Hardware problems that have sent you round the bend..........

Things change I've changed

Things change I've changed

Things change I've changed

Soldato
Joined
27 Jul 2005
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The Orion Spur
share with me your hardware problems that have sent you round the bend and when solved it so something sooooooooo simple,

I've been up now since yesterday morning and all through the night trying to fix a problem with Farcry giving me 'Critical Execption' errors and telling me the memory could not be read at a certain address, so I've been racking my brains ALLLLLL NIGHT reinstalling Farcry, trying different Patches, painstakingly going through every part of the registry, changing video drivers, bar formating my pc I've pretty much done EVERYTHING posiible, until five miniutes ago I unplugged a secound hand flight stick that I brought a day ago and now everything is working hunky dory, I just can't beleive all the stress this caused and all I needed to do was unplug a flight stick AAAARRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
 
My PC was being generally unresponsive, especially web browsing, though I could not see any problems or determine what had to be done to fix it. After a couple of days I reinstalled the Operating System and all my apps, only for the same annoyances to continue.

Turns out I had a faulty mouse. :D
 
Need for speed underground 2 crashing every other time I went from the explore mode to one of the race screens or the config screens, went through every patch imaginable, drivers, nforce profiles, overclocking, underclocking, changing files names, the works - turns out it wants to be run on one core! :eek: :mad: :D

After I changed it's affinity, its been fine.
 
My HardDrives corrupting themselves on my new build.

Replaced the NForce4 Mobo with another, same problem, so replaced it with a VIA one and never looked back.

Working out the problem sucked balls though.
 
Having 2Gb of GeIL ram, adding another 2Gb to make 4Gb. Memtesting everything together, getting errors on all 4 sticks. Checking slots and ram seperately / dual channel, getting none. Took out 2Gb, problem solved. No memtest errors. Mind you, not possible to run memtest on the 2gb that is sitting in its box unused. useless.
 
getting a new cpu and case a few years agho for my athlon system, putting it all together and not having it boot up, checked everything but nothing wrong.
turned out i'd moved the cmos clear jumper across and not mvoed it back :S
 
Rivey said:
My HardDrives corrupting themselves on my new build.

Replaced the NForce4 Mobo with another, same problem, so replaced it with a VIA one and never looked back.

Working out the problem sucked balls though.
Click to expand...

Was it every downloaded exe was corrupt? The active armour/ lan on those Nforces is well flaky.
 
I always have the weirdest hardware problems...

1- I have a cd rom drive which when set to master will cause any pc its connected to to fail to post. How is this even possible?

2-I RMA'd a motherboard because any memory put in it would fail memtest. Memtest shows dead memory right? Wrong. The memory controller is on the cpu so it must be that right? Wrong.

3-Currently ongoing - i have a harddisk on which i cannot install windows, however this is only on the exact firmware revision of the disk in the primary sata controller of on particular motherboard, for anything else the disk and primary sata controller work fine. I've tried everything, i even have an identical disk and an almost identical motherboard, both of which work, and the harddisk in question works fine for everything except installing windows, it even installs linux fine.

4-Currently ongoing - BF2 has a memory leak and will crash after a couple of maps. EA tech support can't help, i have to buy a new pc to get it to work or start swapping out hardware. Loads of people have this setup, no-one else has this problem... why me?

All have been and in the case of the ongoing ones are a major pita. I swear i'm really unlucky with hardware.


Edit: And another one, i once had a situation where i could not ping my router but i could connect to the internet with it... technically impossible. This was solved by a driver update for the nic eventually, but that one had me flummoxed.


melbourne720 said:
Need for speed underground 2 crashing every other time I went from the explore mode to one of the race screens or the config screens, went through every patch imaginable, drivers, nforce profiles, overclocking, underclocking, changing files names, the works - turns out it wants to be run on one core! :eek: :mad: :D

After I changed it's affinity, its been fine.
Click to expand...
Courtesy of ea.
I shall try my best not to buy their games after the bf2 fiasco, and that's the problem above plus a dozen others that i eventually solved.

For me the biggest cause of problems has been unfinished drivers, unfinished bioses, and unfinished games.
 
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Not hardware but it is a hardware monitor problem. PC Probe 2 installed it on my new P5ND2 Sli build. Worked without issue for months until I did a clear up of some of my old files; games, mods, programs I no longer used etc.

Rebooted to be greeted by 'Abnormal Program Termination Probe2.exe'

Stuck the Asus disc in did a repair, same error
Uninstalled fully and then reinstalled, same error
Restored to a point before I deleted anything, same error
Uninstalled, went through the registery and deleted all refrences by hand, reinstalled, same error.
Downloaded the latest versions (three since the one on my disc), same error each time.

Downloaded PC Probe 1 and installed and it works.

Updated my build got a P5B Deluxe, same error on PC Probe II (No reinstall of Windows was needed) but PC Probe 1 doesn't work with the new board. Downloaded TAT and shelved trying to solve my PC Probe II problems.

Annoying since NOTHING short of reinstalling Windows looks like solving this curious problem.
 
i kill anything. :)

had a major mobo/cpu problem recently got through 3 motherboard, which were confirmed faulty.. but i now know werent, as it was a bent pin on my cpu knocking out the mem controller.. took about, 6 months to fix, a new processor, and saving of 50quid on a motherboard thats the next step up (from deluxe to premium) oh and an xbox360 to pass the time.

mmm, i managed to crash a macbook twice, within 2 hours. To which my mate said "but macs dont crash, get out"

my z5500s broke, got a soundcard (xfi) cus onboard main analogue doesnt work.. the soundcard is faulty, got replacement speakers which blew after 2 days.

ooo, i got a maxtor 200gb hdd a few years back , just before christmas eve, which died on christmas day. Fun christmas that was. Oh and samsung sent an RMA spinpoint hdd that was dead on arival so i gave it to my mate to send back again :D

other than that im ok. Oh and getting a home lan setup is a nightmare, it never sees the other computer :/
 
Some of these are making me feel a bit better.

