Yeah, so I've never had a single problem with any computer I've ever built (and that's been like, a lot of them). Buying a prebuilt DAW to me is crazy.

Some people prefer to have their DAWs prebuilt and some would rather DIY.

I DIY with my computers as well but then that is just me.

I do not see someone else's decision as 'crazy' simply because they want something other than what I do.

Memtest86 should be able to spot obvious errors, but HCI Memtest can be even more thorough (even if using it from Windows won't let you test all RAM).
Here are some good testing guidelines.

For the OS complaints in general, yeah I know what you mean. I also notice a lot of little quirks and it makes me wonder why they aren't fixed more promptly.
But I learned to move on and I gave up on waiting for the perfect OS. Overall I must say Windows is still fairly stable for me and apart from the initial configuration I don't really have to spend time with it.

My general motto is minimalism. Don't install something unless you have to. Uninstall components which are easy to remove (Games, Internet Explorer..), but don't go around disabling services or "tweaking registry" and whatnot.

People complain about Windows and some criticisms are perfectly valid, IMO. But the thing with Windows is that, especially if you're online, you'll get offered much more (crappy) software than if you're using other OSs. From various toolbars to straight up malware. And you'll be tempted to cheap out on hardware, which is not always wise either. So you either need a bit more discipline or pay someone else to take care of the system for you. With freedom of choice comes responsibility and all that..

I use Eurosofts PC-Check 6 - bootable CD. The Microtopology test sorts the men out from the boys.

http://www.eurosoft-uk.com/pccheck.html

Such a funny topic, since it's been the story of my life for the last months.

I've always used Windows with no problem whatsoever for anything. Also Slackware, but obviously that's more of a Geek thing as Linux pretty much sucks unless you wanna just do it for fun... many people might differ, but that's my take on it (yeah, someone who even built a simple distro around some small kernel once at college times).

But then last year I decided I needed to upgrade my old Core 2 Duo...
Since I no longer play on PC (Got a PS3 for that), I kept some old components and picked up a new mobo, 8 GB RAM and a Core i7 2600.
But then some friend came over and told me about installing hackintosh, I said "What? Does that thing really works", so yeah, I installed Snow Leopard and loved it.
I now switched to Mac.

The problem seems to be I no longer have time being productive, as it's been almost 8 months of screwing around getting the Hackintosh working, fiddling every time Apple released a new update to Lion, and so on.
The last two things that happened was a fried 1 tb HD and a fried MoBo after doing something wrong while applying thermal paste.

I've been building my own PCs for over 8 years now, even PCs for the family and friends.
While I USED to enjoy it, now I got enough of it.
Is it worth it? If I was in college or school, yes, totally, but now reaching my 30s almost, I feel like time is GOLD and wasting it on stupid things like playing the almighty DIY, is nothing but a WASTE of time, so more gold down the toilet.

I regret buying this PC now, and even if it's better than most options out there, I'm sick of it.

I would get a MacBook Pro in a heartbeat now, if I had the cash, and use it as my main machine, outputting display to my huge HDTV (which is what I use now as a screen).
That's obviously because after being a "hardcore" or "power" Windows user for years, now I have felt in love with MAc and that's why I made the switch (otherwise, I'd say any other netbook option out there, windows-based).

So yeah, there you have it, another DIY who feels... it's been enough.

Plus things are funny nowadays, with mobile devices getting more and more powaaaaa
It feels like yesterday when our dumb phones were just some piece of brick to call the girlfriend, but now, they hold so much power in such a little space, that I've delegated a lot of tasks to my smartphone (Android now, iOS soon) and I even more once I get the iPad.
So I feel like with the exception for really really CPU intensive tasks like rendering or video editing, my desktop does NOT have to be a beast like I wanted them in the past.

/rant over

PD: Sure felt good to write that down

Nforce was never usable for audio systems in my experiance. I note you had a Striker board... you've no idea how many unwanted hours of overtime that caused me to work. Biggest pile of junk I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with.

Any specifics on what's wrong with the nForce stuff for audio systems? Something other than the firewire chipsets, i assume?

Excellent read i'm glad it's not just me who's grown tired of all this tech crap

Oh, really, just $ 299.90. Buy me a license and i'll happily use it. i'm not an IT department. i'm an unemployed disabled guy who can't manage to starve himself enough to save money for software upgrades. Forget stuff like that testing suite!

Veering back on topic I think it's more of a mindset than a technical thing per se. I've known hardware folks that spent more time re-arranging gear in their studios and making cables to the nearest 1/4" to keep everything super neat than actually making music.

"You're getting the tape machine re-aligned again? You haven't even used it since the last time!" etc.

Maybe it's a procrastination thing.

I do that sometimes, but that's not what I'm talking about in this case. I'm talking about actual problems that must be dealt with in order to continue being productive. I just reverted to an older m-audio FireWire driver to see if that stops the most frequent BSODs, for example. Had to be done. I can't accept random BSODs.

Now, some Windows niggles, yeah, they probably are best forcibly ignored, but it adds up & I'm not so good at ignoring critically bad OS architecture these days.

I guess I've been lucky then - virtually all of my hassles have been the fault of third party applications / drivers - like the incompatibility of the Line6 Pod with Nforce 2 USB back in the day, or the M-Audio FW410 driver update that meant I couldn't swap the box between other computers with an earlier driver / OS version because it also forced a firmware update.

The only Windows specific showstoppers I've experienced are the 10 device MIDI limit and (one one laptop) ACPI battery support causing latency spikes.

