What's broken on YOUR system?

Call me lazy but when something software related breaks or acts quirky on my machine, I usually don't have the time and mostly the patience to screw with it unless it's a crucial app. Sure i'll do some troubleshooting and make an effort to fix the problem but if I cant readily fix it and the problem doesn't interfere with whatever i'm doing, i'll usually roll my eyes and keep working.

I'm a utility nut and consequently have to reinstall my OS about every two months. It's all part of the cycle for me. After a few months performance slows, things break and stability suffers. Then I reinstall and begin with a fresh new start.

Last time I decided to reinstall it was my TV tuner that crashed constantly for no reason at all that told me it was time. This time around its a number of things... My audigy control panel is broken, Diskkeeper (my defrag program) now refuses to run its scheduled scans, BSplayer runs at a crawl and Zone Alarm no longer retains its application permission settings. That windows bug where the title of the last cd that was in your rom drive continues to show, long after you eject the CD has cropped up too. *sigh* The time for a reinstall is near.

So i'm curious, what's broken on your system? What have you put off fixing in favor of a reinstall? What little glitches, annoying bugs or quirks does your system currently suffer from?

Or are all things totally rosy in the land of Windows? (yeah right)

Excellent post!

First I am having a Safe disc problem... I have a CD Which I will not name that refuses to work due to me having a virtual drive instaled! :rant: Next, I have a experimental windows on my 4th hard drive that is acting up... Oh, did I mention my sata drive is registering as being dma4! Err... Then theres my 50 or so apps that refuse to start... Oh, and my spysweper program wont update... Then theres my windows its self that refuses to activate! :mad: But I'll fix that in a few mins... :devilish:

All in all I think its time to do my monthly format...

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Originally Posted by myth

Excellent post!

First I am having a Safe disc problem... I have a CD Which I will not name that refuses to work due to me having a virtual drive instaled! :rant: Next, I have a experimental windows on my 4th hard drive that is acting up...

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Tut tut

I cant say I have any hardware broken at the moment, but the wiring inside my case is a complete mess! I need to sort that out.

Unlike deluded I read the thread and have no SOFTWARE problems. :)

It annoys me too much to sit at my pc and not have it fully working.

I can't get realvnc to work from work, but thats firewall related and I don't have permission. Might see about port tunneling and some clever routing (once get new router).

I have used Ghost to image my last install (XP plus essential apps) so when anything majorly annoying occurs I just boot with the Ghost cd in the drive and reinstall the lot in about 10 minutes.
At the moment apart from a few niggles fixed with a reboot my system is fairly well behaved.

Some games dont work as when they detect my primary GPU as my main PCI card (which runs the 3rd/4th screen) it often crashes out DX9 games as it cannot detect DX9 features, even though if it just carried on they run fine on my FX5950U.

OK OK! I read it now! LOL

Yeh, I used to leave my system on for as long as 3 weeks, but now after leaving it on for more than 48 hours, my MSN Messanger, Outlook Express and Winamp dont work, so I have to restart all the time.

My ATI catalyst control centre, just get ' failed to initalize proberly'

My 'Network Setup Wizard' doesn't work on either of my two computers. I click on it and nothing happens. Also my 'network connections' folder is empty even though both computers are hooked up to a router using the onboard LAN controllers and happily accessing the Internet.

These glitches cropped up after installing SP2! I'm going roll back to pre-SP2 system restore points when I get the energy.

barry, try downloading microsofts .net framework (i think thats what they call it) i had the same problem, and now it works.

my ie has critical errors everytime i shut it down, guess thats a sign that i should stick to just mozilla!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ceefer

My 'Network Setup Wizard' doesn't work on either of my two computers. I click on it and nothing happens. Also my 'network connections' folder is empty even though both computers are hooked up to a router using the onboard LAN controllers and happily accessing the Internet.

These glitches cropped up after installing SP2! I'm going roll back to pre-SP2 system restore points when I get the energy.

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Yeh m8, I have that same problem with my computer, but my brothers computer is fine. :mad:

My USB ports trip out every time I power up the system.

I have to unplug my mice (well, mouse and trackball) to get them working again.

nothing apart from a serial ATA ports piece of plastic at the end thats SUPPOSED to give support to the cables.

Came in from work to find the cable disconnected and the piece of placcy that had broken off on the bottom of my case with other nice things like dust and dust.

Its glued back on now - and the connections very tight so no more SATA slippage :)

Most of my PC is broken in some way or another but most of the problems are just little annoyances really such as having no case, cd-rom or floppy drive and using a bit of metal to switch it on and off, trying to use a PC with 256mb of memory to do too much etc etc

Only problems are the dust in the CPU fan which can cause inappropriate sounds to be heard at the most annoying times and my hdd which clicks every so often like it's on it's way out...and the PSU is on its last legs, fan in that also makes strange sounds and voltages are diabolical...an svchost chooses to use 100% of the CPU time when the PC is idle (sometimes) and I cant let the CPU use goto 100% for any length of time due to aforementioned dying PSU.

