Strangest pc probs u have ever encountered ?

[Dark Disciple]

What is the weirdest pc prob you have ever had the pleasure to run across and have to fix ?

I dont have time to add mine now, but when I get back from yet another adventure in pc fix-it land I will.

 

[palee72]

The strangest thing?

A windows 98 install that went smooth worked without crashing for months...


Now that is strange IMHO...

Would I call it a problem? Depends on how you look at it I suppose...lol

Actually, the strangest problem I had was with a 98 install that wouldn't let me install any other program or driver. It was a clean install, I went to put the MOBO drivers in and it told me that the install files were corrupt, download file and retry.. It took about 6 tries till it installed... Then came other drivers... not too much hastle.. then came Earthlink.. It would not install for anything... I re-booted, safe mode-ed, defragged, cursed, swore, and finally reformatted... SAME THING AGAIN!!!! Tried a different version 98 (used 98se)... AGAIN SAME THING!!!!

After 4 days, 2 hard drives, 3 versions of win 98 and a version of win2k (wouldn't even get past install), and a bottle of asprin and nearly a carton of Cigs(I was a pack every 2 days smoker).. I swapped out a RAM stick and it went with no problem...

Anyone ever have that problem??? (BTW.. I quit smoking all together now)

 

[The Revelation]

When I was very young, I picked up a Compaq laptop. It worked well for a while, no real problems. Then, one day, I tried to boot it up, when I get an error saying "Hard drive not found". I was 12 or so, and I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.

That was a pain in the ***, took me like 2 months to fix it. Stupid CMOS.

 

[Rav]

I remember a system that used to turn itself on during the night. It was just a bad PSU, but it was still kind of weird.

-Rav

 

[pcgirl]

Just recently we had a Win 98 computer at work that was having MS Word problems. When the user logged in as herself, Word would lock up on the splash screen. When any other user logged in, Word would work just fine. This baffled us because Win 98 doesn't rely heavily on users and profiles like NT and 2000, etc. After removing Office and deleting all its registry keys, deleting and recreating users, it still wouldn't work with that particular user. We formatted and reinstalled.

 

[garwain]

Re: The strangest thing?

Anyone ever have that problem??? (BTW.. I quit smoking all together now)

yep on both problems. I was quite a heavy smoker, and I've managed to quit (well I still have the occasional cigarette, but that is maybe 1 a week... )

As for the bad ram, I've seen that too many times. When I was setting up my server the linux install was constantly crashing on me. Finally tried another stick or ram, to the original back to the shop and they refused to replace it because it looked good in their tester... Ended up taking the machine in and showing them that the install wouldn't work, swapped out the ram, and put my spare chip in, and the install went through. Finally they replaced the stick for me, saying it wasn't worth the hassle, they would just switch chips, and resell the one I was claiming to be defective to the next person to come in....

Ok, now for wierd problems...2 weeks ago today, my server died on me. When I was working on it, I got a nice little puff of smoke, and the board refused to post. The procesor near the smoke and the board were sent back on warranty for repairs, and the processor, even though charred around the core, is supposedly in perfect working condition.

If you don't like that one, I've seen a machine that had a capacitor EXPLODE after being hit by a bad power surge. I wish I had taken a photo of that!

 

[Ridenow]

Recently I had a fresh install of Win2000 on a computer, I had not put it on the network yet and had 3 local admin accounts on it. After a reboot it decided to not let any account login to it. All it did was bring up a message that said there was no swap file and instructions for changing it. When I clicked OK it took me back to the login screen. It did this for all 3 accounts. Since it was a fresh install I just wiped and reloaded.

The hardest to diag was a computer in our training room. It would work fine for days then blue screen. 2 SEs had reimaged it several times, then I replaced the hard drive. Again, it would work for days, we would close the ticket on it and the next day or so it would crash. On the 5th or 6th call on it I replaced the PSU. That fixed the problem.

