[Hornet]

So about a week ago I was playing on my desktop pc and decided I could spare a few dollars to throw some more ram in it, to try and help speed up Vista and Wow. So I find some on ebay, $35 for 2 1gb sticks...peachy. I login to paypal and just as I'm about to hit PAY NOW...vista pops up with "Your harddrive is failing" warning. As if to say "HEY! I WANT AN UPGRADE TOOO! DONT FORGET ABOUT MEEEEE!" GAH! So I download the WD diag program and sure enough, several things on the SMART test are over the threshold. Now mind you this is my older 40gb drive, but is my windows system drive. So I make backups of a few files and goto newegg to get that 640gb sata drive ive been lookin at. $75. Coulda gotten a 1tb for around $100, but I resisted the geeky urge. Oh, and I tested the drive again the next day, and it passed...mmmmmk?!

So I get the drive delivered a few days later, hook it up and clone my drive using easeus.com drive copy. Unhook the 40gb and toss in the new one, boot up into bios and change settings, etc. Reboot to windows....5minutes later its done loading..WTF!! I searched the net to find bunch of ppl having the same sorta issue, but none of their answers applied to me. So I went back to BIOS and tweaked or reversed some changes I did, reboot and Im into windows in record time. YAY!

The next day, my RAM gets delivered....woohoo! I unplug the power, pop in the ram, plug it back in, turn it on.....*click*....turn it on....*click*....TURN ON M'er F'er!! So yeah, it wouldnt turn on, not even a blip of power. *sigh* By this time I'm cursing and pulling my hair out, which is hard to do since its less than an inch long. I grab my PSU tester and I apparently forgot how to use it cuz I plugged the MB cable into it and nothing happened, stupid me forgot to switch the psu on in the back. Anyways, so Im thinking my PSU died. I call around to get opinions and prices. My PSU isnt more than a few years old, nice modular plugs n all, but 450w. I know in my next pc I will need MORE POWER (tim allen grunt), so I look around for a 600w. I yank my PSU out and take it to the local shop to have them test it, and it powers up fine...wtf. So I goto best buy and get an Antec 650w PSU. I checked my blackberry for reviews n such, and the pics showed the cables were sheathed and all, not modular, but ok. $120. So I get it home, and its just regular wired cables, no sheathing or anything. Sad face for my modded case. But ohh well, power is power. So I plug it in, *click* and it turns on! JOY! I turn it off and get all the rest of the power plugged in, etc. Everythings all set, we should be good to go now.

*click* Everything powers up, I sit in my chair and....why arent the monitors powering on yet? *waits* WHY ARENT THE MONITORS COMING ONLINE??! I turn it off, double check my power connections, make sure the ati x700 has its lil power connector in, check the monitor cables...its all fine. wtf. So I unplug all but the harddrive and the ATI. Power it back up, nothing. I look closer and notice the fan on the ATI is not spinning. WTF!? ARE YOU FREAKIN KIDDING ME?! This card isnt more than 3-4 years old and its dead! But I notice that the LEDS on my monster fan in the back arent as bright as I remember them being...so I think maybe the psu is defective...or something. So I plug my old PSU into an old MB and toss the ATI on there as well, turn it on and no ATI fan, and the LED fan looks the same brightness...hmm, weird. Soooo for some reason my video card decided to bite the dust as well. I look around in my bin o parts for a video card to use temporarily, but all are too old and/or wrong slot type. Suddenly I have a moment of clarity...use the MB onboard video!! GENIUS! So I grab my monitor cable and .... .... .... uh wheres the onboard video plug? (Right now im REALLY confused because just a week or 2 ago I read something on my MB saying someone was using the onboard vid for their 3rd monitor) I desperately look around...THERES NO EFFING ONBOARD VIDEO! I look up the MB webpage on my laptop...yep, no video.

Now as you can imagine, by this time I have random old and current computer parts strewn all over my office floor, me in the middle...cursing, about ready to cry from such a shitty day. At this time, my wife comes home to the severely stressed and frustrated me. I tell her the story and she attempts to console. I give her the bad news that I will have to spend another $200 to get a video card...which she knows Ive been wanting for awhile, but I hadnt planned on doing any upgrades until I got a job (going on 8 months unemployed). She calls her dad and asks if we can use some of the money in our joint account to help pay for it, he says sure no prob...so that helps. We go out to BW3's for dinner cuz her friend was having a going away party. So I sit there looking up prices on my blackberry the whole time, lol. I get a call from a friend who has an ATI 9100 I can borrow, so I grab that and toss it in...praying to God as I turn it on that it'll work and that the MB isnt dead too. I turn it on, and OMG we have Windows! So that part at least relieves some tension that the MB mighta died too.

