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When computers hate you. What computers have refused to work for you?

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Ampera:
So, normally, I'm fairly lucky with computing. I can buy parts, and for the most part, they work. Until my most recent machine, the only parts that have ever really refused to work were a Socket 8 motherboard, and an AWE64 I bought didn't have all the chips needed for anything but PCM audio.

This all changed with my most recent computer, which seems to have had it out for me the day I laid it down.

Now, I intend for this to be a forum about computers in your past (I guess if you need to fit something in that's a bit newer like I did, that's fine too) that have absolutely refused to work, seemingly because they have attained a state of free thought, in which they have decided to hate your guts.

So, without further blathering, let me blather on about what happened.

This machine was intended to fit into the farther end of my line of IBM Compatibles, however inappropriate the term is for something this new. It was to be based around the nForce4 SLI chipset, and have two graphics cards of some sort. I wanted some sort of SATA RAID array, and through looking at all decent options, I had decided that the 939 platform would have fit all my needs the best, as well as a pair of 7800 GTX 512MBs.

Problem 1: First motherboard was completely DOA. Almost all caps were shit, and it appeared to have shit itself through the board. I got my money back here, and could keep the board and the memory it came with. This was a Gigabyte board.

Problem 2: Second motherboard booted, but refused to do anything, but boot into DOS, and reflash BIOS, which didn't end up doing anything else. It would not enter into setup or do anything else, regardless of what I tried. Sent back, money refunded. This was an ASUS board.

Problem 3: Third motherboard. Now, this one isn't really DOA. It was an EPoX 2themax EP-9NPA+SLI, and it actually worked flawlessly for a little while. Little by little, however, it started to gain stability issue. I also had a problem with not getting the SLI selector to work (as these boards have a jumper card to select between dual PCIe 8x, or single PCIe 16x), but this was just because I didn't push down hard enough. This board ended up becoming unstable to the point where I couldn't install windows, regardless of the memory configuration I used. I don't really want to give up on this board, but I guess I have no other choice.

Problem 4: Fourth motherboard. This was the one I ended up using. It's actually not a problem, and works absolutely perfectly. It's an ASUS M2N32-SLI, and it was one my dad was using in one of his machines, just with some random parts in it. I say problem, but that's just to keep a nice list, this works great, but it was a bit too new for what I wanted, as it used DDR2, and an nForce 590-SLI chipset. Why this is worse for me, you have to be my special blend of stupid and crazy to understand.

Problem 5: Fifth motherboard. This was another ASUS board, this time from a neighbor who was awesome enough to give me some load of parts he didn't need anymore. Sadly, this one turned on, but refused to POST.

So, after five motherboards, I'm going with number 4. Don't worry, I tried different sets of RAM (Around 3 different sets) different CPUs (2 different 939 CPUs) and the power supply is brand new and known good (it's working right now.) This, however, was not the end of my problems.

Problem 6: Graphics cards. I have two GTX 7800 512mb editions in this machine, in SLI. I can install Windows XP and drivers, and it will work fine, until I reboot it a few times, at which point it breaks. Device manager reports that both cards can't start up, code 10, and it boots in VESA mode. I previously remedied this (sort of) by uninstalling the drivers, installing an older version, and then reinstalling a new version on top (the older version breaks SLI, which is why I can't use it). This stopped working, and Windows seemed to just refuse to use the cards, for whatever reason.

Long story short, I have found out that it was an IRQ assignment issues. On PCIe. On a semi-modern chipset. How do I know this? Well, the BIOS, as is quite standard, is configured to pass off the assignment of resources and IRQs of devices to the host OS.  This is normal, and something that I have never had break before. Somehow, Windows XP was not assigning proper IRQs to either of the cards, and could only work using, I believe, VESA modes, which can function without specific PCIe drivers. By setting the BIOS to assign IRQs, as if I were using PnP incompatible OS, I have seemed to completely resolve the issue, at least as it stands.

These were just the major issues. I had trouble with drives not showing up, with the graphics cards refusing to connect, severe fan noise, overheating, and just a general case of not wanting to work. It seems to all be set at the moment, and while I have had trouble with it, it's managed to function some of the time, and within those times, it worked quite well.

Also, before anybody says it, I am almost 100% confident none of these are ESD issues. These were handled in dry, non-conductive, mostly wooden, grounded environments, and despite my refusal to use as wrist/ankle strap, I have never had a part die on me for mysterious reasons before or after this. So if it is ESD, it's a consistent run of it happening where it's never happened before, and never happened since.

So, I want to hear the stories of people here. How have computers, old, or possibly new (I consider this a legacy machine, as it's not in common use, not on store shelves, and not powerful enough to be impressively useful for modern tasks) annoyed you, harassed, you, or even just refused to work, and what did you have to do in order to fix it?

bob225:
I have used gigabyte boards for nearly 20 years I probably had 2-3 fail out of 1000's of boards, asus on the other had I had 6 doa (customer supplied) and 10 or more with various faults - mainly voltage reg problems, I will not touch another asus board again - I had major issues with OCZ vertex ssd's - doa, fail to initialise, rma was a mare and then I had 2 doa warranty replacements

I only build for friends and family now as the margins are so tight with out building in volume

Ampera:
Out of all of them, the Gigabyte board was the one that had the most epic failure. ASUS generally is fairly good to me, though. I do agree in general, however, Gigabyte tends to be the nicest company for boards now.

Yansi:
My notebook. For fucked snakes I just can't install the WinUSB driver for the RTL-SDR dongle with R820T2 tuner. (However the other stick with the piece of shit Elonics E4000 works just fine!)  :horse: :horse: :rant: :box:

bd139:
Recent cockwomble that sits in my mind is trying to get my TTi TF930 talking to my Mac. It uses a prolific USB/serial adapter inside it with a custom vendor and product id. I spent four hours of my life persuading the canned driver that it was supposed to talk to the damn thing. Grr.

Oh and a Corsair survivor USB stick which only works every third time you plug it in.

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