Computers – Grrrr! *shakes fist*

After getting the required battery in Tesco, my Father’s computer was repaired with the easiest computer repair job I have ever had. How it makes a change to have his computer fixed in seconds rather than hours!

I stopped off at Scan computers which is in the estate behind Tesco too and got a couple of other bits for other computers. I’ve grown tired of having a tempremental ex-server as a paperweight, so decided it was time to fix that. The problem was graphics – a PCI-E card that was having issues. A BIOS flash didn’t fix it, but as an old PCI card worked fine, I risked eight quid on a new cheap PCI-E card, and it now works pretty well.

One of my other computers has an iffy USB2 controller. One false move, and USB2 devices just disappear, never to return. I bought a swish replacement, but then spent all day fruitlessly trying to get it to work. USB1 devices showed up and worked fine. Plugging USB2 devices to it though caused the computer to slow to a crawl and the devices not be recognised. Interestingly, plugging a USB1 hub to the controller, then plugging the USB2 devices downstream of that had them recognised and working, but far too slowly to be useful (ever tried moving 60Gb on USB1?). After six hours of frustration I’ve ended up putting the old card back in. Guess what? Plugged the USB2 devices in and the damn thing is working again. Grrrr! I’ll test the new card in Zoë’s computer in case it is an issue with the chipset, but on the face of it, the USB2 side of the card appears buggered.