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is it me or is it the machine (i'm sorry for even posting this).

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nudone:
i will understand if this post is seen as dragging this situation out for as long as i possible can but i really am losing my will to turn this machine on...

i'll try and explain as briefly as i can. this machine is just over 12 months old. i paid out top money to buy all the best bits of hardware at the time (just over £3000 - i priced the same components up yesterday - they are currently worth £2000 retail). i can't say it ever worked perfectly from day one but i put that down to me rushing the install of the operating system and then banging loads of programs onto it. it worked well enough, just not 100% perfect.

i recently started having hard drive problems (they might be resolved now, i just have to wait for the next random reboot to occur). this prompted me to install win xp onto another partition of one of the hard drives - i'm glad to say i can keep installing xp without much trouble as i have a legal corporate key.

this new xp install was to be my masterpiece operating system. since its first boot up, i've been keeping a log of every install i make, every setting i change, every issue that occurs and how i fixed it. it was all going so well.

yesterday, the new xp install decided to start playing up - winamp creates errors when trying to run the visualizations and kmplayer complains when i click on a specific set of preferences. poser 6 also wouldn't work as it should. all these things worked perfectly well the day before.

no problem you might think. i've been keeping a log of what i've done to the machine, i can simply revert back by uninstalling and reinstalling, etc.

well, i've tried everything: reinstalling, deleting, using xp's system restore which didn't work at all, and the final kick in the teeth which has nearly pushed me over the edge of sanity - i used acronis true image to restore the entire partition.

acronis worked perfectly well. i successfully restored two different backups of the operating system (one version being a minimal backup of the operating system and another containing a few programs i'd installed). you'd think this would be the answer to my frustration and winamp, kmplayer, poser 6 would now work perfectly after their fresh installs. WRONG. they do exactly what they did before i wiped everything clean. HOW ON EARTH IS THIS POSSIBLE?

you might reply that i must have a hardware fault. maybe it looks that way, but don't forget, i have the old xp installed on another partition. if i boot into this older operating system and use the programs in question, they work absolutely perfectly - so where's the hardware problem now.

i can, of course, just revert back to the older xp install and forget about the newer one. i will, what else can i do. but that doesn't explain what is happening on the machine. it really is driving me insane - i've nearly spent two weeks messing about with this machine since it started playing up - that's whole days nearly, not a couple of hours here and there.

i'm considering asking a friend to drop the machine out of an upstairs window so that it lands on my head as i lie on the ground below. the computer would then finally know that i am beat and would hopefully leave me alone after that.

and now the moral of this tale:
don't spend a lot of money on computers believing that they are going to be the perfect godlike machine. stay in the midrange price bracket and get good value for your money. don't assume your computer actually likes you, mine is a total prima donna that likes nothing more than to see me banging my head up and down on the table in despair. the terms sadist and masochist start to seem quite fitting for my pc interplay.

mouser:
First know: you are not alone.

My very limited experience with computers is that sometimes they just work perfectly, and sometimes you get one that acts up.  You will be able to get this sorted and working ok - and your sanity *will* be restored.  I have my own computer anger management issues and have been known to scream and curse and spit at the computer so loudly that the neighbors came over fearing i was murdering someone.  I have also smashed mechanical devices with hammers as the only way to get out my revenge on them.  I know full well the feeling that your mind is slipping from all these random insane non-sensical frustrations.

But, we will help you get your top of the line system running smoothly - just take a deep breath and resign yourself to the fact that it's going to take a little longer.

sri:
I quickly glanced thru your post and to me it appears as if you have taken an Acronis image with the problems (of winamp and kplayer or whatever it is). How is it otherwise possible for the problems to resurface? This time, make sure you backup when everything is tested and working fine.

mouser:
Here is how i might start out trying to address the issue:

Order yourself a new hard disk.  Take your old one out of the drive or mount it as second hard drive, etc.

If you are using a fancy raid disk drive adapter that you dont need to be using, dont use it.  If you have some overclocking settings in your bios, reset them to default.

Now install windows cleanly on it in a standard way (ie C:\ partition for windows, D:\ for your drives).
Run all windows updates, graphics drivers updates, etc.

Make an image of the drive with acronis.

Now start by installing your meddlesome programs again and see how they behave.

I personally ALWAYS suspect the memory sticks when i start getting insanely random errors.  I've had enough trouble with bad memory to be constantly suspecting that memory errors are doing bad things and never reporting anything is wrong.  Someone else may be able to tell you some stress testing programs you can run to help identify if the problem is a hardware problem.

mouser:
Also, was the image you restored with Acronis ever itself previously restored and then re-imaged with Acronis? It's possible of course that if so, the source of all your problems was an Acronis restore that didnt 100% work.  That's the problem with much of these frustrations, in that you can't 100% identify WHEN the problem first starting occuring.

Don't give up nudone - no matter what you bought, no matter when you bought it, 12 months later it's worth half.  And if you had bought a cheapo machine it might be doing the exact same thing and you'd be punching yourself for not buying a top-of-the-line model.

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