Windows Hardware Compatibility Woes: A Frustrated Scientist's Rant

[Pengwuino]

Why is it that whenever I change one small piece of hardware in any computer I touch, windows decides "UP YOURS *******, I'M NEVER BOOTING UP AGAIN"?!

I've been told sometimes computers have issues recognizing and working with new hardware. This is RIDICULOUS. And of course, the people whos computers I fix never keep their install discs or really know much about how their own computer is organized, so I can't just be like "well, restore!" or "F this, reformat, re-install". It's always wasting 3 days of my life hoping to get the computer to come back to live like it was before the new hardware.

I hate you bill gates.

End rant

DISCUSS

 

[mege]

Maybe the hardware is at fault, not Windows?

 

[Evo]

PEBKAC?

Discuss!

Sowwy. Just kidding. I run windows and live in absolute fear of installing anything.

 

[micromass]

Aaaaaah, the joys of computers... We can send people to the moon, but we can't build a computer that doesn't crash occasionally.

 

[Chi Meson]

... blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah my iMac blah blah blah blah ...

fans and haters can add their own words, to taste.

But I must add: Windows Vista has made converts of both my mother AND my Father-in-law (converts to Mac, that is).

 

[rhody]

Pengy,

I know you don't want to hear this but, I have two words for you, well, one word and one number actually, are you ready, gak... "Windows 7" This is their best OS by far, and you still get to hate Bill Gates, but a lot less, I promise, I have been running it for two years and I am happy. Ok, now, continue to DISCUSS !

Rhody...

 

[Ivan Seeking]

... blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah my iMac blah blah blah blah ...

fans and haters can add their own words, to taste.

But I must add: Windows Vista has made converts of both my mother AND my Father-in-law (converts to Mac, that is).

Sure, if it was useful somewhere besides a classroom or working in a vacuum, I'd be interested.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Why is it that whenever I change one small piece of hardware in any computer I touch, windows decides "UP YOURS *******, I'M NEVER BOOTING UP AGAIN"?!

I've been told sometimes computers have issues recognizing and working with new hardware. This is RIDICULOUS. And of course, the people whos computers I fix never keep their install discs or really know much about how their own computer is organized, so I can't just be like "well, restore!" or "F this, reformat, re-install". It's always wasting 3 days of my life hoping to get the computer to come back to live like it was before the new hardware.

I hate you bill gates.

End rant

DISCUSS

Yes, time after time people have slammed my beloved Dell support... but then I never spend three days trying to fix my computer when I add hardware. If I have a problem, which isn't too often, I just call tech support, they logon to my computer, and in no time at all the problem is solved.

 

[russ_watters]

Just upgrade to Vista - that'll cure your hatred of xp...

 

[Pythagorean]

you're two version behind; Windows 7 works great for me.

 

[Proton Soup]

i think it was XP that screwed me over when i tried to do a dual boot system on it. so that computer just got paved over with Ubuntu. Ubuntu had it's own headaches, but they have a really good forum community, and for the most part the interface is intuitive because it's very windowsy.

 

[Pengwuino]

Maybe the hardware is at fault, not Windows?

Naa, it's windows.

PEBKAC?

Discuss!

Sowwy. Just kidding. I run windows and live in absolute fear of installing anything.

RAWR!

Pengy,

I know you don't want to hear this but, I have two words for you, well, one word and one number actually, are you ready, gak... "Windows 7" This is their best OS by far, and you still get to hate Bill Gates, but a lot less, I promise, I have been running it for two years and I am happy. Ok, now, continue to DISCUSS !

Rhody...

It's not my computer, it's my mothers. This would require coughing up as much money to buy windows 7 as it did to buy the new hardware I installed!

Really, XP is fantastic and does what we all want, it's just hardware. My moms computer is a 5 year old acer and the motherboard went out. This required getting a new mobo, CPU, and RAM. Since it's her business computer, I can't just format it because she has all sorts of programs I'd have to hope to god she still has the install discs for.

All the worst problems about computers happen when they're getting up there in age with owners who... are also either getting up there in age or are technologically stupid. And it's not even because old things are bad, it's that you just can't find suitable parts readily and people don't keep track of their programs.

OHHH and the most pain in the *** part is when people use poorly designed programs that store their saved files within the program files directory or in some weird location. RAWR.

 

[Dembadon]

Just upgrade to Vista - that'll cure your hatred of xp...

