Hardware/Software: When you know it WONT work!

Ever bought a piece of hardware/software and, after installing it you find it just does not work as expected?

I've picked up WinTV Nova-T for Freeview TV reception.
Installed the card, plugged the cables in, installed drivers and software, restarted, ran the software, scanned for channels, and .... NOTHING!

GRRR! I just knew it wouldn't work. Things are never that simple with PC's.

The card is present in the list but the scan just runs for 1/2 second then stops. No errors. No nothing.
I hate it when that happens. I feel like chucking the PC through the window.

Other than that, I'm faced with twiddling around with 6 thousand settings, killing services, patching up, searching for fixes, checking forums, .. you know the drill.

What about your horror stories?

I remember when Firewire first became available and I bought a card to install in my computer. Boy was I being optimistic. The Firewire ports only worked occasionally, and only if I reinstalled the drivers every time I restarted Windows.

I got a 'WinTV Nova-T'. I seem to remember snags with it - but it worked in the end. I haven't got it currently installed but it was a bit fiddly.

I had loads of problems with my TV card before I finally found tucked away the option to turn it from NTSC to PAL! I bought it in the UK as well. This was not even in the manual.

Of course, there's also the opposite - I used to have a cheap Xerox Docuprint P8 laserprinter, which was discontinued. No windows 2000/XP drivers were ever created, and that was a big deal since it was a so-called 'winprinter' (host-based, where the windows drivers do all the work and generate the raster image for the printer to process, rather than the printer doing it on its own)
Luckily, the printer didn't become an instant paperweight after upgrading to Windows 2000, because I managed to find out that the drivers for an entirely different product line worked as well: one of the workcentre multi-function all-in-one devices used the same printing engine, and its windows 2000 drivers were able to print to my gool ol' printer.
Just ended up with a couple of bonus configuration screens for a fax and scanner module that I didn't have. :-?

TV card i had once... absolute nightmare. It wouldn't find hardly any of the stations. I got another one after that, worked ok, except the sound worked sometimes...

I got yet another one, and it worked like a charm. You could make it display the tv, as your desktop backround. BUT, the file sizes for recording where huge. I think it was a ATI graphics card with TV-in.

When i bought a graphics card a few years ago, the power wire to the cooling fan was actually obstructing the fan blades.... When i turned the comp on, i'd get a weird buzzing noise for a few seconds as the fan blades hit the wire... then the fan would give up and i'd get a distinct burning smell.

It was pretty simple to fix, but i can't believe it made it through QA..

I equally hate software which, after experiencing a fault pops up with an utterly useless error message like:

"Error: #405"

Oh yearh.. error 405. Of course. Why didn't you say so. Really helpfull. I believe error 405 is:

"Error: Can't be bothered to explain what's gone wrong. Probably memory issue. Dunno. Check the forums."

I scratch my head when a error occurs when making userlibs, the first time is happened, a little window popped up and said something like 'Memory Access Violation at $3A5323D.. The memory could not be read!' or something along them lines!

Anyway, I saw a little 'Debug' button on the window, and I thought great... So I give it a click!

Though and behold, a load of assembly popped up in Visual Studio... And I thought WTF???

Anyway, managed to sort it... But what a useless DEBUG option that is! (Useless you know assembly I guess!)

Dabz

Hehe.

Once upon a time I viewed the Amiga AMOS Professional runtime in a hexeditor, and noticed that among all the 'real' compiler error messages, there was also one that just said "You can't do that, you silly sausage!"

I remember the first time I saw "Guru Meditation" I mean wtf! They changed the error later on so it was more "normal".

Also in the past I worked in a computer shop and a few people honestly got fearful when they say "Illegal operation" messages, thought what the hell have I done that's against the law...

hahahahaha

I have nightmares with almost everything. Mostly software tho. Recently i installed SP2 and that was one of the worst nightmares. It would go to 80% of the install after 20 minutes of scraping my HD, and then give a vague error so you have to search MSDN. And there they tell you you need to enable a service, repeat the error by going to 80%, read the better description of the error and try fix it. So i ended up reaching 80% of the install about 6 times until all the errors were fixed and it could complete itself. Some real brilliant people over there in MS. Has it never occured to them it might be convenient to go thru and get all the errors at once and then reinstall? No, they just had to waste 3 hours of my time, and if i was a non-uber user i would have to pay the PC repair guy a hefty sum. Economic efficiency at its best.

I haven't upgraded to any of the service packs. I didn't really see the point :o) My computer works fine!

Really bad idea -- there are numerous remote exploits that your computer will be surceptible to without the servicepacks. It will be a matter of time before someone breaks in.

There's a good chance your computer is already part of a botnet relaying viagra spam as we speak, without you even realizing it. Most of the current crop of trojans/virusses don't kill your computer or files anymore, they'll simply hijack it to do their bidding -- it becomes part of a spamming network, denial-of-service attacks on large websites, re-routing traffic so a criminal can hide their true location, etc.

If you don't do it for yourself, you owe it to the rest of the internet to keep up to date on your security & service patches... Others who are on the receiving end of all that crap get to suffer because you don't see the point to protect your computer.

Studies have shown that the average length before an unpatched XP or Win2000 machine connected to the internet has been broken into (just by being connected, sitting idly) is down to about 15 minutes now. Be responsible!

P.S. I mean it. Update your computer. Now.

Not if you're the one that wrote the program and you were trying to find out the source of the bug. I've used that myself many times.
Unfortunately it (the Debug button) appears to have stopped working with WinXP though, :(

To WolRon:-

I was running XP SP1 at the time (VC++ 2002)... I've just had a quick test (XP SP2, VS2003) and the debugging thing still works!

Wonder what wrong there then?

Dabz

I came across a good error message the other day. Installing the Duke 3D KillATon collection on a WinXP machine - all the bonus programs and packages install fine, but naturally the actual Duke3D game itself always brings up an error to the effect of "Error #5: FS unavailable (aka we don't know what's wrong, but you're screwed)". That's pleasant.