(I haven't placed this in tech because it's not a cry for help/advce as much as a rant)
Sooo... there I was going home with a copy of Doom 3 in my eagerly awaiting hands. I reach my home after climbing a long flight of stairs (not really long, but while I enjoy working out as much as the next person I hate the monotony of climbing stairs. I'd elaborate but I don't want to digress), install the game and click on the icon conveniently placed on my desktop. Loading user interface... loading data... a screen with white dots resembling stars not responding. Interesting. My computer, while by no means high-end should be able to run Doom 3 on medium-or-low quality. I decide it's time to update my video drivers, as this is clearly a video driver problem, right? Right. I go to our friendly neighbourhood site, nvidia.com and download&install the latest drivers. So far so good. I run doom. Same problem. But this time accompanied by what appear to be a couple abnormally large black pixels placed next to each other. Cancerous pixels? Probably not, more like blocks of blackness. I then proceed to windowsupdate.microsoft.com to see what else I can update. I update a couple of critical updates and see microsoft also offer an nvidia driver. This time it's specific to my graphic card (on nvidia's website there was one download for all nvidia graphic cards). I download it. I installed the updates. Nothing changed. I kicked the cat
*.
Oh wait. When I said nothing changed, I meant that Doom still didn't work. But now I had the increased problem of blocks of black pixels ON MY SCREEN AS WELL. To get rid of them I had to refresh the screen.
Alright, I say. The problem was caused when I installed the driver from microsoft, right? So reverting to the driver from nvidia's website should fix things. Or so I thought. It didn't. Then I uninstalled all drivers (including my sound-card driver. Don't ask why - I wasn't really being too rational). And installed the microsoft driver only. Then I repeated the procedure with the nvidia driver. Then I reapeated it several more times with drivers downloaded from 3rd parties. No. But now, my computer also rebooted randomly. Well, to be fair, not randomly. Only when doing something graphically extensive. Like for example moving an icon. Yeah, that's right. Windows rebooted when I moved icons around. Hmm... how can it get any worse you ask?
Well, because this is happening in the span of several days, Windows Service Pack Two comes out. So I install it, figuring it can't do any more harm. It can't get much worse. And now instead of rebooting, my screen turns into a 640*480 monster with 4 colors and an error message pops-up saying I should save all data and then reboot. I guess that's at least some kind of improvement. Now, because I'm still convinced it's the driver I reinstall windows. Bye-bye registry. Bye-bye every single program I've ever installed. At least I didn't reformat thus losing my 40+GB music&movie collection (ALL ACQUIRED LEGALLY!
**). Then because this still didn't solve my problem it finally downed upon me that I've got a
hardware problem. Oh vey, who would have guessed
. I put the card in another computer and I get the same problem. Definitely a hardware problem. Sweet lady luck smiles, and I discover that I have a week left of my warranty. A two year warranty and a week is left. Please note that my previous graphic card also malfunctioned a week before a two year-warranty expired and the guys at Dell were kind enough to change it. Because it was my father that purchased the computer, he decided he should call the supposably nice people at foenix-computers. What do you think happened? They replied the warranty is only for one year, even though it clearly states on the warranty-sheet that it's a two year warranty. And I clearly remember purchasing the computer with a two year warranty on all its parts. I might have even payed extra for it. My father, of course, knows this. He tells them. And the reply is that, get this, they offer two-year warranties on paper because they are forced to by some regulations,
BUT IN REALITY THE WARRANTY IS ONLY ONE YEAR. Wait, what? All apologies dear sirs, but <ASTERISK ASTERISK ASTERISK ASTERISK> you and your families. After my father complained they said something about us being unable to prove we haven't damaged the card ourselves by overclocking it or some such. Now there is a reason I've never attempted to overclock anything, and the reason was that it will potentially fark-up my hardware and void warranties. Now I have a farked-up hardware and a supposably invalid warranty. Why? YES FOENIX-COMPUTERS I'M TALKING TO YOU, YOU MISERABLE HORSE SEMEN EXCREMENTS (
edit: I'm relying on the filter to block out anything inappropriate here; since none of the above words are normally considered swearing I hope they'll be no need for moderatoin, but if mods decide otherwise so be it). I have to finish a project that's been ongoing for 6 months in a couple of weeks and all my information is on my computer. I just put the broken card back in and I'm currently waiting for the latest drivers to download (again). If I don't do anything graphically intensive such as pressing the start menu or moving icons around I hope I might prevent it from crashing. If you are reading this, that means my computer hasn't crashed for at least twenty minutes. Sorry for the long, incoherrent and probably poorly-written rant (no way I'm not proof-reading), but I'm stressed about my essay and generally pissed. I've been unable to use my computer for nearly a week, what posting/work I've done in the past week has been done from my parents computer and working on it is painful. I hope everyone else has a nice day: I'm going to bed - the driver just finished installing.
*Truth be told I didn't kick the cat. Everything else is almost true though.
**Legally is a vague term. I'm pretty sure what I did would be legal in Canada.
)
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