I was going to suggest Millenium Edition (Me).

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I must be the only person in the world who has never had a significant complaint with Windows. I run Win7 now with no problems. I think it's really good. Maybe I'm just lucky.

 

[Studiot]

If I have a problem, which isn't too often, I just call tech support, they logon to my computer, and in no time at all the problem is solved.

That's a clever trick given the original premise of an unbootable pc, how does it work?

Nor would I recommend rushing to ditch older pcs. A whole new industry has been spawned since the EU directive in 2007 to remove lead from solder.

(Far too) many computers about 2 years old are failing simply because the replacement solder used becomes brittle and fails under prolonged thermal stress.
And guess what? Laptops get hot inside, particularly the GPU since it often has to function without cooling.

 

[Pengwuino]

That's a clever trick given the original premise of an unbootable pc, how does it work?

Nor would I recommend rushing to ditch older pcs. A whole new industry has been spawned since the EU directive in 2007 to remove lead from solder.

(Far too) many computers about 2 years old are failing simply because the replacement solder used becomes brittle and fails under prolonged thermal stress.
And guess what? Laptops get hot inside, particularly the GPU since it often has to function without cooling.

So I'm guessing the lead provides some strength in the longterm?

I personally hate how people toss computers so quickly. None of the computers in my home are less than 5 years old and I know people who replace their computers every year because they want the fastest stuff going.

 

[Borg]

I must be the only person in the world who has never had a significant complaint with Windows. I run Win7 now with no problems. I think it's really good. Maybe I'm just lucky.

I had a Windows 7 laptop for about a month last year. At first I hated having to relearn where everything had been moved to. However, it was fast and didn't have problems with programs that would hang the entire system. I eventually began to like it very much but, I ended up sending it back because of other issues. I'll be getting a new one again soon and I'm looking forward to having Windows 7 on it.

 

[rcgldr]

Why is it that whenever I change one small piece of hardware ...

getting a new mobo, CPU, and RAM.

That's not exactly one small piece of hardware you changed. I'm going to assume the new motherboard isn't a duplicate of the old motherboard, which means the chipset and other on board device drivers aren't going to work.

I did a web search for "windows xp replace motherboard" and found this article from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824125

Look for the section for replacing a failed motherboard. It describe a "repair" installation which should retain your old applications and registry settings, while installing generic drivers. You may need to change the BIOS so that any SATA interfaces use IDE emulation mode.

Also you might consider taking the windows XP install cd-rom to a working computer, and "slip stream" service pack 3 to create a cd-rom with service pack 3. There's some issue with XP original and service pack 1, but I don't recall what the issue was. There are a few web sites that explain how to do this. Here's a link to an Intel article that also covers adding a raid driver when creating a bootable cd-rom:

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/CS-029550.htm

Another option is to add a new hard drive to the system, install Windows XP to the new hard drive, but that only gets you access to the data on the old hard drive. Unless the old installed applications don't require any registry settings to run, you'd need to re-install them.

One more annoyance, is you'll probably have to "activate" Windows XP again after you get it installed. Tryign to active online or calling on the phone and using the automated system probably will normally reject the activation after you've keyed in 48 digits, and trying to get past the automated system to a real human without having to key in 48 digits and having it fail can be a pain.

 

[Pengwuino]

No, I know this was far from a small upgrade. I mean other times when I put something new in that's not a major upgrade, it poops up just like it's pooping up now. Last time I put in a new hard drive for storage, I started losing the ability to load up hard drives left and right.

I know how to get what I want, I've been building and servicing computers for over a decade, it just annoys me how I have to fix things.

On the other hand, it sounds like the computer failing to boot because I put a new mobo in is to be expected based on that KB entry you linked me! Good to know now!

 

[rcgldr]

Last time I put in a new hard drive for storage, I started losing the ability to load up hard drives left and right.

The BIOS in your system "orders" your hard drives, giving each one a logical number, which is used in BOOT.INI to select which drive to boot from (rdisk(#)). If you add a hard drive, you may have to go into the BIOS and "reorder" the hard drives, until XP boots up (otherwise you get some missing ? driver error message).

> There's some issue with XP original ...

The original version of Windows XP doesn't support SATA or hard drives greater than 137GB in size. If you have an original version, you'll need to create a new bootable cd-rom by slipstreaming SP3 onto it (no point in slip streaming an older service pack, and I don't think you can get SP1 anymore, not sure about SP2).

