Like the butterfly that caused a hurricane

Another one for the geek log.

Thinking about upgrading PC components or doing a bit of DIY repair with your drivers and devices ? I've just been through two weeks of PC hell. If like me your bigger on can do than know how consider how much value you put in your PC being a bit quicker and whether your kids really need to play games with 3d graphics. If it seems worthwhile here are a few things to consider.

1. ATI graphics cards and their associated drivers coupled with AGP slots on a four year old motherboard can be very troublesome.
2. Adding an extra stick of RAM is not in all cases a risk free process.
3. Adding RAM can mess with your video drivers
4. A memory sharing conflict between an AGP device and VGAsave is a nightmare.
5. No matter how logical it may at some point seem DO NOT uninstall VGAsave.
6. Windows recovery does not always recover Windows.
7. RAM slotted in the wrong way may stop your PC from starting. It is quite easy to push RAM in the wrong way.
8. RAM slotted in the wrong way round can heat up very hot very quickly. If it begins to smell like toast chances are it is.
9. Very hot RAM can fry the DDR slots in your motherboard.
10. PC tech forums are a source of questions, free floating empathy and ideas.
11. Whatever error you are getting someone will have experienced the same thing as you. There will be stuff about it on the net.
12. Just because someone has fixed the problem you are having the same fix is in no way certain to work for you.
13. The frequency of problems and solutions posted to tech forums do not follow a a pattern of normal distribution.
14. There are over 100 security updates and two service packs to download and install to bring a basic copy of XP home up to date.  You may well have to go through this process more than once.
15. DDR2 + SATA + dual processors = fast.
16. A clean install of windows, fitting a power supply, new motherboard, RAM, hard drive and optical drive is not the same as fixing a memory sharing conflict. That is building a new computer.

Finally if you stick with it it's possible to end up with a new hi spec dual core PC that's stable and fast. Be happy that you have built it yourself and probably saved at least £2.00 if you bought a similar spec machine of the shelf.

You can forget about the device conflict for the time being.