mobo, and since the upgrade plan had depended on reusing the mobo I ended up just switching from AM4 to AM5. By the time we figured out the ram issue with my friend's computer, indicating that my old mobo and CPU were potentially still good I had already bought and built the new computer. Having the working computer was a priority over trying to save some money and continuing to troubleshoot.

I had an old SATA SSD laying around, but couldn't find the SATA cable for the power supply that's currently in my computer, so I wasn't able to hook it up and use it for troubleshooting earlier.

I also haven't owned a laptop since college. I have a work laptop but no way in hell am I taking that apart.

I'll take some time next weekend and try to rebuild the old computer and see if I can get it working with the SATA SSD I have, and if it works I'll probably flip it on ebay and get some money back.

 

[Chimpzy]

Was by myself yesterday, and didn't feel like cooking something. Since sunday and also holiday season, almost everything was closed.

Opted to get a doner kebab from the shop I used frequent, but hadn't been to in a good while. Cuz they're almost always open, except maybe during Saum/Ramadan.

Got a large doner with garlic sauce. It was kinda shit. They now use the same low quality kebab meat and bread the other shittier shops do, and they used to have this delicious homemade garlic sauce, but that's gone too, replaced with store bought. And they charged 10 euros for a large doner, which is like half again as much as it was a couple years ago.

Alas, seems there is no good kebab shop left in my town. Which sucks, cuz kebab was my go to for affordable fast food that's a step up from other fast food (or at least felt like a step up)

 

[Kyrian007]

Was by myself yesterday, and didn't feel like cooking something. Since sunday and also holiday season, almost everything was closed.

Opted to get a doner kebab from the shop I used frequent, but hadn't been to in a good while. Cuz they're almost always open, except maybe during Saum/Ramadan.

Got a large doner with garlic sauce. It was kinda shit. They now use the same low quality kebab meat and bread the other shittier shops do, and they used to have this delicious homemade garlic sauce, but that's gone too, replaced with store bought. And they charged 10 euros for a large doner, which is like half again as much as it was a couple years ago.

Alas, seems there is no good kebab shop left in my town. Which sucks, cuz kebab was my go to for affordable fast food that's a step up from other fast food (or at least felt like a step up)

I feel that. A BBQ place opened up near me and for about 6 months it was amazing. Clean, great wait staff, excellent food. Standard BBQ, but used in a variety of interesting ways. A Cuban sandwich, but made with smoked ham and pulled pork. A banh mi or bao, but with crispy smoked pork belly. And my personal favorite, a smoked egg and chorizo burrito (which was smoked, the egg or chorizo... and the answer is yes.) And then their chef left for another place. And suddenly the interesting menu became standard bbq fare, with standard bbq sides. Boring.

As for kebabs. Got 2 places near my apartment within walking distance for kebabs. One is a newly renovated diner with a full Mediterranean menu and is a little pricy, but very excellent. The other is a little place with no indoor seating, who's shawarma grill has a partially pre-cooked cylinder of mixed ground beef and lamb turning on it. Which I should turn my nose up at with the better place so nearby... But their kebabs are still very tasty and noticeably cheaper. But I imagine I'll be feeling your pain soon enough with the high turnover such places usually have around here.

 

[Xprimentyl]

A couple of weeks ago, I and a coworker were tasked with taking on a new task on a Wednesday. As we were walking through the ins and outs, we soon learned it was a very complicated and nuanced process. We then learned that the person off-loading this duty was leaving the company... Friday. So with all of two-day's training, it was completely on our shoulders, and we had no one to fall back on. We've been struggling, but we're making it work (we think.)

Monday, we began working with another coworker who has taken us through several hours of training on yet another set of duties being off-loaded on us. She is very unorganized, literally writing up the procedures as she's training us, and even her procedures are bullet points at BEST. Fine, we thought; these are vital reports with the audience of senior leadership with high expectations of timeliness and accuracy, but with the person training us to fall back on, we should be able to manage. Welp, that person is going on vacation after today for TWO WEEKS! We've got hours of recorded Teams meetings to guide us, but the Teams meeting recordings suck both in quality (my screen froze multiple times) and content (our trainer has a thick Chinese accent, and her processes are anything but orderly to follow any meaningful procedure.)