Today I had a user convinced that when he scrolled the bar on the bottom of a window it moved up and down. I had to have him watch the files move several times to convince him that they were moving sideways, like they were supposed to. Then I had to let him give me a line about it must have been fixed.

I almost forgot a Gigabyte motherboard and an ATi card that drove me nuts for days. I could not get the ATi drivers (junk anyway ) to run right. After trying almost everything I decided that I thought the mobo was bad. Since I was short on time I decided to buy another mobo and RMA the one later. When I got the new board there was a note in the box that said something about a defect in the AGP drivers for the mobo and a floppy with a patch (which was NOT on the website, I looked!)
There are 2 companies that I still avoid if I can.

Intermitant problems are the ones that drive me nuts.

 

[The Revelation]

If you don't mind me asking, garwain, how did you go about quitting?

I'm a pack-a-day-religous smoker, and I need to quit while I'm still young

 

[FlypSyde]

Anyone who has dealt with Dell Optiplex G1 PII-266 desktop computers might have come across this. For some strange reason these computers will, on a rare occasion, lock up requiring a restart. Then they'll refuse to boot and just beep at you. At this point the only thing you can do is remove the power cable because the power button won't work, only the reset button seems to work. To fix it you have to completely disconnect either the floppy drive or the cdrom drive (I forget which), plug in the computer, use the power button to shut it off, and then reconnect the floppy or cdrom. Just unplugging the computer won't fix it. For the 2 years that I worked with those machines I had it happen to me only three times with three different machines.

 

[NookieN]

I've seen plenty of weird software problems over the years.

One of the most annoying was a two-week period when every time I checked my e-mail with Eudora under Win95, the computer would freeze up solid. I finally discovered that playing wave files was the problem and since Eudora was playing a new-mail sound file, that was that. To this day I still wonder if I lost any important messages.

Win2k is always good for some amusing examples of over-controlling MS software. I was trying to install an ATM NIC under 2k and the MS virtual adapter wasn't binding properly. However, Windows wouldn't let me remove it as it was "necessary to start the computer." Well it installed a new virtual adapter every time I rebooted and I think I had about 20 of them in the hardware list before I reformatted.

 

[Ridenow]

Anyone who has dealt with Dell Optiplex G1 PII-266 desktop computers might have come across this. For some strange reason these computers will, on a rare occasion, lock up requiring a restart. Then they'll refuse to boot and just beep at you. At this point the only thing you can do is remove the power cable because the power button won't work, only the reset button seems to work. To fix it you have to completely disconnect either the floppy drive or the cdrom drive (I forget which), plug in the computer, use the power button to shut it off, and then reconnect the floppy or cdrom. Just unplugging the computer won't fix it. For the 2 years that I worked with those machines I had it happen to me only three times with three different machines.

How odd. I work with Optiplex GX1 PII-400 and have not seen that one it 3 years. One we do see is a blank screen, no video signal. To fix we have to unplug the video cable and both power cables, CPU and monitor. If you do not unplug one cable the screen will stay black. Plug it all in and turn it on.

 

[Dark Disciple]

Well, now I have time to add my own personal touch to this thread...

This is the latest weird thing to plague a system that I was fortunate enough to have to fix (the worst part is that it is my wifes new box)...

I built her a new rig for school, nothing fancy (1600+, Gigabyte GA-7dx+ mobo, GF3 Ti200, WD 60 G HHD, lite-on cdrw, SB live, etc.)

The thing ran fine for about 3 days, then when I restarted it, it gave the 1L, 2S post code (video card) error. I cracked open the case and inspected the card, reset the card, and re-booted. It worked fine. The next day it did the same thing again, so I did the same thing (I also swapped cards to test the card w/ a known good vid card and un-installed/re-installed video drivers) and it booted fine until a restart.

Well, this sort of thing went on everytime I restarted the thing. So I tested everything, PS, ram, CPU, SC, CDRW, everything. I also insulated all of the stand-offs thinking that maybe they were shorting some traces.

Next up, I thought that maybe it was a heat issue, so I added a fan to the mix. No matter what I did, everytime I would have to restart the system, it would give the video card error !!!