The price/review/stats hunt went on thru half the next day to finally settle on the ATI Sapphire Toxic HD 4870 512mb card. $175 after rebate. Reviews were decent for the card, and horrible for the sapphire company customer service...but I took a chance anyway. The card will be here monday. If anything else goes wrong when I pop this baby in, I will get out my sledgehammer!

So anyway, heres to hoping you had a better week than I did!

[Hurricane]

Wow! I feel your pain man. Hoping today when you get your new card you week starts off with no more PROBLEMS!

[Ambrosius]

All I can say is ... wow. But at least you know WTF you're doing. Imagine if something like that happened to a techn00b like me!

[Hornet]

Yeah Im happy I can at least make my way around inside the computer. I dont know everything, but I know enough to do what I need to do.
*waits impatiently for the UPS man

[Eraser55]

LOL! sorry.. but that was funny in a sad way..

[netburnr]

Were you by chance doing all this work on a carpeted floor without a ground strap?

I know how you feel, I've had similar stuff happen to me and it gets old real fast.

I'll be upgrading my case and adding a duel TV tuner card to my computer as soon as the parts arrive from newegg

[Jump]

I believe newegg has those fast reliable WD 640 drives GB for $60 with FS.

[Romulus]

Hornet. I had to laugh a couple of times as I know exactly how you felt when things quit working when they just were working. the M Fer is my favorite saying when that happens to me.

I just went through that on my last system crash

[Hornet]

Ok so the card is in! I had to disconnect one of the cdroms cuz the ide cable isnt long enough to go around the monster card. I kept getting BSODs once I logged into windows. The ati software wont install in safe mode, so I got a driver cleaner and wiped the drivers, and managed to get into windows long enough to get thru the install before the BSOD. Couple more BSOD's after logging in and I pulled the new ram I got...been stable since. Now I gotta find a memory tester and see what stick is bad. *sigh* BUT, at least I can play WoW again. Cant beef the vid settings much cuz the 1gb system ram just isnt enough.

*sings - This is the upgrade that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends...

edit: Net, yes i was...but I always made sure to touch the outside of the case before anything.

[netburnr]

While touching the case was the power supply cable still plugged in?

[Diver012]

The only time I have seen this many parts on a system fail at the same time is when it either

a: Got struck my Lightning.

b: Was hit my a massive static electric discharge.

I can see a faulty power supply doing this as well.

Maybe its time to break out the Sledgamatic!

:chair :

Originally Posted by Hornet

Ok so the card is in! I had to disconnect one of the cdroms cuz the ide cable isnt long enough to go around the monster card. I kept getting BSODs once I logged into windows. The ati software wont install in safe mode, so I got a driver cleaner and wiped the drivers, and managed to get into windows long enough to get thru the install before the BSOD. Couple more BSOD's after logging in and I pulled the new ram I got...been stable since. Now I gotta find a memory tester and see what stick is bad. *sigh* BUT, at least I can play WoW again. Cant beef the vid settings much cuz the 1gb system ram just isnt enough.

*sings - This is the upgrade that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends...

edit: Net, yes i was...but I always made sure to touch the outside of the case before anything.

[Ratneck]

Did you end up getting the e-bay RAM? I wouldn't be surprised if most of the RAM on there was bad/going bad from overclocks and the like.

[Hornet]

Net, I dont know the order I did it in, prolly touched case before and after unplugging.

Yes the ram was from ebay. It seemed to work fine when I had an old vid card in, but once I put the new one in it started BSOD'ing. I'm gonna run memtest on it today.

[Ratneck]

Are your sure your power supply is putting out enough wattage to run everything? I had a similar problem (only no blue screen) when I put it a new video card and it was sucking the power supply dry. You may want to try loading up the system without the power adapter plugged into the video card if it will let you.

[Hornet]

I cant unplug the video card, and the PSU is brand new, 650w. should be PLENTY.

Windows mem test program passed...so dunno what the issue is. Im running on the new sticks now, but took out my original 1gb stick to get it to boot. hmmm...=/