I spent days (on and off), including reinstalling windows (98SE) twice with different drivers etc, swapping almost every bit of hardware in and out of my brothers machine as it was locking up but never something I could recreate it.
After days of this, and reaching the point where I was about to kill someone it locked up, whilst I was using it, to be precise when I moved the mouse.

I swapped the mouse with my one, and about 8 hours later my system locked up in the same manner, younger brothers was fine.

Cue one very relieved, but annoyed (at himself) Wolfy telling younger brother to buy a new mouse :)

Lesson learned - try never to discount anything when troubleshooting the computer, no matter how trivial it might seem.
 
I took the last but one PC i built completely apart after it wouldn't boot and made a high pitched speaker noise. I suspected the Mobo, so as i was about to take off the HSF i noticed something. I'd forgotten to put the HSF plug into the mobo.

About an hour and a half it took me to notice that. :mad:
 
Joe42 said:
I always have the weirdest hardware problems...

1- I have a cd rom drive which when set to master will cause any pc its connected to to fail to post. How is this even possible?

2-I RMA'd a motherboard because any memory put in it would fail memtest. Memtest shows dead memory right? Wrong. The memory controller is on the cpu so it must be that right? Wrong.

3-Currently ongoing - i have a harddisk on which i cannot install windows, however this is only on the exact firmware revision of the disk in the primary sata controller of on particular motherboard, for anything else the disk and primary sata controller work fine. I've tried everything, i even have an identical disk and an almost identical motherboard, both of which work, and the harddisk in question works fine for everything except installing windows, it even installs linux fine.

4-Currently ongoing - BF2 has a memory leak and will crash after a couple of maps. EA tech support can't help, i have to buy a new pc to get it to work or start swapping out hardware. Loads of people have this setup, no-one else has this problem... why me?

All have been and in the case of the ongoing ones are a major pita. I swear i'm really unlucky with hardware.


Edit: And another one, i once had a situation where i could not ping my router but i could connect to the internet with it... technically impossible. This was solved by a driver update for the nic eventually, but that one had me flummoxed.


Courtesy of ea.
I shall try my best not to buy their games after the bf2 fiasco, and that's the problem above plus a dozen others that i eventually solved.

For me the biggest cause of problems has been unfinished drivers, unfinished bioses, and unfinished games.
Click to expand...

#2 Faulty coupling resistor between the LGA socket and the DIMM slot (had one before, Asus actually replaced the board even after they fixed it)
#3 Seagate?
#4 What sound device you using?
 
CPU failed due to overclocking, even tho it was not overclocked, pulling the jumper everytime the PC was turned off to get it to turn on again untill eventually even pulling the jumper failed to get it to turn on.

Problem: CPU or Mobo.
Solution: Buy a new computer because its old and I cant find spare parts.
Problem 2: -£700 for new parts.
Solution: Get a job.
Problem 3: Im lazy :(
 
ASrock motehrboards!!!!!!!!!!!

i had a 3200+ xp and it was rubbish soI got a 4600x2 and an ASrock agp/pcie to keep my 6800gt agp going i had 2 DOA ASrocks which sucks. I ended up buying a pcie x1800xt becos I had to cos i got a diff brand motherboard after the guy on the till in the shop said the asrock dual boards arent well known cos they are rubbish.

so after all this I could have just gone coe2duo. I have since but that isnt the point it hacked me right off :p
 
Well i had a hdd go down on me, couldn't get it to do anything. Determined its was duff and bought a new one. Only thing is i'm still having problems with it booting, keeps locking up. Can't for the life of me think what else it could be, but willing to bet is probably something simple like dodgy ide cables. Just don't have any spare to test.

Also had one a while ago when i bought a 9700. Was the first card i had that needed a power connector plugging into it. Took me ages to figure this out after about 20mins of sat staring at a blank screen and beeping pc, thinking it was broke. :o
 
malfunkshun said:
#2 Faulty coupling resistor between the LGA socket and the DIMM slot (had one before, Asus actually replaced the board even after they fixed it)
#3 Seagate?
#4 What sound device you using?
Click to expand...
#2 - Probably, but it was the last thing i expected when it was failing memtest. It was 939 btw, so i was expecting the cpu to be at fault when i found it wasn't the ram.

#3 - Western digital raptor, but works fine with my other identical raptor and the 'faulty' one works fine in every other sata controller and doing anything else but installing windows, it even works on the secondary sata controller on this board. I can't rma either the board or the harddisk because both work fine for everything except when connected together and installing windows.

#4 - Creative (deep breath) soundblaster audigy 2 zs platinum pro. You think its worth trying the onboard sound instead?
Of the 6 or so people i have encountered with this problem, some solved it with driver updates, some solved it with a new motherboard. I've had this problem for a very long time now, if anyone can help me out woth it i would be incredibly grateful.
I am going to be doing some hardware swapping soon to try and fix this.
 
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Some of you folks seem really unlucky. I just tend to have problems with wireless networks, partly because I don't normally bother matching routers with receivers/adapters and partly because I simply expect them to work like a wired system will, it isn't like the standard(s) haven't been around for a while after all. However even when I do get connected my connections tend to be flaky, I've also tried at a mates house when they have added my MAC address to the router and I can see the router initially but as soon as I try to connect it disappears and it doesn't matter where I try it from.
 
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