Bloody hell...
Oct. 27th, 2007 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teylaminhJust to clarify - is anyone else having problems with Yahoo! Mail? It has consistently refused to load any of my emails since yesterday evening.
Having said that, the PC has slowed to a crawl today and everything is slow to load. We took the PCI card out this morning in the hope that it would improve matters (I swear the problems only started after we installed it and it stopped working a day later) but it took six attempts earlier to get the sodding PC to load up without one of various problems occurring:
1) Mouse & keyboard freezing on start-up (frequent);
2) PC freezing on BIOS startup thingy, before it even starts looking for the boot-up drive
3) No response at all when on-switch pressed.
It's incredibly frustrating, and the entire thing has slowed down. (Although LJ seems to be fine, for once.) I've done a virus check, and did a Spyware scan last week. Any other suggestions?
This problem was the final straw this morning, as it happens.
Yesterday I was feeling quite positive and productive (hence the to-do list) but when I got home, for some reason, I started being pissed off again. It turns out I don't have the biscuit recipe after all, as it's in a different cake book to the one I have, so I phoned my mum to ask if she still had the book. Subsequently, she emailed me a recipe.
Which, obviously, I can't bloody well open. Since she might be bringing over our new plate set and S-hooks tomorrow I might have to ring again and ask her to bring the book, too...
So, this morning, despite being in a better mood for all of ten minutes after a good night's sleep, I hit meltdown, and had a good cry about things before getting up. Which gave me a headache, unfortunately, but at least the paracetemol kicked in and killed it. Serves me right for bottling everything up on Thursday, really. Noor said I should have told her and she would have stayed; I'll remember that for next time, and I'm definitely going to have to let Marie know that I may end up having to have extra time off once a month... Stupid hormones.
We went shopping a bit later to Somerfield and ended up spending £30 (how does it all add up??) and I almost failed in my mission for frozen or fresh filo pastry (I'm making a pie tonight), as Somerfield had sold out, Iceland only had puff or shortcrust, and eventually Sainsbury's had some. Obviously, there's not a high demand for filo in Kings Heath... or, possibly, there is, as Somerfield may testify. So at least that wasn't another thing to be annoyed about.
But yeah, if anyone could put my mind at ease about Yahoo, that would be good. The PC is still under warranty if it is frelled, but apparently whenever Paul goes past the shop the bloke is either out or the shop is shut, which doesn't bode well. Bargain turned out to be not so bargainous after all. Bastard. If I thought my old motherboard would cope with it, I'd use my rudimentary knowledge of PCs and just put my hard drive, this processor and RAM into the old machine and be done with it...
Also, here's the other weird thing - according to all sources (well, a couple anyway), one can only have four IDE devices plugged into the motherboard at any one time. In this computer's case, they are: HDD, other HDD, Zip drive, DVD-RW drive. So how come my old PC had a HDD, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, Zip and floppy drive? Isn't that five IDE devices?
The bloke also said I couldn't have a DVD-ROM and DVD-RW (whicih I wanted originally, to enable better copying of things) because it was impossible to do direct copies. Er, okay, so why have I been doing just that for years with no problems?? He also refused to put my originaly HDD (the bigger one, by all accounts) into the new machine because the one that was already in there "has the OS on it". Er... my old one has an OS on it, too. That's how my PC worked. I suspect he was just too lazy to swap it.
So, yeah, much confusion, but mostly I'm just hoping my PC isn't fucked after two months. Any and all suggestions from the computer-savvy on my f-list would be much appreciated.
Edit: On the plus side, I got some knee-high boots from the charity shop for £3.50, which... sort of fit, by virtue of having buttons and elastic. They are very funky and I will take a photo later...
Having said that, the PC has slowed to a crawl today and everything is slow to load. We took the PCI card out this morning in the hope that it would improve matters (I swear the problems only started after we installed it and it stopped working a day later) but it took six attempts earlier to get the sodding PC to load up without one of various problems occurring:
1) Mouse & keyboard freezing on start-up (frequent);
2) PC freezing on BIOS startup thingy, before it even starts looking for the boot-up drive
3) No response at all when on-switch pressed.
It's incredibly frustrating, and the entire thing has slowed down. (Although LJ seems to be fine, for once.) I've done a virus check, and did a Spyware scan last week. Any other suggestions?
This problem was the final straw this morning, as it happens.
Yesterday I was feeling quite positive and productive (hence the to-do list) but when I got home, for some reason, I started being pissed off again. It turns out I don't have the biscuit recipe after all, as it's in a different cake book to the one I have, so I phoned my mum to ask if she still had the book. Subsequently, she emailed me a recipe.
Which, obviously, I can't bloody well open. Since she might be bringing over our new plate set and S-hooks tomorrow I might have to ring again and ask her to bring the book, too...
