September 15, 2010

• I hate computers.

  In March of 2008 I put all of my $3000 tax return into an above-and-beyond gaming rig (which is a little funny, because the same rig now is worth about $800) and everything was good until a few weeks ago. I had a TV tuner card hooked up to my cable (Mediacom) and Windows Media Center, and I watched TV on my computer more often than on my TV. When I lost my job, I got Dish Network because the same channel package was half the price (sorry if I sound like a Dish salesman, but this is all part of the story). My cable came straight in through the wall, and worked great with the TV tuner, but the Dish came with a receiver box with HDMI/Component outputs and wasn’t compatible with my tuner card. I explored my options, and found that there was only one capture card available that would suit my needs; the AverMedia HD capture card with HDMI in and a dongle with every other imaginable AV input. It was PCI-E x1 though, and my only x1 spot was covered by my dual-bay 8800 GTS. So I bought the card, and a 9800 GT (same specs, single bay) and when it came I took out my 8800 GTS and put in the 9800 GT and the capture card. Shortly thereafter some snow, electronic interference, dotted lines, what have you started showing up on my screen, and YouTube videos and other flash videos started crashing my graphics driver. I figured I had gotten a bad graphics card, so I contacted EVGA for an RMA. I told the tech about the problems I was having, and she said it sounded like either my power supply wasn’t putting out enough power, or my board and/or processor was bad because the graphics card doesn’t handle Windows Aero (desktop glitching), and since my games were running smoothly it couldn’t be the video card. She gave me the RMA anyway, just to be sure, and when I took out the card to send it back, I put the old one back in and the problem remained. I called them back to cancel the RMA, and a different tech answered (obviously) and he said the same thing about the PSU and MOBO/CPU problems. Hopeful, I purchased the most highly recommended and most awarded power supply (which I had had my eye on for quite some time) a Corsair 650W. When it came I took my PSU out, tossed it in the garbage, put the new one in, and fired her up. To my extreme disappointment, the problem remained. I started looking around for a motherboard and cpu that would work with the rest of the components I already had, but found my computer to be so out of date the parts I had were no longer available. A little disappointed, I went for a major upgrade (darn, I have to upgrade to a six-core, DDR3 system. Oh well.) I got a really nice, future-proof Gigabyte board, 4GB’s of G. Skill DDR3 1333, and an AMD 1055T (2.8GHz x6). When it all came, I grabbed a spare 500GB SATA HDD I had laying around (who has an extra internal hard drive laying around anyway?) just to make sure as much of the machine as possible was new and/or different. Let’s recap: new power supply, new motherboard, new processor, new memory, used but different hard drive. The only components of my old machine that remain are the case and the DVD-ROM. Everything all assembled now, I fire it up and (you guessed it) the problem remained. I called EVGA again, told them everything that had happened, and the guy that answered this time said he had had a similar problem before and that he had gone through the same replace-everything troubleshooting process, only to find out that there was too much voltage coming out of his wall outlet, and he had to contact the electric company to rewire his outlets. So I called the landlord, told him the problems I was having, and about what the EVGA tech said, and asked if he would check the voltages in my apartment. I was sure this was the problem all along, because my electric bill is unusually high every month, and the landlord said something about the hallway/parking lot lights being wired to my place, so he was happy to check the outlets for me.  Of course, the outlets were fine. AHHHH! Bad cable maybe? Well, when I got all those new parts, I tossed all my old parts and the drawers full of spare parts and cables into the dumpster outside, so I didn’t have a spare. After much asking around, I finally came up with an old VGA cable and DVI to VGA adapter. I hooked it up and I still had the problem. Ah, crap the monitor’s bad. Of course, replacing that is a little over budget for me, I’ve got a 28″ Hanns-G 1080p monitor. I grabbed a spare 22″ LCD I had in my closet (come on, I wasn’t going to toss that!) and although the static is gone the YouTube videos are still crashing the graphics driver. Now, I recently read an article that said there’s a security issue with Adobe Flash that can cause crashes and allow an attacker to take control of the affected system, so I’m assuming that’s the problem since everything else works fine with the new monitor (except my Aver MediaCenter, but I’m sure the card’s just bad). The moral of the story? Sometimes fixing a problem is simpler than it may seem.

  • 8:09 am
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