The Human vs The Machine

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The last two weeks I have:

1. Understood the workings of a computer more than I probably ever wanted to.
2. Nearly witnessed a computer flying out of my window.

SUMMARY:

Alright so I bought my bro's computer off him a few weeks ago at a bargain price (after assuring me it was a stable machine even though he didn't used it for 6 months) and I was more than happy with my purchase. That's until the dreaded freezing came into play, with strange error messages appearing left/right & centre. The battle begins....

ROUND 1:

A few posts back I mentioned memory/RAM testing, and I found a faulty stick in my machine so I thought bingo! just buy some new RAM and problem solved. Think again...although I solved the issue of the dodgy RAM, some other issues were still apparent. Ha it's not like I waited for a week to receive my new RAM from Germany to solve the problems. Ohhhh no. So.....after reinstalling windows and noticing the errors were still haunting me, I narrowed it down to being another hardware issue.

ROUND 2:

So I ripped the thing to pieces (yes this was satisfying) and cleaned the mofo head to toe. I rebooted the mofo up and did some more research online. I found out you could manually change all the settings in the BIOS to configure your hardware to run at the optimum rates required of your motherboard. So I tinkered around with getting the perfect volts/bus speed/ vram frequency and all that crazy technical stuff to see if the default settings were causing the mofo to crash.

NOTE: I smelt victory in the air and I felt confident I was going to have the last laugh.


ROUND 3:

After several reboots and tweaking I honestly thought I had won the battle! It worked with no crashes for several hours and I even had a sly giggle of satisfaction. Shame on me! A few hours later the mofo died on me again. Hmmmmm.


ROUND 4:

After finally getting the thing up and running again I got on the tinterweb and did some more research. I found a program that tests the temperature of your processor. I downloaded it and found it was running at around 65 degrees when it was idle, and it shouldn't even be going to 70 when its running at full speed on an intensive stress test. Wahoo that's it of course! The mofo is just struggling and needs to chill out a little. Literally. Then BOOM the mofo died on me again.

NOTE: By this point you might be wondering, why the F%^k are you torturing yourself Jack? and the answer is much like the game of trading.....this was a battle I wasn't willing to give in to.


ROUND 5:

My bro had given me this strange compound paste which you spread on the surface of your fan which sits on  your motherboard, this helps to reduce the overall heat that is getting trapped (apparently) OK jobs a good en, so I got started on the surgical procedure right away. A short time (ish) later I booted up again and did the temperature test. Unbelievably I had knocked around 15 degrees off my last test. Shocked and somewhat chuffed I was 100% confident I had finally solved the mystery...an overheating processor. I did a little dance, clicked my heels in joy and thought I was going to start a whole new career as a computer technician. OK maybe not but the battle had been won.......so I thought.

2 hours later it crashed again and that was where I nearly witnessed a flying computer from my window. But after a reality check I held up my white flag and bowed my head in shame to the victorious machine. I narrowed it down to a faulty processor, video card or hard drive but I really couldn't be assed with it anymore.

RESULT: Winner - The Machine by TKO

The taste in my mouth was bitter, as not only had I wasted hours on this mofo but I was forced to give in to the machine. The bastard won and I couldn't even smash the thing up to cheat in victory as my bro wanted it back to start his own battle with it. Don't ask me why ha. It was an interesting learning curve and I hope an enjoying post to read, but not one I will be looking to repeat anytime soon.

So the moral of the story - only buy a second hand computer if you can bet your life on it working perfectly. Let this be a lesson, it's not worth the battle I can assure you.

But today brings a new day and ooooooooh yeh a new computer! It should be arriving before 10am and it's the computer in the pic at the top. It's a beast which is custom built and touch wood 'should' last me years. So here's to a computer that actually works properly. Well I hope :)