I do treat all updates / changes with extreme suspicion though - I'm still on XP here and I don't mix internet and music making on the same Wndows partition (Windows Update is good at breaking stuff but it's only really necessary to update for security purposes imo).

With this in mind I'm not looking forward to building a new PC at all.

I really shot myself in the foot with the 3D stuff. I decided to be a smart
arse and learn 3DMax, SoftImage, Cinema4D, LightWave, Bryce, Terragen, Silo,
Rhino and Wings all at the same time. Of course I ended up not having a clue
about anything - not even what my name was But I learned a major lesson
from following this OCD bent - It isn't necessary and it is counter-productive.

So I have taken a different approach with the thing closest to my heart.
Bear that in mind when I say whay I say - everything I have done is needed to get the kind of system I have always wanted.

To answer your question:

I was thinking about this earlier because I am really hacked off with the setup/music making ratio. I came to the conclusion that it was the same type of thing as flying an F-22 Raptor Fifth Generation Fighter Jet. Or rather 'maintaining' one, so one can fly the bloody thing.

This made me feel better about things and inflated an otherwise crushed
ego that was previously suffering from 'What's the point of it all?' syndrome.

I spend about 10 hours of maintenance for one hour of music making. But what blissful superspeed fifth generation music-making. As I have got my system cloned (except the data drives because I can't afford extra drives at the moment with the extortionate prices) I expect this ratio to go up. The hard work has been done. I am reaping what I have sowed. It's only an i5, but I have it super-stable overclocked to 3.42 GHz. It is as cool as stock at that point.

So before I fire her up, I make sure I have my map coords in my pressure suit pocket - I'm a 21st Century music-making man! Good to go! Even got my poison pill tucked away in case anything goes wrong...



Having said that I end up making more music on a shitty old laptop. The 'Storm-System' as I call her is more of an experiment. I don't obsess over drivers - if it works - it works, but there has been a lot of effort need to get thus far. I am finally starting to enjoy music-making on a whole new level.

Would I do it again? No, coz I don't have the cash. I need £500 at the moment just to back up the three drives in her. A year ago or so I built the whole computer for not much more than that.


So to put your mind at ease: cut your losses, enjoy what you have and finally get to make all the music you planned to...


For a glimpse of Storm-System the fifth generation DAW -
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7760&postdays= 0&postorder=asc&start=3135


Don't let her dour demeanor deceive you, this little pussycat has claws!

I rarely stretch over 10-20% CPU on a finished track! Everything instant!
I could have an i50 Hexacore overclocked to 25GHz - it wouldn't be any faster.
You can't get faster than 'instant'. So it was worth it.

Some guys build cars and tune their engines. I do this.

('')


Edit:

Oh and thanks Kaine and Scan Computers for providing the parts and advice.
Still going strong! Couldn't have done it without you!

I probably spend about 80% of the time using my computer and 20% tweaking it, but that's by choice. I don't really have any problems with it, I just enjoy making sure everything is working optimally, trying out new tweaks and software.

BSODs are an indication of a serious hardware problem or faulty driver. It is *not* "Windows" itself that crashes, like some Mac fanatics would have you beleve. It's simply Windows' way of saying that something went so seriously wrong that it's just not safe to let the computer continue to operate. Faulty/overheating CPU, faulty RAM or faulty drivers are most likely to blame, but it can be something as silly as a slightly loose SATA-connector.

A program like BlueScreenView (http://nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html) can help you analyze and pinpoint the cause. You can also use the Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows. If it points to a specific .dll or .sys file, you can look it up on Google to determine what hardware driver it belongs to. If it points to a Windows system file, or points to different files all the time, it's likely a hardware problem rather than a driver problem.

I'm not particularly computer-savvy, I use teh Windozers, when I started out I knew less than nothing about PCs and was INCREDIBLY lazy and disogranized with setting up and maintaining my computer. But since I started out in 1998 (which is pretty much when the Akai S3000XL Sampler and the good old Atari ST went to that great retirement home in the loft) I've had very little problems with the four main desktop systems I've had. I don't know if four systems in nearly 15 years is a lot to get thru, but I do tend to have two at once, one for gaming/interwebs and one for music.

Ok, occasionally it goes wrong, and sometimes I lose a bit of data, have a random crash, have to get someone to look at it (very rarely!), or whatever. Often it's something trivial and I rarely lose much work due to learning about the backup thing. All-in-all, if I compare it with the problems I had with the Akai such as my sample disks going wrong for NO GOOD REASON, the crappy bugs in the OS, eg, the way a sample wouldn't play up to the end marker, so if you cut a break into 8 slices end-to-end and sequenced them back to back exactly, you'd get gaps, or the leaky inputs which I could shout into and have a level register on the sampling page (?!)... NOT TO MENTION the GOD-AWFUL tech support who just got abusive on teh-le-phone when I asked about these bugs and told me I wasn't making "real music" (I mean, hello, can we say a 10 year-old love affair with AKAI stomped on in one second?!). Then there was the DAT machine I used to archive my work... Today... sounding fine! Tomorrow... What's that? Sounds like a gremlin puking up while in 2.5-space and half-fused into an LCD screen that's been run over by a tank..

Hell, compared to that, working with a PC with Evildoze installed is freaking heaven! I turn on the computer, and if I get ideas, they convert into sweet music before my eyes, as long as I keep moving the mouse around and clicking on different shit