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As the title might suggest the computer is not quite to a point that I would prefer it but it is behaving a hell of a lot better than it previously has been, what with the banishing of that memory chip that proved to be such a misery! Currently tidying up a Win XP install on the system, I did have Win 7 RC 64 bit on prior to it but as usual I have some freak hardware configuration that causes problems.

All started out very good, got the OS installed, most of the drivers built in off the bat but still updated what I could of it. Got my usual essentials all set up and started to feel a love I hadn’t felt since I first started using XP all those years ago. Testing various aspects that I needed, fraps capture in various proggies, video playback (a bit of a no brainer that one but still had to be tested) and capture from the 360, that’s where it all started to go wrong. On the other hand I discovered I seem to have broken something on my Audigy card, the headphone socket on the front panel no longer seems to be working properly so at the same time there could be some connection there too.

At the moment I just want a stable computer so I can wrap up on a number of things and continue on with other things, I’ve had enough of computer problems for the present time no thanks to that memory chip and just want to get on with my little projects. Only potential problem at present is I’m a bit paranoid over the heat it’s kicking out but I do have a meaty Phenom 2 black edition now so probably just not properly accounting for it on the case cooling setup, all is fine in the mean time thanks to that wonderful cool ‘n quiet technology but will have to keep check when it comes to the more strenuous tasks.

Really wanted everything to work in Win 7, was starting to really like using and working in the environment.

Update 16/09/09 – Category change

Let me start this by explaining a few little bits. Computing today is currently present in two main forms, 32 bit and 64 bit. I don’t need to go into the nitty gritty but I do need to explain a couple of differences between the two… well, just one really.

Due to technically restrictions in relation to the way computers work which I don’t need to go into, 32 bit Windows has a limitation on the amount of memory that you can use, 4 gig or more and it will generally only use a little bit above 3 gig, might report that it sees more but ultimately it doesn’t utilise it. Enter 64 bit Windows, allows you to use 4 gig and more (depending on any restrictions imposed within the software).

Now let me present some evidence, only recently 32 bit Windows xp started hanging solid on me, did have some occasional oddities prior but nothing major to threaten operations so to speak. Eager to try Windows 7 during it’s beta period I try installing the 64 bit version however it would display some bad instability which I put down to the test code. When the computer became inoperable I obtain a new motherboard and CPU, in the installation process the memory chips go in reverse order in comparison to how they where in the old board, major instability problem, so much so that even memtest hangs solid!

The verdict in all this is simple, the computer has been operating with a bad memory chip for possibly a long time, you see, I had it installed in the upper most slot so 32 bit Windows didn’t allocate all of it and of course when I tried the beta of 64 bit Windows 7 it was using all of it. The past few months the chip must have degraded to a point that it started effecting 32 bit Windows and when I swapped it into the new board in reverse order, it was the first chip to be used for memory, hence the instability increase.

So why did I not suspect the memory before hand? Well, I was going by prior experience in my judgement, I have experienced both motherboard and memory issues before. Motherboard issue had the symptoms of hard hangs like I had been experiencing and the memory issue produced very very random error messages.

What I have learned in all this, not everything is always as it seems and probably should be a little less quick to judge to which I should probably make an apology to Gigabyte for any bad mouthing that has been roughly aimed in their direction, may have been this memory chip all along and nothing to do with the motherboard.

This is the little bugger

To recap a previous post, computer upgrade, first motherboard bad, replacement, stability issues which turn out to be the PSU, replacement PSU but damage done and motherboard starts failing. At this point I start rethinking things and looking at dismantling the computer for the present.

Well this preented one problem, I would at time play my 360 through the capture card onto the computer to free up the main TV for the lady and suddenly I no longer had this option so I seeked out obtaining a flat screen monitor that I had originally been planing on picking up before the computer went up on me and so I could get back to gaming while having the TV freeded up again.

The lovely Samsung Syncmaster arrived a couple of weeks back…

All 24 inches of it with a resolution of 1920×1200… well once I played the 360 on it for a bit (at 1080p I might add just to make sure I got as much out of it as I presently could) I was wanting my computer back.

Soooooo I set out to get the bits required and keeping in mind I was still needing to rebuild my mother’s computer too, a new motherboard, cpu, keyboard and mouse soon arrived.

However all is not well, as I type this I am still restricted to the laptop, the on board GPU is buggered which normally wouldn’t matter as I don’t use rubbish on board GPUs but even then the motherboard is showing big stability issues… which is a real shame as I was starting to like Windows 7 that I finally managed to get installed. Memtest won’t even run without halting :s

So, still without a computer, the mashups will have to wait… oh, I’m still to make a post about that.

Nope, as much as it would be good financially to dismantle the computer and sell on the bits and be left fighting over the laptop with the lady, I just can’t do it ultimately and the cost of various bit to take over the general functions the computer performed, well, I might as well just fix up the computer again.

This whole episode has taught me one thing however, I’m currently aiming too high. This basically means I’m still re-thinking operations, more info as and when I am ready to share, don’t worry, should be all good

Been working out some sums, some big things are afoot and some choices are going to have to be made and the choice to dismantle the computer and sell off the parts until as to when I’m back in a position to re-build a brand new machine is the one having to be made.

In meeting my lovely lady I’ve never really thought of life in such a wide scope but I have to be doing that now, we are planning to get married and we are wanting to have a house we can call our own and do what we want with it which means a lot of curbing of spending and a lot of hard saving.

In the mean time I do have access to the laptop so I’m not going to vanish, just things are going to take a bit of a shift until I can get a computer built back up, how long that will take I don’t know yet.

I have figured it all out, ultimately I can’t walk away from everything but at the same time I am putting myself under way too much pressure to do way too much. At the end of the day, I am going to sort the computer out for once and for all, trouble is it may have been all my fault to start off with. For a time I was running the system, unknown to myself however, on an underpowered PSU.

The PSU eventually went pop but during the operation of the system I believe it has damaged the motherboard and doing other weird things. Should have realised really but there was no real solid tell tale signs that it was the problem considering at one point I had it running solid for 3 whole days. All this time I had been rubbishing the mobo, should had remembered my own little rule of a problem is not always what it seems to be, until I had to pick up a new PSU I would get regular BSoDs.

Soooo a new mobo will be needed and might as well spruce up the CPU at the same time a bit however I’m rescaling operations when everything is all sorted out or just simply try not to let everything get on top of me. Well no doubt keep all posted here… need to write more on the 5800 adventures, going to start doing more actual ‘blogging’ on here.

Well it has happened again, don’t know what exactly but it keeps hanging solid minutes after boot up.

At this point it is the straw that broke the camels back, a lot has been going on and I just don’t need this nore I have the resources to just keep chucking at it all.

It is also helping me see that I’m just trying to do way too much at the moment given the circumstances, I need to go away and have a think over things and probably scale back operations for the time being.