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Monday, December 31, 2007
[Worst New Year's Eve ever....]
My rig's still down. I spent the whole of today troubleshooting and figuring out what's wrong with it. But I think I've got it figured out now...
Basically, I had to do an upgrade because my original rig died and I couldn't tell for sure which component broke. I bought a new CPU/MB, RAM and display card. Upon testing, I realised it was my old display card that crapped out.
So I assembled the new parts together with whatever old parts I was re-using. Old is relative, they are really quite new. The oldest component is only 15 months old and some of them are less than a year old. I tried to make it as neat as possible, and here's the end result:
Those of you who have systems assembled by the folks at SLS would probably feel that mine's kinda messy. Well, it is. I can't figure out how they make everything look so neat and tidy. Try as I might, this was the best I could do.
I booted up my new system and all was fine (so I thought). I installed WinXP, and that's when the trouble began. It kept hanging. Once at the black start-up screen, twice after the desktop has loaded, and usually at the blue "Welcome" screen. I tried flashing the BIOS. Didn't work. I tried a whole bunch of other stuff...Using on-board display, removing hard-disks, etc. The problem remained....Until I removed my ancient SB Live! Value sound-card. It was during this process that I discovered yet another problem, but I'll go into that later. I tried using the on-board sound system, but it was so horrible that I couldn't live with it. There was practically no bass. My ancient SB Live! Value beats the on-board hands down.
Try as I might, I couldn't get my SB Live! Value to work. I tried re-seating the card, installing WinXP before as well as after installing the card...Nothing worked. I give up. I'm going to buy a SB Audigy Value tomorrow. I pray that it works. Otherwise, I would either have to settle for the shitty on-board sound or get a whole new motherboard altogether.
I'm actually rather disappointed with the ASUS motherboard I bought. So far, it has been nothing but problems. Besides not being compatible with my SB Live! Value, it also has trouble booting up if you installed WinXP with more than one hard-disk present. This is the problem that I mentioned earlier. I have three hard-disks, and if I installed WinXP with all of them connected, it would not load ("Boot disk failure, insert system disc to etc etc etc...."). The only way for it to load is if the WinXP CD was in the CD drive. I don't get it. And yes, I know about boot priority/boot order in the BIOS and yes, I set it correctly. The only way around this is to disconnect all the other hard-disks during WinXP installation and reconnect them only later on after installation.
So to sum up, my old display card crapped out, my new motherboard doesn't like my SB Live! Value and has a bug when it comes to installing WinXP with more than one hard-disk present. Yes, that took me half of yesterday and the whole of today to figure out. Of course...Along the way, there were several mishaps...
During the course of trouble-shooting, I had the great idea of using my old motherboard. It makes sense...My old motherboard was fine and was supposed to be able to support my new CPU, and my SB Live! Value had no problems running on it. I had to switch CPUs for this to happen. You're not going to believe this...But the heat-sink on my new CPU was stuck to the CPU! I don't know what kind of thermal tape was used, but it might have been cement. I pulled really hard and I managed to pull it out --- with the CPU attached! I finally managed to separate them, but I couldn't installed the CPU into my old motherboard. I took a closer look and realised due to the CPU coming out of its socket with the latch down, some of the pins were bent. I tried fixing it with my fingers and only made it worse and I almost shit-ed myself. If I broke the pins, I think I would have lost it....
Anyway, I managed to fix the pins. And no, the old motherboard didn't work. It didn't recognise my new CPU and I don't understand why. And I think I might as killed it (my old motherboard) in the process.
The next thing to go wrong was the CPU fan connector on my new motherboard. When I removed my CPU/heat-sink to test on my old motherboard, I pulled too hard and broke part of the connector. No big deal, but I have to be careful not to connect the molex wrongly now as it's no longer "keyed".
The next thing to go wrong was an IDE cable for my hard-disk. I still have an IDE hard-disk, and while trying to remove the cable, I tore the cable right off of the IDE connector. Imagine an IDE cable with one missing connector --- it's on the hard disk. I had to use a pair of pliers to pull the connector off the hard-disk, and in the process, dented the pins on the hard-disk (see the pattern here?). But it's not too bad...IDE connectors are quite forgiving towards bent pins. The holes are large enough that they actually "guide" the pins back into the right position.
So there you have it. Everything that's happened thus far. I'm tired, frustrated and sort of pissed. It's almost like a role-playing game (figuring out the display card's the culprit, realising that the new motherboard doesn't like my old sound-card and that stupid problem with WinXP not loading right with multiple hard-disks) with side-quests (swapping CPUs and getting the pins bent in the process, breaking the CPU fan connector and tearing the IDE cable off the connector). Most annoying game, ever.
Here's what my room looked like yesterday. It was much messier today but I wasn't in the mood for photo-taking.
I hope everything goes well tomorrow when I plug in the Audigy card. I certainly don't want to have another chapter to add to this tragic story. I can't remember the last time I had this much trouble with my computer.
What a way to spend New Year's Eve.
^^^ by Locksley @ 9:17 PM.
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