Poll: What's the most NUISANCE to install?

[Rigoletto]

I have had problems with just about everything. Only my Voodoo3 card hasn't given me a hard time.

Rigoletto's nuisance list
1. Graphics cards tried to install ATi AIW128. Aargh! Where do I begin? Sound problems, won't work as secondary in ME, wouldn't play OpenGL in Win2000(driver issue). Tried fiddling with the card order and eventually ME would boot up perfectly, with no picture on either of the TWO graphics cards!!! That's a neat trick, folks.
Diamond SIII- will sleep forever in suspends. Very helpful. Won't work with Win95 AGP patch.
2. TV cards. I hate 'em. Pinnacle PCTV not working in ME (bsod), pinnacle don't publish drivers on the net... WTF and their "support" is... Huh.
3. LAN. This crummy cheap Realtek2000 combo card gives problems in both ME and 2000, bsod, especially if you plug something new in, you have to fiddle.
4. DVD software players esp. when integrated to a brand of graphics card. Will decide the drive is empty or just crash (after installing ATi card), or sound will stutter without offering options to correct, you get the idea...
5. Soundcards. Sometimes a pain, or seem to interact with something else...
6. CDRW parallel won't work in Windows 2000.
7. Memory if you put it in the wrong slot for autodetect. Get wrong settings and crashes. Umm.
8. Keyboards and mice in Win2000. Tried swapping keyboards, what a disaster, had to reinstall. After swapping the mouse wouldn't get recognised anymore (didn't touch the mouse), and after trying to reinstall the driver would tell me it didn't need a driver and so wouldn't. Huh, that's GENIUS.
9. DVDrom still won't record audio cleanly even after limiting the cacheing as recommended, clicks galore.
10. Motherboard not working with a certain case.

click on the poll icon above this post which has the grid and the red line to vote

 

[duragezic]

I voted LAN because I used to have some much trouble with a NE2000 card. It would install but it took me so many tries and restarts trying to get it work. It would show up as NE2000, SN-2000, Realtek once.. just it was such a pain to get working. Even this 3com 905b-tx gave me a little trouble at first. Either ethernet cards suck to install or I suck at installing them (prob the latter! ).

edit: Oh yeah trying to setup a network between two computers. They'll show up and then disappear and sometimes don't show back up in spite of not changing a single thing. It just takes so much fiddling with I can't stand doing it.

Guess I'm not good at network crap.

 

[Leo V]

Write-in candidate: installing Win2000 from 4 startup floppies (+ ATA controller floppy). Real fun when you don't have a floppy drive.

 

[delano]

I voted LAN for close to the same reason as eagle, a no-name NE2000 PC card that i have never ever been able to get to work in windows.

Of course that is just the tip of the iceburg of general PCMCIA problems..

 

[Hanpan]

a busted abit mobo if you don't yet know it's busted

 

[Xenon14]

Next to Bill Gates' software and Seagate HD's....LAN. It's the one thing I have yet to install. I have 2 hubs and 6 ethernet cards, and I can't establish a network. i've worked for weeks...months...a year - did everything; and still now LAN!!!! Win98 is a bit**. Damn this post...now I'm reminded of my futile attempts to get LAN to work!

 

[Sugadaddy]

From my experience with my own comps. and others I've built for friends: dial-up modems. These damm things always give me trouble, while all the rest installs perfectly. Solution: no modem in my current system .

 

[spamboy]

I went through 3 Netgear NIC's before I finally got one that didn't cause my syetem to lock and unlock every 5 seconds.

 

[LogicalOne]

I vote for incompatible motherboards and hardware in general. What's worse is that it seems to be happening with quite a bit of the newer stuff, such as the Kingston NIC's that don't work with certain MSI Athlon motherboards and Hercules Prophet GTS 64mb video card not working with Abit KA7-100 (out of the box. After several updates, I believe it works fine now) and several other problems I've seen.

 

[Mule]

Linux, what a headache

 

[Muerto]

Heatsinks on CPUs by far. Especially AMD ones. They need to apply a lot of pressure to effectively cool a Duron/T-Bird. Everything else is usually pretty straight forward I've found.

 

[AndrewR]

Easily motherboards. Nuisance value of removing all the cards, unplugging all the cables, possibly removing motherboard tray, likelihood of reinstalling OS, fairly good chance of one screwed up cable producing no boot activity whatsoever (in particular, those fscking LED/power switch settings on the front of the board -- I hate cases that don't have the wires labeled, and most don't).

Everything else is fairly straightforward for me -- at least you're only moving one part. Maybe because I've stuck with Intel, 3Com, and Linksys I've never had any trouble with LAN cards. Graphics cards can be a pain, too.

 

[SirFshAlot]

I'm with sugadaddy; no modem.

 

[erub]

graphics card and older hardware that does not have specific win2k drivers written for it

 

[odog]

while cases LEDS used to really intimadate me... i've gotten over them... the thing that truely pisses me off.... DVD and the software that comes along with it.... skips, dropped frames, distortion.. ARGGG!!! i hate it... heatsinks are also becoming a biatch to install.... i near broke the skin on my finger getting a damn FOP38 on....(now i just use a screwdriver and prebend the clip after that i'd have to say.. onboard IDE drivers... they just plain suck:|

 

[jpprod]

Aside from my "pleasant" experiences with TNT/ALi Aladdin V combination, graphics cards have been a really easy install for me. For example; swapping my old TNT for GeForce took like two minutes, and I didn't even have to upgrade Windows display drivers to be able to test the card.

What I really hate to install is a stick of RAM into a crowded case. Being too lazy to take off all the cards and any IDE/floppy cables, it usually takes half an hour for me

 

[miniMUNCH]

Modems, LAN, and software for configuring/communicating with electric devices like PLC's and so forth.

But then I found LinkSys network cards (actually they were the cheapest cards at best buy)...and LAN is now off the list. Just plug'em in and viola!

Excerpt from my fit of jubilation when the LINKSYS network cards functioned right the FIRST time:

&quot;Holy Crap!!! OMG, OMG, OMG!!! <a lot of jump around and shadow boxing> Who's the man!!??? Who the man!!??? Ya!! Whose your daddy?!!!&quot;

You get the picture.

Hey, if SUBHUMAN reads this: &quot;WHAAAZZZZZ UUPPP!&quot;