Then, I came home yesterday to a jury summons for next month. 44 years old, and never had a jury summons until about 5 years ago; this is my third since.

2025 can eat a giant penis at this point.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Big storms over where I live, and apparently the apartment next to mine's balcony drain clogged up, water went in through their balcony door, flooded the entire apartment and leaked somewhat into mine.

It's sorted now, just have to wait for my carpet to dry out, but it's the 2mx3m approx area I most frequently walk over.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The insane wind in California right now sucks.

The night before last my area had winds gusting at 65 mph. The wind started lifting my patio furniture and slamming it into the ground, which woke me up. So in the middle of the night, at 4am I went out with a roll of duck tape and taped the patio furniture to each other, then taped that down to the outdoor rug, and then taped that rug down to the ground. Then I went back inside and proceeded to get no sleep.

The massive fire in LA is also completely the fault of the wind. It's making it impossible to contain, regardless of firefighting resources. People are complaining that firefighters aren't doing enough but what exactly are they supposed to do about the wind carrying the fire wherever the fuck it wants?

Last year when there was a wildfire near my house, if the winds had been blowing in the direction they currently are rather than the opposite direction my house would be gone.

 

[Worgen]

The insane wind in California right now sucks.

The night before last my area had winds gusting at 65 mph. The wind started lifting my patio furniture and slamming it into the ground, which woke me up. So in the middle of the night, at 4am I went out with a roll of duck tape and taped the patio furniture to each other, then taped that down to the outdoor rug, and then taped that rug down to the ground. Then I went back inside and proceeded to get no sleep.

The massive fire in LA is also completely the fault of the wind. It's making it impossible to contain, regardless of firefighting resources. People are complaining that firefighters aren't doing enough but what exactly are they supposed to do about the wind carrying the fire wherever the fuck it wants?

Last year when there was a wildfire near my house, if the winds had been blowing in the direction they currently are rather than the opposite direction my house would be gone.

Stay safe man.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Stay safe man.

I'm not actually near the current wildfires in LA, I'm further south in a different also wildfire prone part of California.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Allow me to continue the saga of my PC being fucky.

Begin Act 4

I rebuilt my old pc to see if the ram issue was what had caused the mobo to register a cpu error and not boot.

I don't have another case to put all the parts into, so I just built the whole thing on top of a motherboard box as a poor man's test bench.



It looks like after rebuilding it with the original ram kit and a sata ssd it powers on but still doesn’t post, and still has the cpu led debug light turning on.

At this point I'm still not sure what the issue is. The M.2 SSD was definitely dead/corrupted because I tried it in my friend's PC and it immediately blue screening, and the PC wouldn't recognize it when the SSD was connected using an external housing. Here though I'm trying to boot the PC with a SATA SSD instead and it's still not booting, and still giving me the same CPU error I was getting last time. It's possible that there were multiple compounding issues that occurred at the same time coincidentally, but for some reason that just feels unlikely to me.

Anyway, this result does make me feel better about the full system rebuild I had ended up doing because I did get the new parts at a good price because of holiday sales, and it looks like if I hadn't done that I would have ended up fiddling with this issue for several more days if not weeks.

Now comes the question of what to do with this old system. I'm planning on selling the GPU, which is a 5700xt and is still in perfect working condition. I'm pretty sure the ram is still good. I don't know if the CPU issue I'm getting is actually the CPU or if it's a mobo issue.

I could put the mobo, ram, and CPU up on ebay as a kit and just say it has an issue I haven't been able to diagnose, but that either the CPU or the mobo is perfectly good but I don't know which. Then just let people gamble to see if they're smarter than me and can solve the problem, or they'll at least get either a working CPU or working mobo on the cheap plus a working kit of DDR4 ram (3600mhz cl16). Somehow I doubt that's going to be a successful sales tactic though.

 

[Gordon_4]

Allow me to continue the saga of my PC being fucky.

Begin Act 4

I rebuilt my old pc to see if the ram issue was what had caused the mobo to register a cpu error and not boot.

I don't have another case to put all the parts into, so I just built the whole thing on top of a motherboard box as a poor man's test bench.

View attachment 12634

It looks like after rebuilding it with the original ram kit and a sata ssd it powers on but still doesn’t post, and still has the cpu led debug light turning on.

