ivybgreenflower: The Beatles (late period), surrounded by green plants and red flowers (Default)
Ivy ([personal profile] ivybgreenflower) wrote2010-04-08 09:57 am

Sigh

Siiiiiiiiiiigh. This computer needs to stop doing this.

It takes forever to start up. Everything lags. The graphics cards keep wigging out. I forgot to mention here, though I ranted mightily on twitter, that the graphics card acted up in such a strange way I feared for my computer. Again. But I was NOT HAVING THAT. See, my mother was sick, and when my mother is sick she doesn't cook or go out and buy food, so I was starving. When I'm hungry you do not want to cross me. And then the graphics card causes strange problems like glitching out sims and then making me have to manually shut it off, and when it comes back there are LINES ON THE SCREEN (hmm, this sounds familiar) and I can only run it in safe mode, otherwise it's an endless loop of starting, getting to a certain point, and then restarting.

Knowing that it seemed to wig out while I was playing my game, I figured it must be the graphics card again.

So I flipped over the tower, opened it up, and flailed wildly for a bit. How do you get a graphics card out? I couldn't remember. There are thingies you push! But without the internet for guidance I couldn't look up which thingies. WHICH THINGIES DO YOU PUUUUUUUSH. Eventually my Hulk powers kicked in- I was HUNGRY, and this is MY BELOVED COMPUTER, and YOU DO NOT MESS WITH MY COMPUTER. YOU DO NOT. Especially not when I'm hungry. So I pushed some levers, wiggled some things, and BAM. I yanked that damn thing out like nobody's business without even breaking it or the computer, pretty much on sheer willpower alone at that point.

I hooked it back up and everything was fine. While on the integrated card I ran sims again to see if it was possibly the game causing trouble, but nope. So I put in the card my boyfriend gave me last time it went crazy and everything looks beautiful, no trouble at all.

Why do graphics cards hate me?

I didn't even bother with tech support this time. If all they're going to do is make me (or more accurately, my mother) spend hours on the phone with people who can't speak English and then send me barely functioning morons to put graphics cards that could potentially hurt my computer in, then forget it. I give up.

Well, anyway. Besides all that my beloved computer is very slow. I have tried everything I can think of. I do not have viruses. I do not have multiple programs running that shouldn't be. I only have I think 3 that run at startup, one of which is our virus/malware scanner. I've tried cleaning registry errors. It regularly scans itself for viruses/blahblah and does a weekly maintenence including defragmenting and deleting unnecessary files. I've moved a large number of files off of the harddrive completely. We got her in February 2007, but later in 2007 or maybe 2008 I think...? we had to get a new harddrive because of... well, I never really did figure out what went wrong, just that we needed a new harddrive. So this computer is a few years old but not so terribly old it should be like this. All of my programs are up to date. I let Windows update when it feels like. I don't have the money for a new computer right now and I really don't want to have to reinstall windows (which is the last solution most people mention).

I'd just like it to get its act together. My boyfriend's similar computer is about the same age and is full to bursting with giant files and programs and it runs like a dream. I don't get it. I think I might buy more memory for it, if I get any more aggravated.

First person who says anything at all about having a Mac, buying one, I should get one, blah blah gets scalped and fed said scalp. JS.

-9:57 AM

[identity profile] teamaims.livejournal.com 2010-04-08 04:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Hmmm. Does your computer have vista? My older laptop had it so that's mine would take FOREVER to start and shut down and it would randomly freeze. I'm not that good with computers so I'm of no help but I just wanted to say hi! LOL

[identity profile] teamaims.livejournal.com 2010-04-08 04:58 pm (UTC)(link)
:DDDD

I hate Vista so much. I blame it for everything. LOL. Maybe you can find a version of Windows 7 ~around somewhere?

[identity profile] oreohmygosh.livejournal.com 2010-04-08 06:06 pm (UTC)(link)
I was going to be a smartass and suggest buying a Mac, then I read your last sentence.

I do not have a Mac. But a cheap little Toshiba. It's a decent computer, but it has Vista and Vista is VERY problematic. I want a new version of Windows =[ My disc drive doesn't work. Because Vista makes it not work. So, maybe Vista is trying to reject your graphics card?

Maybe downgrade. A guy that my mom used to work with put everything back to Windows XP. Maybe you should try that if possible?
(deleted comment)

[identity profile] odontv.livejournal.com 2010-04-08 08:36 pm (UTC)(link)
LMAO I GET SO BITTER WHEN PEOPLE ARE LIKE "JUST GET A MAC" AND IT'S LIKE NO I'VE USED THEM I DONUT WANT THEM GO AWAY DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH TIME I'VE INVESTED INTO THIS AND HOW MUCH SHIT I HAVE AND IODFDGKLKLGLKGFLGKFLGKLGF LMAO.

BUT OMG POOR COMPUTER. :(
Edited 2010-04-08 20:37 (UTC)

[identity profile] shakeandcry.livejournal.com 2010-04-16 02:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, a junk graphics card can just have problems with certain functions (games and video being common no-nos), but if it's randomly crazy no matter what, it's a crap card period.

Have you researched the card type to see if other people are getting stabby stabby?

And Macs are useless, as well as evil. I wouldn't take one for free, and instead they sell them for like 10x the cost of a pc. Choke on an apple lump and die, trendwhores.