So, this morning, despite being in a better mood for all of ten minutes after a good night's sleep, I hit meltdown, and had a good cry about things before getting up. Which gave me a headache, unfortunately, but at least the paracetemol kicked in and killed it. Serves me right for bottling everything up on Thursday, really. Noor said I should have told her and she would have stayed; I'll remember that for next time, and I'm definitely going to have to let Marie know that I may end up having to have extra time off once a month... Stupid hormones.
We went shopping a bit later to Somerfield and ended up spending £30 (how does it all add up??) and I almost failed in my mission for frozen or fresh filo pastry (I'm making a pie tonight), as Somerfield had sold out, Iceland only had puff or shortcrust, and eventually Sainsbury's had some. Obviously, there's not a high demand for filo in Kings Heath... or, possibly, there is, as Somerfield may testify. So at least that wasn't another thing to be annoyed about.
But yeah, if anyone could put my mind at ease about Yahoo, that would be good. The PC is still under warranty if it is frelled, but apparently whenever Paul goes past the shop the bloke is either out or the shop is shut, which doesn't bode well. Bargain turned out to be not so bargainous after all. Bastard. If I thought my old motherboard would cope with it, I'd use my rudimentary knowledge of PCs and just put my hard drive, this processor and RAM into the old machine and be done with it...
Also, here's the other weird thing - according to all sources (well, a couple anyway), one can only have four IDE devices plugged into the motherboard at any one time. In this computer's case, they are: HDD, other HDD, Zip drive, DVD-RW drive. So how come my old PC had a HDD, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, Zip and floppy drive? Isn't that five IDE devices?
The bloke also said I couldn't have a DVD-ROM and DVD-RW (whicih I wanted originally, to enable better copying of things) because it was impossible to do direct copies. Er, okay, so why have I been doing just that for years with no problems?? He also refused to put my originaly HDD (the bigger one, by all accounts) into the new machine because the one that was already in there "has the OS on it". Er... my old one has an OS on it, too. That's how my PC worked. I suspect he was just too lazy to swap it.
So, yeah, much confusion, but mostly I'm just hoping my PC isn't fucked after two months. Any and all suggestions from the computer-savvy on my f-list would be much appreciated.
Edit: On the plus side, I got some knee-high boots from the charity shop for £3.50, which... sort of fit, by virtue of having buttons and elastic. They are very funky and I will take a photo later...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-27 04:38 pm (UTC)As a means of troubleshooting, also... maybe try getting hold of a different browser (Mozilla Firefox is excellent), and seeing if your email will load on that? If they do, it could be a browser problem.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-29 11:39 am (UTC)Mozilla wouldn't even load on Friday night when the PC was acting up in general, but I'll give it a try anyway...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-30 09:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-30 12:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-27 05:45 pm (UTC)I'm afraid the problem sounds like a motherboard issue. I thought it might be the power supply but I doubt it.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-29 11:43 am (UTC)And thanks for clearing up the IDE device thing - that was confusing me no end...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-27 06:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-29 10:30 am (UTC)If it wasn't under warranty I'd be all for fixing it yourself. If you opened the case to put in and take out the PCI card, is the warranty intact?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-29 11:37 am (UTC)Paul is going to see the bloke in the shop today, assuming he's in or the place is open...
My mum suggested it might also be a video card issue as apparently David's PC was having the same sort of problems and that turned out to be the cause...
Yahoo works fine at work, so that eliminates Yahoo being fritzy, at least.
I presume the warranty is intact as he sold us the PCI with the intention of us putting it in there ourselves, as he didn't have any when we bought the unit. Given the receipt is a hand-written piece of carbon paper it's not exactly high-tech...
Paul also wants to know if having an OS on the old HDD would adversely affect the bootup or general performance of the main one (IDE-0). I think not, but my rudimentary knowledge of PCs may be failing. Any idea? And if so, can the old OS be removed easily from the old HDD without losing data?
Personally, I would be all for just putting my old hard drive in and forgetting the crappy new one, but as Derek said above, it sounds like sheer laziness on the part of the bloke in the shop...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-29 08:16 pm (UTC)You could try swapping drives with the old one and seing what happens - I'd suspect WinXP would decline to boot cos it'll think it's on a brand new computer so a phone call to Microsoft will probably be in order to get it activated again, plus all the hardware settings will be set for the old machine, which may be why the shop bloke was reluctant to swap it. It may work but it would really need a fresh install.
Sounds like you have a sick computer on your hands, I have a spare gfx card lying around if you want a space to check with btw.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-30 12:37 pm (UTC)It all worked fine before a) I put the PCI card in (which, as stated, worked for a day and then wouldn't 'start') and b) I installed stuff. Which seems a bit silly.
I was going to try the graphics card out of my old machine first. Apparently the one that's int he new machine is just an on-board thing (putting a new one in won't void the warranty, luckily) and I'm fairly sure the one in my old PC is better. Like, I installed Starship Titanic on the new one and the movie graphics wouldn't work, which they did before on the old machine...