The power switch gets me too. Also, I spent an evening cacking myself when I fell victim to the Wester Digital Hard Drive jumper trick where you have 1 setting for "solo drive" and one for "Master with slave present". Thank god we're in SATA technology now.
Built new PC from scratch... and it just worked!
- Thread starter Wej
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- 21 Nov 2007
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Went to do an upgrade last night, having not done one for 4 years, new mobo, cpu, gfx, mem. checked everything was compatible with each other, thought through connector, everything, only to find in the intervening 4 years something has happened to power supplies - they now need a 24 pin connector. Was not happy.
It is making me chuckle to see how people can get flustered on the most basic of things.
Few moons ago, when we would get a CPU and a Motherboard, we had to know its FSB and Multiplier and manually set the Motherboard accordingly. We also had to know its voltage too, and set that correctly too!
If you had these wrong, there was a strong chance that somethign would pop, and given that the parts were 10 or 20 times more expensive than they are today, it was a hairy time.
Nowadays, the only incompatible thing you might get ( and even this is unlikely today ) is with Ram - You might have CPU thats got a higher FSB than the RAM, but other than that, nothing.
And whats worse, is that 95% of us will be able to disect a nuclear rocket tomorrow, we would be able to build a spaceShip, and anything... Nothing will stop us!
Except we will forget that one screw and it will fall apart at the last hurdle.
Ok, so on that note, something else that has just got me only an hour or so ago...
I added a HD and I could not get windows to access it at all? - Disk MAnager didnt see it, Device Manager didnt see it.. Nothing? I had a look in the bios and the BIOS was unable to see it too!!???
I tried it on another PC and it was fine, so WTF?
I was having a whine and my 9 year old son said I have not enabled it.
I checked and sure engouh, the SATA controler was disabled in *** BIOS.
FFS!
Few moons ago, when we would get a CPU and a Motherboard, we had to know its FSB and Multiplier and manually set the Motherboard accordingly. We also had to know its voltage too, and set that correctly too!
If you had these wrong, there was a strong chance that somethign would pop, and given that the parts were 10 or 20 times more expensive than they are today, it was a hairy time.
Nowadays, the only incompatible thing you might get ( and even this is unlikely today ) is with Ram - You might have CPU thats got a higher FSB than the RAM, but other than that, nothing.
And whats worse, is that 95% of us will be able to disect a nuclear rocket tomorrow, we would be able to build a spaceShip, and anything... Nothing will stop us!
Except we will forget that one screw and it will fall apart at the last hurdle.
Ok, so on that note, something else that has just got me only an hour or so ago...
I added a HD and I could not get windows to access it at all? - Disk MAnager didnt see it, Device Manager didnt see it.. Nothing? I had a look in the bios and the BIOS was unable to see it too!!???
I tried it on another PC and it was fine, so WTF?
I was having a whine and my 9 year old son said I have not enabled it.
I checked and sure engouh, the SATA controler was disabled in *** BIOS.
FFS!
Soldato
- Joined
- 11 Oct 2007
- Posts
- 2,597
I had issues with my first sata only system but that was back in the a7n8x days (2002? 2003?) and I think a bios update fixed it. Never had an issue since. Maybe having to reconfigure boot priority after a bios reset but that takes seconds.
Saying this there have been systems which have just had arsey problems from initial build. Ram errors seem to be common for myself and the majority.
I think harder than building new though is building a working rig from old stock. you never know what works etc. i seem to be doing this a lot for friends. generally ill upgrade friends systems for them and keep hold of the old bits. then ill pass the other bits onto people. things come in.. things come out.. its quite the rotation I have.
even in work i was recently asked to remake 5 PCs from bits and bobs It took me over 3 ******* days to go through a stack of old p3/p4 flatbeds, build, install and configuer the bloody things. the amout of dead components i went through was more than annoying. ill say one thing though CPUs never, ever, ever, seem to die. still it was quite fun in some respects. i think just the fact i was working with flatbeds was the arsey thing. my hands were cut to ribbons after
its interesting what you come across though i think i found a few p3/p4 hybrids, looked like a p4 soldered onto a p3 "pcb" never seen that before. found a few implimentations of it too. not just the one design.
Saying this there have been systems which have just had arsey problems from initial build. Ram errors seem to be common for myself and the majority.
I think harder than building new though is building a working rig from old stock. you never know what works etc. i seem to be doing this a lot for friends. generally ill upgrade friends systems for them and keep hold of the old bits. then ill pass the other bits onto people. things come in.. things come out.. its quite the rotation I have.
even in work i was recently asked to remake 5 PCs from bits and bobs It took me over 3 ******* days to go through a stack of old p3/p4 flatbeds, build, install and configuer the bloody things. the amout of dead components i went through was more than annoying. ill say one thing though CPUs never, ever, ever, seem to die. still it was quite fun in some respects. i think just the fact i was working with flatbeds was the arsey thing. my hands were cut to ribbons after
its interesting what you come across though i think i found a few p3/p4 hybrids, looked like a p4 soldered onto a p3 "pcb" never seen that before. found a few implimentations of it too. not just the one design.
thats similar to a mistake i made once, set both hdd's to master on the same cable, only shows up as there being 1 drive installed (its like they 'fight' and one 'wins') lol, no biggy tho i knew what i did when i saw it
just funny really
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I just finished building my aunt's new pc and it felt good when it came on the first time (almost forgot power supply switch but didn't!)
(almost forgot power supply switch but didn't!)You realise of course you can do all that from computer mangement without rebooting windows
AH HA!!! i thought there was a way to do this in windows i just didnt know how
now i know, thanks for that 
ill 'TRY' and remember next time lol