I hate Windows Vist-- eh, 7, and Best Buy
Jan. 30th, 2010 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserWhat a horrible, terrible weekend thus far. My computer's been doing something bad: Screen goes black, programs all crash in 15-ish seconds after that (I can tell by the sound they make as they die). I thought this was a hardware issue (my graphics card runs really hot), but googling around, it's a WoW issue. WoW + nVidia = not happy.
I didn't want to go get a new graphics card right away, so I thought I'd try updating my drivers. Everything I read said you should uninstall your drivers before installing new ones, so I did. It then asked me to reboot. "Hmmm, but if I reboot, will it work after? You know, display anything with no video card drivers? But... it wouldn't ask me to reboot if that wouldn't work, right?" Idiot that I am, I rebooted. Black screen. Rebooted. Tried for safe mode. Black screen. Nothing.
Gah. It was about 9 AM by now, I struggled to the extent of my highly limited knowledge to try to fix this. Nothing. Oh well... I was semi sort of thinking of upgrading my machine anyway? Not really, but... Off to Best Buy for a new computer.
Arrived there at 10. By 10:15 had a new machine picked out, was going to upgrade the video card. Since I'm an idiot, I have no idea how to do that. They told me to come back in (2|3|4) hours -- different people said different things. Sick of being offline, I went back at 2 hours. Not ready. Sat out in the parking lot, checked in every half-hour, didn't get finished until nearly four hours.
BUT! "Finished" was not finished in a good way. They couldn't make it work, they thought the computer itself was broken... and it was the last one of its kind. Sigh. Next closest machine cost $100 more...
Got next machine. Waited in the parking lot 45 minutes while they installed the graphics card AGAIN. (Really? It takes you people 45 minutes to do that?). Went back in. "Oh nos! Your power supply isn't strong enough for the new video card! You need to upgrade that too!" Another $100...
So, five hours later, I finally headed home with my machine. Hooked it up. Didn't work. Black screen. GAH. WTF! Hauled out my old monitor (thing must weigh 100 pounds) and hooked it up, no image. At least I wasn't wrong to think that it wasn't a monitor issue!
Took it back to Best Buy. Apparently the new graphics card meant I needed some adapter. Silly me, I had been plugging my monitor into the color-coded slot marked "MONITOR". Wacky! It went a totally different place!
So, finally I'm on the new machine. WoW has been installing for hours (I haven't been on all day, grrrrrrrrr). And Windows Vista-- Ooops, 7, sucks so much god damned ass. It's Windows Vista. Seriously. Looks the same. Acts the same. STOP HIDING MY PROGRAMS FROM ME! I AM AN ADULT! I KNOW WHAT THE HELL I WANT TO CLICK ON MY OWN! AND WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN, I DON'T HAVE ADMIN LEVEL PERMISSION BY DEFAULT? AND NOT ONLY THAT, YOU ***HIDE*** HOW TO SWITCH TO ADMIN? Fuck you, Windows 7. Seriously. XP was nice. XP was non-intrusive. XP worked. Fucking Windows 7.
It's now 5:30. I've still done nothing online. I've cut and bruised myself multiple times lugging the damned new computer around and trying to set it up. Thankfully I did a backup about a week ago so I can get most of my data back, but still!
And thankfully I have enough money to make up for my utter cluelessness about computers. I've been kicking myself all day, that the fix for my old machine might be something simple.
Blah. What a stressful, annoying day. Computers are great things... until they stop working.
PS: I better not lag in Dal anymore, otherwise I might throw this new machine out the window. New graphics card is a Radeon HD 5770 and my computer is quad-four something or other, which is hopefully twice as good as my previous dual-something or other.
Edit: I've been using this time to watch The Watchmen. Other than being too violent for me, it's not half-bad. I don't get what all the uproar was about the blue penis though. I was sitting here expecting it to be six feet long or mutated or something, for all the uproar there was online about it. (I'm only two hours into the 2:45 movie, so maybe there's some wacky blue penis panic coming up!)
I didn't want to go get a new graphics card right away, so I thought I'd try updating my drivers. Everything I read said you should uninstall your drivers before installing new ones, so I did. It then asked me to reboot. "Hmmm, but if I reboot, will it work after? You know, display anything with no video card drivers? But... it wouldn't ask me to reboot if that wouldn't work, right?" Idiot that I am, I rebooted. Black screen. Rebooted. Tried for safe mode. Black screen. Nothing.
Gah. It was about 9 AM by now, I struggled to the extent of my highly limited knowledge to try to fix this. Nothing. Oh well... I was semi sort of thinking of upgrading my machine anyway? Not really, but... Off to Best Buy for a new computer.
Arrived there at 10. By 10:15 had a new machine picked out, was going to upgrade the video card. Since I'm an idiot, I have no idea how to do that. They told me to come back in (2|3|4) hours -- different people said different things. Sick of being offline, I went back at 2 hours. Not ready. Sat out in the parking lot, checked in every half-hour, didn't get finished until nearly four hours.
BUT! "Finished" was not finished in a good way. They couldn't make it work, they thought the computer itself was broken... and it was the last one of its kind. Sigh. Next closest machine cost $100 more...
Got next machine. Waited in the parking lot 45 minutes while they installed the graphics card AGAIN. (Really? It takes you people 45 minutes to do that?). Went back in. "Oh nos! Your power supply isn't strong enough for the new video card! You need to upgrade that too!" Another $100...
So, five hours later, I finally headed home with my machine. Hooked it up. Didn't work. Black screen. GAH. WTF! Hauled out my old monitor (thing must weigh 100 pounds) and hooked it up, no image. At least I wasn't wrong to think that it wasn't a monitor issue!
Took it back to Best Buy. Apparently the new graphics card meant I needed some adapter. Silly me, I had been plugging my monitor into the color-coded slot marked "MONITOR". Wacky! It went a totally different place!
So, finally I'm on the new machine. WoW has been installing for hours (I haven't been on all day, grrrrrrrrr). And Windows Vista-- Ooops, 7, sucks so much god damned ass. It's Windows Vista. Seriously. Looks the same. Acts the same. STOP HIDING MY PROGRAMS FROM ME! I AM AN ADULT! I KNOW WHAT THE HELL I WANT TO CLICK ON MY OWN! AND WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN, I DON'T HAVE ADMIN LEVEL PERMISSION BY DEFAULT? AND NOT ONLY THAT, YOU ***HIDE*** HOW TO SWITCH TO ADMIN? Fuck you, Windows 7. Seriously. XP was nice. XP was non-intrusive. XP worked. Fucking Windows 7.
It's now 5:30. I've still done nothing online. I've cut and bruised myself multiple times lugging the damned new computer around and trying to set it up. Thankfully I did a backup about a week ago so I can get most of my data back, but still!
And thankfully I have enough money to make up for my utter cluelessness about computers. I've been kicking myself all day, that the fix for my old machine might be something simple.
Blah. What a stressful, annoying day. Computers are great things... until they stop working.
PS: I better not lag in Dal anymore, otherwise I might throw this new machine out the window. New graphics card is a Radeon HD 5770 and my computer is quad-four something or other, which is hopefully twice as good as my previous dual-something or other.
Edit: I've been using this time to watch The Watchmen. Other than being too violent for me, it's not half-bad. I don't get what all the uproar was about the blue penis though. I was sitting here expecting it to be six feet long or mutated or something, for all the uproar there was online about it. (I'm only two hours into the 2:45 movie, so maybe there's some wacky blue penis panic coming up!)
