Worst Computer Problem Ever

[runtheplacered]

Considering I've been a professional computer tech from the age 16-25 (now i'm studying radiology, though).. I've seen all kinds of shitty computer problems. But none ever seem worse then my own. Recently I purchased a new system.. quad-core, 4 gigs of ram, yadda yadda, whatever. But the ram was apparently incompatible with my motherboard.

The problem is that it took awhile to figure that out, because the problem was so intermittent, and the actual symptoms ranged from.. CTD's, to BSOD's, to just full on shut down of the computer. And every stick of ram I tried of the 4 sticks would cause the same problem. I RMA'd the motherboard and it still didn't fix it.

Now I have a new motherboard then from what I started and 4 completely different sticks of ram and I'm finally good to go. It was a costly and lengthy process. When it's a customers computer I have spare parts right around the corner. When you're waiting a week or more for a particular part it's a real pain in the ass.

Of course, not realizing that spell-check isn't functioning in MS Word 2007 until you've written a paper or two is also a pain in the ass. But no software problem can hold a candle to an intermittent hardware problem.

And to those still lampooning Vista. It's been out for awhile now. It works fine. You have to start wondering if perhaps your problems aren't just a User Error? I have no idea how many times I've heard peoples complaints about Vista this or Vista that, when they could have helped themselves the entire time.

 

[Flour]

Our first family computer(bought near the end of 1998 I think, all I know is that it had a 3,2GB HD and 322mhz processor)
It had the normal first time computer user problems, multiple blue screens and random errors, nothing that actually did any damage and until last year it still worked until my dad decided to replace it.

Our second computer had some problems with crashing, but no real problems, we wiped it every month or two because anti virus software refused to work properly. But when it got older(after nearly 7 years I replaced it with the computer I'm using to type this) it got some interesting problems. It decided to randomly ignore one of the sticks of RAM, it refused to recognize new RAM(which led to two 1gb and a 500mb stick getting wasted). In the last few months before I replaced it, it started to randomly crash but it never got any blue screens.

This current computer.. Well, it already had more problems than both previous computers combined.
My dvd player is called a "cd-ram player" and refuses to play any cd or dvd, it still refuses to work after completely removing and reinstalling anything that was related to the dvd player.
My video card doesn't work like it should(atitool artifact scanner should have a black background, mine has a lot of colors) certain graphics options, which it should display refuse to work.
For some reason older games get lower fps than newer games(CoD1 gets 40fps, CoD4 averages at 60fps)
This computer also has a nasty habit of randomly uninstalling programs, drivers and sometimes recently installed or downloaded programs.(I've had it randomly uninstall steam, my video card drivers, winamp, firefox, game patches and driver updates from a cd, some of those are on my computer for months before they're deleted)

 

[Kais86]

My worst problem is one I'm having all the time right now, the computer will go up until a certain point and then will just freeze, only happens when I am playing DoW or watching a movie on WMP, and while I've worked my way around the second problem the first one is persistent.

Other than that one time Vista went to update and I couldn't make it TO the password screen, so I had to format the hard drive, thankfully my porn collection is kept on an external drive, but my movie collection isn't >=(.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

This whole Vista thing has been a fiasco, but it's about fixed now. Windows XP had similar teething problems, but brought a slew of improvements to compensate. I don't think many people see Vista in that same light. Had Microsoft been smarter, they would have offered only two versions, Basic and Pro, both 64 bit and differing only in the add-ons. Then other companies would have had to write only one new driver and one new version of software, and Vista would have had at least one compelling reason for adoption. In trying to force universal Vista adoption, MS forced Vista on machines not nearly powerful enough to run it, and as a consequence bought themselves a class action lawsuit. But hindsight is 20/20.

the only thing that's fixed is they're stopping xp support so that "fixes" the issue that ppl have with not wanting vista, they aren't given a choice

the fiasco with xp was they rushed it and had to issues tons of patches, which they "fixed" by only releasing patches once a week and then once a month.

corps are NOT going to vista, which is the big thing. i know we have no plans of going to vista.

My worst problem is one I'm having all the time right now, the computer will go up until a certain point and then will just freeze, only happens when I am playing DoW or watching a movie on WMP, and while I've worked my way around the second problem the first one is persistent.

check the cpue temp, sounds like an over heating issue or problem with the cpu

either that or you have a ram problem

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

From what I hear, Vista is going to be canned on the first quarter of 2009. They simply cannot get the support for it.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

From what I hear, Vista is going to be canned on the first quarter of 2009. They simply cannot get the support for it.

it wouldn't surprise me, no one wants it

if they made a BETTER operating system that would be one thing, but they didn't, they added more crap and made it run slower on faster equipment.

look at both the linux/bsd guis and apple's gui, they get more flash and still run pretty fast and not a lot of bloat

 

[Omnidum]

Woo, go Vista!

But seriously, I have only got one single death screen, but it was random and retarded.

 

[OneHP]

Good things I have found with Vista:

Installing it somehow fixed an error where my PC wouldn't boot the OS without a restart if it had been off for more than a few hours.

The voice command software is good fun. I was letting my housemate have a play with it when a window pops up that he doesn't want, he promptly shouts "Fuck Off!" at it and it disappears instantly.

Flip 3D looks cool.

Detection of other networked machines and resources has been better for me than it was in XP.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

This basically explains all my probolems.........
http://www.guildwars.com/images/events/pax2007/cloudofdoomstrike.jpg
It's how I lost a good laptop, 2 monitors and a Motherboard.

 

[Radelaide]

Vista, not money, is the root of all evil.

 

[Denmarkian]

My worst computer problems in recent memory were ones I had while attempting to set up my new computer last fall. I went through 3 mother boards before one of my managers mentioned that nForce northbridge boards simply will not with with Intel Core2Duo E6750s. Switched to a P35 northbridge and poof! No more POST errors.

Then I was a total retard and installed ALL of my hard drives, then attempted to reformat one drive to be the new OS drive, leaving the others as data archive drives. This was my first time building a computer with SATA ports, so I assumed the first drive would be the master drive on the IDE channel, yes? No. I reformatted the damn thing 3 times with the Ranish Partition Manager and I kept getting weird memory address messages when I checked out the partition after formatting. This happens when you format a 160GB drive expecting the size to be 120GB. Lost all the data I had on there, nothing was backed up because I didn't think I was doing anything to the drive.

 

[Zamber0ni]

Had an old IBM that I just kept adding stuff to. At the same time I was also really into Starcraft. 5 minutes after the first time I FINALLY finished Brood War, the hard drive skips and I lose everything.

So lame.

 

[Ruffythepirate]

My PC problem is Vista. In fact, everything that makes me miserable is vista.