Topic: crash and burn
started by: BlackFlag
Posted by BlackFlag on Jan. 15 2002,18:37
ever have one of those days where you start tweaking your computer and 6 hours later, dripping sweat and dissavowing your beleif in god, you come to the conclusion that there's a very good chance you're not going to be able to fix whatever it is you just screwed up?im still not sure what the problem was, but i think it was a bad ram chip.
bad sectors, lost clusters, everything crosslinked, scandisk, crash, scandisk, crash, norton disk doctor, crash, scandisk again just for fun, crash crash crash, blue screen of death, format harddrive, bad fats, unmatching fat copies?!, crash, fdisk harddrive, format harddrive crash crash crash, install winME, out of memory, crash crash crach, install Win98, crash crash crash, yank possibly bad ram chips, out of memory, crash crash, out of memory, tweak vcache settings, crash......... stability? (stability is a relative term in win9x i guess.....)
i think my tinkering days are over.
anyone else care to share their traumatic war stories so i won't feel so pathetic?
Posted by editor on Jan. 16 2002,05:03
Wow! What a story! I can't top that! Can I un-rant for a minute?I went to CompUSA to buy more RAM for my 'puter. After a long search in the back, they found 2 chips that would work. I ended up paying 130$, which is a lot more than I thought, but I went home and they were a drop fit for 512mb! Nothing went wrong!
I've put my old 128 chip in 3 other 'puters, and it doesn't work in any...at least my friends' registries don't crash...
(knock on Formica)
Posted by BlackFlag on Jan. 21 2002,23:24
ok, so im the only idiot?
Posted by Rshias on Jan. 22 2002,06:05
Well, I once spent ~13 hours trying to figure out why Windows XP wouldn't install. I literally rebuilt the entire system piece by piece after convincing myself it couldn't be anything else. Turns out that with some motherboard + video card combos, XP just halts the install and won't go on. I had to swap out the Geforce for an old ATI card, then it installed without a hitch. Afterwards, I popped in the new card, and presto. It worked like a charm. Motherboard swaps are what usually throw me into convulsive states.
... Well, those and shoddy computer cases that might as well have been made from razors. The kind that when you even look at it funny, you come away bleeding from numerous lacerations.
Posted by Nikita on Jan. 22 2002,14:28
aww come on, everyone knows by now that computers are evil creatures that demand blood sacrifice now and then ...
Posted by Dark Knight Bob on Jan. 22 2002,18:06
erm i think the worst one for me was wheni tried updating the motherboard of a 386. at the time having almost no understanding of how cmputers wokred my freind and i completely dismantled the pc found the 486 mobo wouldnt fit and so tried fitting it back together. clever me didnt bother marking the cables so i knew where they went and so i had a dead pc that my dad hgad paid £50 for (which was a lot for him at the time) with which i pretended it worked for some 6 months until he decided his 286 could be swapped for mine. i tried to pretend i didnt know what was wrong with it and when my dad finally twigged i was about as red as i could go with shame. 
but i have a better pc than him now so i dont care anymore:-D
Posted by ASCIIMan on Jan. 23 2002,02:14
I always liked the time when I got me a new motherboard, installed it and plugged in all the cables in their correct positions, plugged in my graphics card, and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't turn on. I heard a weird clicking noise, so I swapped out powersupplies and hard drives thinking (first) it might be the power supply and then that is might be the hard drive. Neither worked, so I stuck my head in the case to see if I could localize the noise. Hmm... That's odd, it seems to be coming from the motherboard. POP! Flash of light. One of the chips exploded six inches from my head. About a two inch fireball of sorts. That sucked, exchanged the defective motherboard, new one worked. The end.
Posted by Rshias on Jan. 23 2002,05:40
Damn, knew I shouldn't have posted. I jinxed myself. Today has been nothing but fits with this system. I had a spare 1 GHz Athlon laying around, and started thinking "I wonder if I can get that sucker to hit the 1.4 GHz mark," why not try it? No problem, whip out the soldering iron, unlock the multipliers, and swap out chips in this system. (It's freaking cold as hell in the basement where my test system is located, and I was in no mood to freeze to death) Anyhow, it boots up! Okay, time to get to work... Screw taking small steps, let's go hog wild.
First attempt: 1397 MHz (10.5 x 133 FSB). Yay, it post, but DOH! Windows XP doesn't like it. Time to up the VCORE. Yay, it boots right up, and it's stable!
Second attempt: 1463 MHz (11 x 133 FSB). Woot! It works again! Hell yeah! Three cheers for modded cases, and air cooling!
Third attempt: I'm feeling cocky. 1530 MHz (11.5 x 133 FSB). Damn, it won't post. No prob, clear the CMOS and play with the FSB next time.
Fourth attempt: I want 1.5 GHz! 1507 MHz (11 x 137 FSB). RAR! It boots, and is stable!
At this point, I'm thinking, "Hell yes, I'm a greek god!" Why not try for even more performance? Better crank up the FSB... it won't go much higher on MHz.
Fifth attempt: 1504 MHz (8 x 188 FSB). It posts! Oh shit, windows is freaking out. WTF! NOOOOOO!
Okay, no prob. Reset the CMOS and go back to work, right? NOPE! The system will only boot once every CMOS reset, WTF! This could suck. What did I break?