At this point I'm still not sure what the issue is. The M.2 SSD was definitely dead/corrupted because I tried it in my friend's PC and it immediately blue screening, and the PC wouldn't recognize it when the SSD was connected using an external housing. Here though I'm trying to boot the PC with a SATA SSD instead and it's still not booting, and still giving me the same CPU error I was getting last time. It's possible that there were multiple compounding issues that occurred at the same time coincidentally, but for some reason that just feels unlikely to me.

Anyway, this result does make me feel better about the full system rebuild I had ended up doing because I did get the new parts at a good price because of holiday sales, and it looks like if I hadn't done that I would have ended up fiddling with this issue for several more days if not weeks.

Now comes the question of what to do with this old system. I'm planning on selling the GPU, which is a 5700xt and is still in perfect working condition. I'm pretty sure the ram is still good. I don't know if the CPU issue I'm getting is actually the CPU or if it's a mobo issue.

I could put the mobo, ram, and CPU up on ebay as a kit and just say it has an issue I haven't been able to diagnose, but that either the CPU or the mobo is perfectly good but I don't know which. Then just let people gamble to see if they're smarter than me and can solve the problem, or they'll at least get either a working CPU or working mobo on the cheap plus a working kit of DDR4 ram (3600mhz cl16). Somehow I doubt that's going to be a successful sales tactic though.

Throw them on for a low enough price and you'd be surprised what kind of chancer would take a punt on it.

 

[Gergar12]

If PowerBI changes the user interface/UI one more fucking time I swear to the simulation master or whomever I will stop using. Constant UI changes by UI that degrade user-experience/UX.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Got bit on the face by a dog.

Not really a bite, more of just a nip, but enough to draw blood and potentially leave a decent sized scar near my chin. Not deep, but decently wide. Not a huge deal, it's not the first scar I've gotten on my face and it won't be the last.

The biggest issue is that I won't have insurance through my new job until the beginning of next month, and my insurance from my last job ran out at the beginning of the year, so if I get an infection from the cut I'll have to go to urgent care and pay out of pocket for it. I've been trying really hard to keep things clean and use neosporin to keep it disinfected but it would have been nice to be able to go to the doctor and just get some anti-biotics just in case.

 

[Kyrian007]

A couple of weeks ago, I and a coworker were tasked with taking on a new task on a Wednesday. As we were walking through the ins and outs, we soon learned it was a very complicated and nuanced process. We then learned that the person off-loading this duty was leaving the company... Friday. So with all of two-day's training, it was completely on our shoulders, and we had no one to fall back on. We've been struggling, but we're making it work (we think.)

Monday, we began working with another coworker who has taken us through several hours of training on yet another set of duties being off-loaded on us. She is very unorganized, literally writing up the procedures as she's training us, and even her procedures are bullet points at BEST. Fine, we thought; these are vital reports with the audience of senior leadership with high expectations of timeliness and accuracy, but with the person training us to fall back on, we should be able to manage. Welp, that person is going on vacation after today for TWO WEEKS! We've got hours of recorded Teams meetings to guide us, but the Teams meeting recordings suck both in quality (my screen froze multiple times) and content (our trainer has a thick Chinese accent, and her processes are anything but orderly to follow any meaningful procedure.)

Then, I came home yesterday to a jury summons for next month. 44 years old, and never had a jury summons until about 5 years ago; this is my third since.

2025 can eat a giant penis at this point.

Jury summons can go like that. I've gotten summoned 5 times, I'm 47. But all of the jury summons I've gotten happened between 1999 and 2005. At least I've never had to actually serve. Talking to one co-worker, he's 68, he had never been summoned to jury duty until 2018. He's gotten 4 since.

Complaints... hmm. Right now everything seems to be going well. But, looking ahead to late this year... my job may ask me to move to St. Louis. And by ask, I mean offer me so much more money that I'd have to be crazy to turn it down. Still not sure that is what I want, and moving after so long here is going to be painful. It will be a tough decision.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Going through an application process and I'm being asked for a bunch of documents that have been stamped. Not by the government, but from work and volunteer experiences. Maybe I'm just young, but who the fuck uses stamps? This process has been entirely digital so far, so I just can't understand why they need to be so fucking specific about this.

Oh, the and the forms they provided can only be opened on Windows computers and on MS Word. Blegh.