Another stupid computer question
by I hate the tech guy at my office; anyone who's read my comments about him before knows my disdain. So I won't tell him I'm having an issue with my computer here at work.
I completely shut my computer down every night. That's one of his "requirements". I won't go into that madness. 70% of the time when I boot it up in the morning, the graphics on my desktop don't load correctly. The icon colors are messed up, and the upper toolbars for each application are completely blacked out, like you can't see the minimize, size and close buttons at the top right. Also when this happens, my mouse scrolls very slowly and documents open and save very slowly.
Originally, I thought it was the video driver. I realized that the idiot computer guy had a driver from like 2003 on here. So I updated it (does anyone recall that fiasco?). It solved the problem for about 2 months. Now it's happening again. I also have the newest driver for my mouse (which is a 5-button and requires its own driver).
So almost every day, after I come in and start up my computer, I have to restart it to get the graphics and mouse to load correctly. Today I had to restart it twice.
I'm out of ideas. Does anyone know what I can do to resolve the problem?
AI Summary
29 Comments
When the board is powered on, and all circuits are a GO, tempature rises in the board, expanding components to make possibly better connections. It's quite possible, somewhere, some of the PCI/AGP boards, RAM, anything aren't seated completely. Or if there's some kind of line break on the board, when it heats up it may expand to make better continuity.
Open up the system, try reseating the video card, the RAM, and any other boards on there. Make sure cables aren't pulling the video card out of its socket.
See, if it was my home computer, that would be cool, but I'd get in trouble for taking apart my computer here at work. I'm not "qualified".
woah you're right! this is a stupid computer question! LOLLERR OF THE RINGS
I tried Mike's idea about not shutting down completely, and it seemed to work, but like I said, it didn't happen every day.
I spoke to Donovan, and he seems to think it might be more motherboard related than boot related. It's annoying, because I can't just say to the tech guy, "fix my computer", because he's such a moron and it's taken me a year at this company to work my computer into a well-functioning machine that has no trace of spyware and is not affected by the stupidity of the network. It's to traumatic for me to get a new computer and lose all my settings.
you guys use remote profiles or are they stored locally? If your machine is giving you that much trouble, backup your profile and (doc and settings/diana/desktop, cookies, favorites) and then see if you can get a new machine, then copy that stuff over. You could even copy over your progam files and reinstall the programs you do use and it should keep your settings.
We use local settings. You are wise, my young friend. I'll have to remember all that.
I'm not going to ask for a new computer any time soon, probably, because I just got into a little tiff with the office manager here, and she's the most emotional person ever (not impartial at all), so I might wait until she's not mad at me anymore. I can deal with it, it's just annoying. At least it doesn't affect my programs at all. In the meantime, I'll keep doing your lack of shutting down thing and we'll see how that goes.
do the eagles have large talons?
you'd better stop ruining this thread with on-topic comments
what kind of drives do you have? cd, floppy, dvd, etc?
I have a 3 1/2 inch floppy, a CD, and a gaping hole where a drive or at least on of those place holder thingies should have been placed by the stupid tech guy.
what type of monitor do you have?
KDE is what's written on it.
what size display?
15 inch. I have it set to 32 bit color and 1024 x 768 pixel display and 96 dpi
what kind of mouse do you have?
Do you mean what brand? It's a GE ps/2 optical 5 button.
you have windows 2k?
XP
i love xp. i really do.
thats really odd, XP is pretty good with loading drivers? And you say that everytime you boot up you have to reload the video and mouse drivers? what type of video card do you have? what type of mouse do you have? is it usb?
I haven't been reloading the drivers; I've been restaring the whole computer. I have a USB mouse, and my video card is an Nvidia GeForce2 MX/MX 400.
so all you do when you come in is just reboot ur machine 2 times and then it works?
Sometimes it takes 1 time, sometimes it takes 2 times. Weird, huh?
so you boot it up first and it doesnt work, then you reboot it 1 or 2 times and it works? And you have a mouse, ps2 like... the round looking connector?
and you said that it worked after you upgraded your video drivers?
Only thing im thinking is maybe something with the boot up process. Try leaving your machine on over night, power off the monitor, put tape over the lights on the front of the machine so it looks like its off. See how everything goes.
My mouse is PS/2. It worked ok for a time after I upgraded the video divers, for like a month or two. Then, if you'll recall my earlier complaints, the idiot tech guy thought my hard drive was broken, and he replaced it, then it started happening again.
I've been debating just logging off every night rather than shutting down completely; I'll give it a try tonight. I mean, I'm not going to get into changing the boot processes for a work computer. And it sucks, because I'd never ask out stupid tech guy to do it, because he'd probably think 'the hard drive is broken' again. Thanks Mike! I'll let you know how it goes.
The story with my harddrive is that the fan was actually broken, I suspected that, so I set a system alarm, and the moron mistook the alarm sound for the sound hard drive discs make when they rub together. But he replaced the hard drive and the fan when I wasn't here, so I couldn't yell at him. It's so horrible to have a bad computer guy.
lol hmm that is wierd, did he open up ur machine at look? You can usually tell where the sound is coming from if you open the case.
I don't know, I wasn't here. He said he turned it on and heard the sound (which I set) and just replaced the hard drive. I swear, I wanted to punch him in the face that day.
Oh, wait I'm sorry, it's not a USB mouse.