in other words, how often does your pc get messed up? when was the last time sth bad happened?

i think i've just fried my mobo and psu.

i've been getting random reboots for a few days, and have noticed that the +5V have been quite unstable (somtimes it drops to 4.1V). but i didn't pay much attention to these problems (note: it's Ai Hate). until 2 days ago, the random reboot happened more and more frequent along with freezes. sometimes, i can't even get the rig to POST.

at first, i thought it was because of the power line to the CD-ROM causing the rig to reboot (like what happened to my old rig). so i tried switching cables and stuff (and it's still Ai Hate). i didn't even know what the +5V is for and why i've been getting unconstant power (very Ai Hate).

after a while, the rig froze and wouldn't power up again. the mainboard wouldn't even beep if i took out the ram, gfx card, or cpu. so i brought it to the repair shop next door.

basically, there was like a +5V shortage and the power plug on the mobo (from the psu), was fried. the 5V lines (red ones) were copmletely melted and the wires were burnt. (hmm.. so that's why i smelled sth burning )

it's still in warranty (the mobo), but i'm not sure if i can get it replaced or not. probably have to get another psu too.

anyway, this is the only problem i've had in like six months. i have no idea why it happened out of mid air. i haven't opened my case for months.

so, do you get lots of hardware problems?

Well, lets see..



October 2000:

I put my rig together and after two weeks finally found out that the floppy drive was not working because the wires in the mini power connector were the wrong way around. I had successfully killed one floppy drive in the process. Stupid chinese PSU!



After 2 months my Philips monitor died, luckily it was under warranty and I got a new and better one.



A month later fans on graphics card and chipset started making too much noise, so I get rid of them.



System temps go up, I need a case fan. Fortunately I have an old PSU to strip it from.



Summer 2001 - first bad sectors on my hard drive.



December 2001 - unlucky BIOS upgrade for my gfx card. Turned out the flash system didn't work properly. I now have a semi-useless GF2MX.



After these mishaps, it has been a whole year of no trouble on the hardware side..

Oh, almost forgot: two weeks ago I realized that it's a dodgy IDE cable that's causing these random crashes..

Well, my IBM 2127 (17" CRT) seemed to be dying, but installing the monitor drivers cured that problem... (Or at least so it would seem, as the screen doesn't shrink and give me horrible horizontal lines anymore...)

And I got a Deskstar that turned into a Death Star... (I changed it with another deskstar last week) Or rather, it would suddenly lag my entire system, then work like a charm for 10 min etc... What is strange is that the only weird sound was coming from a screw that had loosend... Oh, well, it's (hopefully) still under warranty and going back to IBM for a fix...

Before that... It's a long time since anything went wrong with my system... Summer 2001 when my Abit KT7A-Raid and Duron 750 just died... Worked like a charm for over 6 months, then just one day it was dead... I never found out what caused it, but it was still under warranty

Generally speaking, its only about once per year I get a total disaster. Last time it was a capacitor blow on my motherboard.

Apart from that, it only tends to be daft things that you solve in no time. The other day for some odd reason one of the cables plugged into my RAID controller came out. The machine hung, then did not detect the RAID 0 array on next boot. Quick check of the cables and it was all over.

Not long ago I did a bios flash of my A7M266 motherboard. Installed the 2100+ (flash was to add bios support for this CPU), formatted the HD, installed an OS. Dead. Nothing. Bought a replacement BIOS chip, switched it over. Still nothing. Don't know why this happened but it forced me to upgrade to the less than impressive KT400 chipset. Apart from that the only problems I usually have a problems with some games crashing but generally I try to follow "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Hmmmm.......In October of last tear, a pwr surge fried my scanner. In April of this year, my mobo died a greusome death, leaving me right in the middle of papers for Uni. A couple of weeks later, my monitor went out in a blaze of sparks and glory. Just a couple of months ago, thanks to a faulty RAM module, mobo #2 went kerplooie in a dazzling spectacle of smoke and sparks. (sickening sight, really). So, after a new scanner, monitor, and two motherboards, not to mention the RAM I had to replace, and countless hundreds of dollars, I have my fingers crossed that nothing else happens. I'm beginning to believe that my case may be possessed or something. Does this qualify as "having trouble?" :eek:

I can honestly say that I have not had any problems with my own machines. Just ones that I work on. But my most recent one was eaten up with virii and destroyed the MBR.

But before that it was a problem with a sound card and linux. For some reason it didn't like my sound card installed, and paused on boot every time.

The last one I had was my new sysbo (A7V8x) being DOA. Then there was the whole not detecting my first hard drive because the cable was upside down, and then the first one I had was me frying my brand new, $270 Athlon XP 1900+ One incredibly stupid problem on my part, one that wasn't a very big deal, and another that wasn't my fault. Not too bad I'd say

I think that's all the one's I've had, but since I'm exponentially more knowledgeable than I was then, I'm likely to not do the same kinds of things again.

Then I've had a few OS problems here and there...like RH7.2 not recognizing my video card and therefore not starting X.

Nodsu - what kind of Philips monitor was it? Mine died about a month ago it was a Philips 17" 107P (P for professional - so yes pro series stuff isn't imune )
Only reason I bought that monitor was because my other 17" had died this past January.
Lets see I had one hard drive complete failure (Deathstar 60GXP 30gig) about a year ago I believe, luckily I had just bought another Deathstar just before that - since then both have acted wierd at times - scared me enough into buying a 3rd hard drive this time a Maxtor 80gig 7200rpm.
I got bad RAM shipped to me once but it wasn't like it died in my system - it just came that way.
I also built a computer for a friend of my parents a while back with an ECS mobo and when I got everything hooked up the motherboard had a problem - no system would run stable (and yes I did sufficient tests to determine it was in fact the mobo - some of you might remember that). Sent the mobo back and got another and it worked.

Very rare. The last one was a few months back. To make a long story short, it was caused by an erratic open condition in an IDE cable on one of my HDDs. Before that, the last one was when one of my monitors died, nearly a year ago. About a year before that I had a modem get hit by lightning. The surge protector didn't stop it like it was supposed to. It ended up being the fault of a defectively made surge protector.

I have had a few more problems than that but most of them were due to devices that were defective to begin with.

Everytime I crack open the case...

The last big system problem I had was when.....
I was sitting at my computer..calmly surfing the web...when my system suddenly rebooted...well It came back up again...and I figured it was the fact that I had all kinds of new stuff (GF4 Ti4200, WD 100GB....) on my cheap old 300w P.S. that came with my cheap case...I knew that I needed a new nice P.S. but didnt feel like spending the money..well after about an hour when I was getting ready to go to bed, I heard a loud POP!..almost sounded like an M-80(big firecracker..lol) or something..I smelled a horrible smell of burnt plastic..I ran to my room and lo and behold my system was off..and wouldnt respond to the repeated push of the Power Button ..I bought a nice new Antec 350w the next day.... ..I opened the old P.S. and the main capacitor had exploded

Oh and on a few peoples computers which I've repaired...and replaced old P.S. with cheap ones...they've almost all quit functioning within the first month... ..I hate cheap P.S.....Oh and I can say thankfully...I've never had to endure the pain of losing a mobo or cpu.. ....or even a video card or HDD....I guess I've been pretty lucky so far...compared to you guys

Just wait, you will get your day sooner or later muwhahahaha

New tornado 80mm case fan doesn't fit in 80mm case fan holder ... had to use twist ties to secure it!

Haha, now you can really call it your RIG