Why setting up a PC is a nightmare

So I spent what must have been 4 hours yesterday trying to set up a PC for somebody and I can pretty much say it's a job I would not want to do permanenty:

1) The work area was very confined

2) They had a dog. I was up to my eyeballs in cables and wires and the dog decided to eat the bottom of my jeans!
Shame I never had enough time to teach it how to chew on a live mains cable

3) Some cables proved to be bloody short. The keyboard for starters. The base had to be halfway inside the desktop unit before the connector would reach so I had to guess where I am plugging it into

4) The power adapter for the speakers had the 3-pin plug fixed to the main brick. It therefore blocked off an additional required power point on the extension

5) It was damn hot under the desk area because they had the heating on full whack

6) After struggling to plug everything in and powering up there was no sound. The PC a built in 4-port sound + PCI sound card so again I had to constantly pull out the base and poke around trying to find the right connector port

7) I dont like dogs


To conclude, if you want me to set up your PC I am rather busy for the next 35 years

I actually quite enjoy building a PC from the ground up... I like dogs too! :)

funny that, maybe ask em to turn down the heating and put the dog in another room, all the other problems, well, just bad luck :-)

d'ya like dags?

Cheers, cheered me up for the day, hilarious :-)
Only watched it the other day.

I'm on e of these sick bas@%ards who actually enjoy setting up PC's. I'm like a hamster under the desk building my nest of cables. mmmmm, cat 5.

LMAO! Hilarious!

I don't really like computers OR cables, but I enjoy putting things together, so building a new system is good for me, AS LONG AS IT WORKS AFTERWORDS... So many times have i built a system for it to suffer restarts.

My current system was the same till I jumped up the Vcore a bit, stable as anything now!

my system used to restart randomly, I never did figure out what it was. Course it didn't help that I left the side off all the time so occasionaly my foot would stray inside the case and I'd get my toe caught in the CPU fan.

Lol!!!

I used to live with Cats- Cats like boxes.

So don't leave the side off your case and have it on its side, you'll come home to a cat powered computer. That doesn't work.

cat's like warm places too, so I can understand why they'd go in there.

My parents cat sleeps on their laptop.

One of my main gripes, how easy it is for connected cables fall out of the PC. PS/2 keyboard, audio cables, and USB connectors to name but a few

Secondly, those damn small icons they stamp onto the metal plates to 'identify' what port does what
You know the sort ..

->)) Audio In
((-> Audio Out
((.)) ?

Oh, and the fact that you need roughly 15 extension sockets to plug everything into

Setting up a new system can be quite cathartic, up until the point where I have to install Windows. Especially if I find I'm trying to use an OEM key on a Retail install (for XP).

Too many Windows Update downloads, generally involving using my bandwidth allocation.

I didn't appreciate being handed a laptop a few weeks ago with the superbly self-diagnosed:
Word has disappeared but we found it under something else but it was different and there's some message about it will expire in three days. This is a top of the range Toshiba that we got in Japan last week from a guy."

What actually happened:
[i]You bought an 8 year-old laptop who'se only saving grace was a colour LCD screen. You deleted the shortcut to Word and you failed to activate Windows. Windows activation message showed you exactly what to do but instead I had to ring the stupid phone activation line and enter a million digits to get it running. Oh, and there's a bunch of documents and photographs from the people you bought (or more likely, stole) the laptop from which you might want to delete."

The files in My Documents had time-stamps from 2002.

LOL it's the old story - once it gets known about the manor that you know a bit about pc's, not only your family and friends, but their friends and some bloke their friend met down the pub suddenly think you're obliged to fix their computer every time it goes wrong, gratis.

Yep.. on 24hr callout, at least it feels like it.

I keep my desk a short distance away from the wall. So I never have to crawl under the desk to do cable work, but just walk behind it. Cables are also in a cable basket, so I don't have to crouch to work on them.

This solution is a bit must for me, since my computer desk is also the center of my home studio, so I have a bit more cables than most people.

Setting up a PC is fun for me when I need to do it only once in a few years. I'm an optimizer and a perfectionist by nature, so I love the tinkering and tweaking.

I dont mind the hardware build bit, can do that in minutes. Its the software bit I hate,

for a=1 to loads_of_apps
        InfuriateMe("NextChooseNextNextWait..-Yawn-NextChooseNextNextNextFinish");
next;

-- Nail and head --

One of the 'MOST' infuriating things is when they say, "I can't get XYZ to work now. It was working before you fixed the PC 2 weeks ago"

I'm pretty lucky in some ways. Don't know anyone who plays games and very few people have PC's at home that weren't provided by their work and can't be tampered with.

Only problem is no one has a console myself included, so I don't get to see the latest games either.

Another annoying thing is that people always ask the same old same when they know your good with PC's...

"How do you download free music?"

I bet the majority of the average users out there only get a PC to do just that, with the grand idea of making a fortune burning copies and flogging them...

Personally, I'd rather spend my spare time hod carrying for a few extra bucks than sit watching a progress bar over and over.

I had to get my nephews router/broadband set up over the phone. what a nightmare. took hours

I like messing with PCs. Especially when I can charge people for letting me.

It's ok till they blame you for their computer NOT working the way it used to. IE better than it used to.

The absolute BEST one was when i got rid of a heap of spyware from someone's computer. They phoned me after asking me where the search bar had went too... The MySearch thingy... jesus.

I used to do on-site desktop support. Most of the problems people had, were because they couldn't keep themselves away from porn/warez sites.

You do the job to fix PCs - not to judge people on their personal habits. But most of them do ask for it.

BLOODY HELL!!!

Computer repairs, etc must be a great way of lifting stuff off peoples' hard-drives.

That sounds like a great little scam - in so many ways.

Well, here is a little happy nightmare that I am currently having. I bought an ASUS 8800GTS 512MB today, plugged it in 2 hours ago, swapped out the old ATI X800GTO2!!! YAY!!!! But, I can't find 1360x1024 resolution, also, some games HL2 engine mostly are off sync past 1024x768, probably because of bad monitor setting from within the card. Problems that I didn't have before of course. The new card is also quite loud when running any 3D app right now, so I have to figure out a setting for the fan. Probably I have to forget about overclocking and with low fan settings (consideration). Anyway, a good buy for 319$ but many issues to resolve.

EDIT: The monitor I'm having problems with is my old NEC MultiSync 6FG. Before I could go up to 1600x1200 with the ATI, now only up to 1024x768 with the 8800GTS in 3D modes :( Luckily I also have an HP A4576A which I don't like as much, but is fully compliant with the 8800GTS...

1360x1024 is an odd resolution :o)

Ross C, you will learn to know that 1360x1024 is much less odd than 1280x1024, because one is 4:3 and the other is an LCD resolution in 5:4. I happen to really like 1360x1024 on a 21inch monitor, more than 1600x1200.

You can create your own resolutions with an nvidia card. Don't ask me how right now because I'm on a laptop which sits happily at one resolution all the time.

It might be worth asking around on nvidia's forum. It's not as bad as having to edit INI files, it's accessible through nvidia's control panel thing. You may need to know a little bit about your monitor's tech specs, but usually it's a matter of entering the desired resolution and refresh rate.

That would be theft. Tho I definitely would report someone to the fuzz if they had kiddie porn (as well as kick the sh*t out of the sick bast**ds).

And setting computer's up is fun, more so when things go wrong.

@Jim Brown
*lol*