I finally just RMA'd the Mobo and it fixed the problem. The techs at Monarch had never seen such a problem before and were just as perplexed as I was, lol.

 

[zachj]

Weirdest thing I've seen:

My sister's computer got a virus. Reloaded and installed software and updated it and all was fine. Next day, it won't get online. I do everything I can think of to get it to work. Even did a repair and still nothing. So I reinstalled 98SE again and set it all up and let it go. The next day the same thing happened. Tried again with the repair. No Luck. That's where I am today. It's the wierdest thing I've ever seena nd it makes NO sense. Also my computer randomly restarts . . .Don't know what's up with that, but it won't stop. Could be the mobo from what I just read in this thread, although I don't know . . .Lastly, my sister's computer got struck by lightening. Worked fine for a day and then stopped working. Took out the chip and the thing was black as hell on the bottom. The computer worked for an entire day without the fan running, I guess. They don't make 'em like they used to.

Not really good stories, I guess, but those are the ones I've got.

Z

 

[nealric]

I got two of them:
A while back I had a 1.4 tbird. For some reason JPEGs would not display correctly when viewed with ie. They worked with any other program and the problem was strictly limited to JPEGS I tried reformating, vid cards, setting, os's. Then, I crushed the core of my tbird while putting on a water block. Got a new proc- and guess what? JPEGs worked fine.
Also, my box used to randomly not give me video. If i wated for a while, it majically fixed itself. This would happen once a week or so. New mobo fixed that one.

 

[bdf24]

The strangest for me is my AK31 in my wife's School PC. When I first got it it worked great. I had a NIC in there to share my internet connection and for networking. Well little by little it started losing the network connection more and more often. Pretty soon it would'nt install the network card after bootup anymore. Then a week or so later it would'nt install anything in any of the PCI slots. Now I've been using this for month's now. It work's fine except ALL of the PCI slot's are unusable! Very weird! So now till I get some exrta cash I'm stuck using a USB ethernet adapter to get internet access to that PC. It work's ok but if you try to do any sort of file transer or data transfer across the network it will lose the entire connection all together. It can be a pian in the butt sometimes.

 

[aero red baron]

with my old compaq it would always turn on at midnight. I would turn it off (not sleep mode) and bing, right at 12 there it went. I got fed up as this was right when I was about to fall asleep and the hard drive clicked louder than a cricket in my eardrum. So I set the windows clock off by twelve hours. Solved the problem so it came on at noon now. BUt the clocke kept trying to reset itself and ended up being about 6 hours off the real time.
compaq

 

[Ridenow]

with my old compaq it would always turn on at midnight. I would turn it off (not sleep mode) and bing, right at 12 there it went. I got fed up as this was right when I was about to fall asleep and the hard drive clicked louder than a cricket in my eardrum. So I set the windows clock off by twelve hours. Solved the problem so it came on at noon now. BUt the clocke kept trying to reset itself and ended up being about 6 hours off the real time.
compaq

That is a setting in BIOS, we sometimes use it to turn on computers so they can get software updates over the LAN in the middle of the night.

 

[hooziewhatsit]

http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=135672


weirdest recent problem...

 

[baqai]

Re: The strangest thing?

A windows 98 install that went smooth worked without crashing for months...


Now that is strange IMHO...

Would I call it a problem? Depends on how you look at it I suppose...lol

LOL now that IS a serious problem LOL


My strange problem was/is having error while publishing a big file in Flash 5, got memory error saying suggesting "not much memory" but on checking the system it was utilizing 300 something mb out of 512 physical and my swap file (1500mb min and max) was not used at all

i dunno what is wrong and how to fix it *shrugs*

 

[palee72]

Here is another one

Here is one I am having right now.

When you fill in a screen name & Password, you know how you hit 'TAB' to change fields? Well, when I hit tab, mine switches open windows. I know this is probably something simple...

It doesn't do it all the time, only once in a while. Restarting is the only thing I have found to fix it..

Any ideas?