Turns out I royally fux0red the data and OS on the primary 75 gig hard disk in that last attempt. Damn! At this point, I'm blaming it all on Bill Gates and hating Windows XP more than ever. It's always been finiky around overlocks, but never done this.
I still dunno exactly what happened. Throughout the day, I've reinstalled Windows XP, and totally re-built the system one card at a time between CMOS cleared reboots. It totally refused to do it any other way. After it was all reassembled, had a clean copy of XP, and a newly flashed BIOS, it's running like a charm again. WTF!?
Now I look back on today and wonder if it was worth it. Nearly 50 gigs of data, 15 gigs of pr0n, and anything else I downloaded on that drive from the weekend's Lanwar is gone. A full day was totally wasted. I drank 27 Bawls Guarana that would have been better used during Soga or MillionManLan, and have been at my breaking point all day long.
So, was it worth it? Almost. From now on, I'm using the test system for this shit.
Posted by Dark Knight Bob on Jan. 23 2002,13:48
188MHZ FSB!!! jesus kid you're lucky your ram didnt explode, your pci cards explode in tandem whilst you northbridge liquified. you do realise that increasing fsb will overclock your ram,pci AND agp and i wouldn't trust anything more than 150 let alone 188!
Posted by Rshias on Jan. 23 2002,15:10
I'm a kid? The effects of FSB overlocking are a pretty easy concept to grasp. At 188 FSB I was running a 1/5 splitter for AGP/PCI slots. That's still a bit higher than it should be, but nothing that the components shouldn't have been able to handle. I wasn't worried about the RAM, and the Northbridge has the biggest heatsink on it could be safely fitted on the board.
That system is clocked to run at 172 FSB with it's normal parts, so in my mind, 188 wasn't too big of a stretch with the appropriate dividers. Turns out the hard drive was the weakest link. Guess it's time to invest in a newer, higher quality one.
I'm an overlocking, case modding junkie. Just another day at the office... live and learn.
Posted by Dark Knight Bob on Jan. 24 2002,01:44
your a kid cos i the big fuck off robot wit da gun ready to blow you into your conponent elements. 
Posted by Rshias on Jan. 24 2002,02:22
I'm at a loss for a way to dispute that.
Posted by liquid metal on Jan. 30 2002,15:43
cool.blush.gifsome of your smilies dont'w ork...
anyways. twice i have been unable to get ram chips onto the motherboard.
first time i couldn't get it into the slot and when i thought it was in i locked the clamps and it was sliding around. funny stuff.
second time i was upgrading my sister's computer (it's an HP Pavliion) and my hand was too big to reach the motherboard. i ended up taking apart the entire inside to reach the motherboard (i thought the ram chips were under the cd-rom but it wasn't :-( )
Posted by Spydir on Jan. 30 2002,16:42
if you're ram isn't fitting, changes are you have the wrong type of ram.
cool.blush.gif 
woobaloo! woobaloo!
Posted by RadioActive on Jan. 30 2002,18:22
from my personal experience, for older computers a good kick from the side always does the trick
Posted by liquid metal on Jan. 30 2002,20:53
no. i just completely missed the dock for the ram when putting it in.
Posted by Nikita on Jan. 30 2002,21:15
.... mind ... going ... down the gutter ... hehe slipped the dock ... ram ... putting it in ... 
Posted by Wiley on Jan. 30 2002,23:08
| Quote (Nikita @ 30 Jan. 2002,13:15) |
| .... mind ... going ... down the gutter ... hehe slipped the dock ... ram ... putting it in ... |
hehe ...you said going down
hehe ...he ...hehe
Posted by Spydir on Jan. 31 2002,01:21
hehe, you're nasty... you said "the"... hehe 
Posted by editor on Feb. 05 2002,23:14
dunno, Rshias, 15 gig/pr0n? 15? You may need a g/f....just a thought
Posted by Rhydant on Feb. 06 2002,02:57
ive been trying to fix my friend's computer for over a week now. one day out of the blue, the computer decided it wouldnt recognize the modem anymore. so i pop open the case and put the modem in another PCI slot. i boot up, and it doesnt know where the drivers are.so i come home, get some drivers for the modem and bring them to friend's house. no luck.
i call the tech support line. i realize its Gateway. i hang up.
i tried about 10 other drivers with no luck.
i tried just about everything and it still doesnt work. now friend's mom is mad at me because i voided the fucking warenty. FUCK YOU. i dont care if you have to pay $50 for the repair shop fees. if you would of bought something other than a god damn gateway, like i suggested, this wouldnt have happened.
i think its a motherboard problem.
Posted by Rshias on Feb. 06 2002,17:23
Editor, I had just came from a massive lan party before that happened. The goal is to grab what you can, and sort it for quality later. Unfortunately, most never makes it past the first inspection. A girlfriend? Girls don't want nice guys. They want those crazy circus freaks that will spend the majority of their adult life in jail. Sure, it would be nice to have that comfort again, but I have all but given up on the dating scene. For now, pr0n provides enough comfort to get me through the shallow existance we call life. The only way I'd even consider getting into another relationship would be upon meeting a girl with all the charm, humor, and intelligence of the women that post on these forums. But that's not going to happen.