PC woes. Oh, we've all been there, I know. I'm just so utterly fed up with it!
A month or so back, I put in a new GPU & PSU (that's a
gizmit and a
hoodad for those of you not fluent with the lingo) - the system booted fine, but would not reboot without a BIOS flash.
Despite all advice & best wishes from the TOG think-tank, web searches, tips from
Deep Blue and Bill Gates Himself, that issue still remains. The BIOS utterly vanishes the minute it achieves a successful boot, and it needs to be re-flashed (meaning
kicked up the proverbial, for those not hip to my jive).
So,
that I can
live with barely cope with. Another odd side effect of that install was that my secondary monitor stopped working. I love using dual monitors. If you don't know why, you haven't tried it yet. SO,
that I had to learn to survive with as well. Granted the monitor I was left with is a decent one (SamSung SyncMaster 226BW)... still not the way I would like.
Today I accidentally ended up in a PC hardware store and I unintentionally gave a guy some indication I wouldn't mind a new monitor (thinking that ol' secondary was dead) and I quite amazingly ended up leaving with a new SamSung (SyncMaster P2350).
I got home, plugged it in and installed it - nothing. Self-tests fine, just not receiving anything from the system. 5 minutes of
playing aimless fiddling earnest work with nVidia Control Panel and Device Manager later and *POOF* - system goes black. It's running, but I've lost all visual.
Try flashing your BIOS blindfolded some time, knowing that if you don't you can start removing hardware to reset your mainboard.
...which I did, about 20 times tonight.
Good news: I'm back up and running and I have a
seriously nice, brand new SamSung paperweight. You should get yourself one! They're great!
So: New PC -
it is time.
What's better than using two monitors? ...using 3!