In the rare case you used a raid driver, you'll need to slip stream that as well. These used to install via floppy drives, but motherboard don't include floppy drives, and although there are some USB floppy drives that Windows XP install will work with, the floppy disk itself may no longer be readable.

 

[WiFO215]

I've been running Linux for a few years now and haven't looked back. I cringe everytime I have to work with a MS PC somewhere, which is mostly in my relatives places where they want me to fix things. So painful. Linux FTW!

 

[Pengwuino]

The BIOS in your system "orders" your hard drives, giving each one a logical number, which is used in BOOT.INI to select which drive to boot from (rdisk(#)). If you add a hard drive, you may have to go into the BIOS and "reorder" the hard drives, until XP boots up (otherwise you get some missing ? driver error message).

> There's some issue with XP original ...

The original version of Windows XP doesn't support SATA or hard drives greater than 137GB in size. If you have an original version, you'll need to create a new bootable cd-rom by slipstreaming SP3 onto it (no point in slip streaming an older service pack, and I don't think you can get SP1 anymore, not sure about SP2).

In the rare case you used a raid driver, you'll need to slip stream that as well. These used to install via floppy drives, but motherboard don't include floppy drives, and although there are some USB floppy drives that Windows XP install will work with, the floppy disk itself may no longer be readable.

Yes I knew all of this. This went way beyond that. My motherboard was old and I bought a new raid SATA card and along with getting 2 SATA chipsets to play nicely with each other, I had my computer just randomly deciding it knew better which hard drive to try to boot off of. It was epic. I was this close to grabbing my shotgun and voiding some warranties.

 

[rcgldr]

I had my computer just randomly deciding it knew better which hard drive to try to boot off of.

You could add multiple entries to BOOT.INI so that it contains something like this, which would allow you to select which drive to boot from, assuming your BIOS doesn't renumber the drives on each reboot.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINDOWS="XP drive 0" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(0)\WINDOWS="XP drive 1" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(0)\WINDOWS="XP drive 2" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(3)partition(0)\WINDOWS="XP drive 3" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

 

[Mark44]

I must be the only person in the world who has never had a significant complaint with Windows. I run Win7 now with no problems. I think it's really good. Maybe I'm just lucky.

No problems for me, either. I run XP at home (I have the Win 7 install disk, but haven't done the install, yet). At work I have Win7 on two computers, and Win Server 08 and Win Server 03 on another two computers. I don't have any problems with any of them.

IMO, the main reason for problems with Windows is hardware drivers. These are generally provided by hardware vendors, but run at a privileged level in the kernel just like Windows does. It used to be fairly common for a driver to cause a "blue screen" (AKA BSOD, or blue screen of death). I've only seen a single blue screen in at least the six or seven years. The only hardware problem I've encountered was on my home computer with XP, and I was able to solve the problem by updating my video driver.

 

[Studiot]

IMO, the main reason for problems with Windows is hardware drivers.

And there was I thinking the main problem was all those silly users.

Silly me.

 

[Pengwuino]

You could add multiple entries to BOOT.INI so that it contains something like this, which would allow you to select which drive to boot from, assuming your BIOS doesn't renumber the drives on each reboot.

That was one of the problems, it was! It's like it was toying with me, just wanting me to drop it off the grand canyon.

 

[Chronos]

How soon we forget windows 2000 - worst ever windows OS. I skipped that iteration and jumped from W97 to XP. I never had any issues with XP hardware upgrades, but, agree W7 is the most user friendly version of windows to date.

 

[rhody]

That was one of the problems, it was! It's like it was toying with me, just wanting me to drop it off the grand canyon.

How soon we forget windows 2000 - worst ever windows OS. I skipped that iteration and jumped from W97 to XP. I never had any issues with XP hardware upgrades, but, agree W7 is the most user friendly version of windows to date.

Pengy,

Save yourself a ton of trouble, bite the bullet and upgrade to (gad...) Windows 7. Wave a happy flipper this way if it makes your life easier and addresses your issues.

Rhody... who will wave back with a hand...

 

[Pengwuino]

How soon we forget windows 2000 - worst ever windows OS. I skipped that iteration and jumped from W97 to XP. I never had any issues with XP hardware upgrades, but, agree W7 is the most user friendly version of windows to date.

You're forgetting Windows ME.

And vista.

 

[Chronos]

Vista was just the beta version of W7 released for debugging by the unwashed masses