December 2008 Archives

I bought an internet radio for the mother for Christmas - it means that she can listen to BBC Radio 4 without it sounding like complete rubbish over long wave. It worked fine for a few hours in the morning on Christmas day then it malfunctioned - the volume started to act as though the volume up button was jammed down. I can't reset it - the behaviour makes it completely unworkable. It seems to be some form of short circuit. After I powered it off overnight, it seemed to work again - for about 10 minutes, then I got the same behaviour. With sadness I shall be returning it to the store to get a replacement unit, which, I hope, will work much better.

The issue it that it's frustrating, I don't think that it's a problem endemic with the model as there seem to be a lot of people with the same model, none of whom seem to be complaining about it.

The motherboard arrived yesterday and I fitted it last night. No luck; still in the same place. Mind you, with all the components I've bought, I should be able to make another computer from the parts I've bought to replace the old ones and make someone else a nice computer.
I've ordered a new CPU and memory. I'm winding my way around to the opinion that it's the CPU. It must have overheated from the first 2 weeks of use. Even without a smidge of overclocking. Maybe it has something to do with the 9800GTX cpu sitting immediately below it?
The replacement CPU is a slower, quad-core processor, and if the memory isn't shot will mean that I'm up to a chunky 8gb of RAM on 64bit vista.
C'est la guerre. It's only money.

I went out and bought a half decent set of kit to make a good 'bang for the buck' system. It lasted 2 weeks and then came screeching to a halt one evening. Every effort made after that got me to the same hang point 'detecting USB controllers'. So I go online and look for references to the motherboard. Several people with the same problem who have had various luck resetting the BIOS to get past the issue.
Reset the bios... now I don't even have text - I have the pretty 'quiet boot' screen. Which means I can't even see any of the failed diagnostics.
I bought a replacement GPU - small, and low powered and it's given me no love at all. I'm still in the same place. So I've decided to buy a new motherboard. The old one had been flakey since the get-go.
I had an ASUS P5KC - with the most insane form of RAID I've ever seen in a motherboard. The replacement is an Asus P5Q. Granted the motherboard types are a bit different, but the big thing I get is RAID-1. The other minor thing is that I get a little embedded Linux.
I hope I don't need to reinstall Vista, as it was a pain in the ass. Mind you I think I screwed up by making the disk a dynamic volume (!!!!!) twit that I am.