The one stick of memory wont work with its SPD timings BUT will work fine at cas 2.5-3-3-7 etc...which IS it's SPD timings, just that if I set it to SPD it will cause havoc.

The PC I use most often dosn't shutdown properly after it has been on for a while. It just hangs on the 'Saving Your Settings' screen. Other than that, everything is just dandy.

Like Kez, my mouse won't work without unplugging it, though only when running it through my screen's USB hub.

Back on topic, Internet Explorer won't load Google (Just shows a blank page), has a few other minor issues like that. That, and BSPlayer, if it'll play the file at all, will play the video slower than the audio. :( Waiting for the rest of my new hardware to arrive before doing an overclocking run and then reinstalling Windows (Trust me, don't try to overclock on an otherwise stable install of Windows - if the overclock isn't stable, it can quite easily corrupt your install. I say this from experience. :P).

heh, mirc randomly sets all of my windows to "desktop" mode now, as i did it once to test, and however many times i undo it, it still seems to have saved the one time i tested it, so it does that everytime i start it, giving me 20+ windows rather than one with tabs.
oh yeah, my sound... volume control is buggered. my max volume is 1/3 up the scale, after that its almost silent. never really bothered to figure out what causes either problem, if anyone has would be nice to fix i guess ;/

Hmmm my PC still likes to reboot randomly (been a prob since i built it). its so random i get confused! sometimes goes for a few weeks 100% fine then will have 4/5 days where I cant do anything for more than a few hours without a restart!

Looks like im gonna have to wait till i build another system to cure the problem. Which will be after Xmas sometime i would think.

NForce4, PCIe gfx, A64 and new case are the hopes.

I like to keep a tight PC. Things need to be running and, if not, i'll fix it. I tend not to need to re-install as I avoid experimental stuff and beta programs in the main.

At present my PC runs dandy, though it is all quite new (2 months old) so time will tell. My previous machine ran windows 2000 for over 2 years without needing a re-install...

keyboard sometimes doesn't work without un/replug, on boot

and 2 case fans are b0rked

I have an annoying noise coming from one of the fans in the case. I thought it was the case fans but changed those and its still there. I think its the PSU but cant be bothered to pull the PSU out the case and replace the fans :P

oh yeah, i can't click links to mailto: in firefox withut errors.

and gaim keeps locking the sound subsystem, spwaning thousands of processes, and dying

I broken the WBEM Service and ask I cant be assed to reinstall OS so I just turned it off (never realised it wasnt an essential service). Also think I might have broken Prime95 as well but it works if I dont fiddle around with the mousewheel. :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by directhex

oh yeah, i can't click links to mailto: in firefox withut errors.

and gaim keeps locking the sound subsystem, spwaning thousands of processes, and dying

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What version of FF? Might be OE/Firefox arguing over the default client if you've turned off the prompting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by arsen

heh, mirc randomly sets all of my windows to "desktop" mode now, as i did it once to test, and however many times i undo it, it still seems to have saved the one time i tested it, so it does that everytime i start it, giving me 20+ windows rather than one with tabs.

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Tried deleting mirc.ini after closing program (mirc caches its ini files).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pre

What version of FF? Might be OE/Firefox arguing over the default client if you've turned off the prompting.

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i doubt it, OE hasn't been near my system for a long time.

Code:

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Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name            Version        Description
+++-===============-===============-==============================================
ii  mozilla-firefox 0.10.1+1.0PR-1  lightweight web browser based on Mozilla

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Quote:

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Tried deleting mirc.ini after closing program (mirc caches its ini files).

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bleh im lazy, that would surely entail redoing all the options etc ;\

My mouse is broke i think its time for the bin after 4 years of good service R.I.P MOUSEY.

nothing :)

and for the record Myth, speaking about illegal software is usually fround upon here.

Myth.......monthly format? jesus you need to sort out exactly what your doing if you have to format every month, I'd wager a fair bit more software passes through mine and its been working perfectly with damn near constant uptime for 8 months

The usual stuff, annoying cookies etc but the main two are probs a couple of strange things that always show up in the event log. I can't fathum them.

First one is:
------------------------------------------------------------------
Type: Error, Source: PlugPlayManager, Event ID: 11

The device Root\LEGACY_RUSHTOPDEVICE\0000 disappeared from
the system without first being prepared for removal.
------------------------------------------------------------------

And the second is:
------------------------------------------------------------------
Type: Warning, Source: cdrom, Event ID: 51

An error was detected on device \Device\CdRom0 during
a paging operation.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Guess it's just one of them things, or rather two of them things lol :)

My graphics card fan is making a sound like a washing machine, don't know whats happened there, as for software i'm quite picky about what goes on my machine, and if i have problems with it or it's giving me grief and i don't really need it it comes straight back off again. I do a clean install about every 2 months, i always loose something though, no matter how much you think you have backed up everything it's never 'everything'. Codecs always give me the most grief when doing a clean install, i'm always missing a codec and by the time i have found out which one i need and installed it the time for doing another clean install is around the corner. *sigh*