There are a number of things my computer (Windows) does differently at various times. I’m guessing there’s a technical reason for these occurrences which, if I knew, would be logical. But to me they appear as inconsistencies, sometimes benign and occasionally annoying as hell. Two come to mind immediately:
I start iTunes, then plug in my iPod. Sometimes, but not always, a window opens up as if the iPod were a disk drive. There’s a setting in iTunes to enable your iPod for disk use, which I don’t do. But about half the time the window opens anyway, half the time it doesn’t and the iPod just syncs without further ado.
Using “print screen” I grab a screenshot of whatever is on my display. I then paste it into a program like Windows Photo Editor. Sometimes it pastes it immediately, sometimes it pastes the previous screenshot and ignores the one I just did. But the strangest behavior is when I get an error saying it can’t grab the image from the clipboard - but if I do it again once or twice it goes ahead and pastes it! Weird, but I’m guessing this has to do with Photo Editor being an older program.
This isn’t a tech support thread - I’m just interested in hearing about weird, apparently inconsistent behavior from your computers.
Sometimes my computer (Win 7) won’t go in to sleep mode or whatever. However I have it set when the monitor turns off. It doesn’t seem to be related to what apps are running but more related to updates. I think sometimes an update will come out that fucks up the sleep mode and then they’ll release a new update that fixes it.
I use IE at work. I’m on, say, this site, and I want use wikipedia or something. Start a new tab, type in the address - the old tab will start loading the new page! And it only does it sometimes too. Guess I should really just get another browser or something.
I have a creaky old desktop that we still use sometimes. My Better Half, being nerdalicious, has basically rebuilt it three times, so it’s a bit of a Frankenmachine.
At one point before I met him, I got really into WAV files and downloaded and made them computer sounds. Ex: Critical stop was Eddie Izzard saying “Fuckin’ ELL!” At that point I made something Carlin doing his Seven Words You Can’t Say bit. The Seven Words.
I don’t remember what I put it as. (Hell, I’m getting old, I don’t remember how I did it at all, frankly.) He could easily figure it out, I’m sure, but it makes us both laugh. But, if we leave the computer on, it randomly does the Seven words. (Our response: Thank you, George!)
Once it did it while he was on a conference call with mucketymucks and others at his company. He just sat there, very quiet.
There was a pause, then a mucketymucks said “Well…someone must be in an airport!”
I usually build 3 or 4 machines per year (long story). One time, I put everything together and it wouldn’t even boot. bit by bit I replaced every single part in it including the power supply (might have kept the HDD) and it still wouldn’t run. I finally concluded that the case I was using was possessed.
Getting a new case was cheaper and more convenient than hiring an exorcist (try to find one of those - ha!). It worked on the first try.
Honestly, since I got an Imac 2 years ago, it’s been remarkably consistent. Only issues have been with certain programs that I installed but I have since adjusted the proper settings etc…
Did you check to make sure the motherboard wasn’t shorted to the case (a standoff in the wrong place), since otherwise I can’t think of why it wouldn’t work, unless the power button connector was incompatible with the motherboard, but you say you replaced every part (but you did try shorting the pins together?).
As for my computer, the computer I had previously (Win XP on a Compaq Presario, but not original motherboard/OS) would never go into sleep/hibernate except for the first time (or after several times) after a reboot. Also, I always disable wake-up on mouse because otherwise it may randomly wake up (the mouse I have, a generic Microsoft optical mouse, stays on (the light that is), when the computer is asleep).
I hibernate my MS-Windows computer at time. When I turn it on in the morning and then not use it right away, it will sometimes go back into hibernation mode and I have to power it on again. Not at all clear why it decides to this.
I was working on a project recently in which I used the “print screen” function constantly. It worked correctly on the first attempt less than half the time, and often took two or three tries to grab a screenshot and paste it into a usable program. Then it started working perfectly, and the only difference I can see was that I had Adobe Acrobat running. Print screen worked flawlessly under those conditions, although I wasn’t grabbing screenshots from Adobe.
I’ve got a Vista PC. (Yes, ugh.) If I ever turned it off, and did not put it in sleep or hibernate, it would not handle my wifi correctly when booting. I could fix it by plugging into the router ethernet port, which somehow made the wifi work again. It was connected - but just locally.
I finally figured it out. If I turn wifi off when booting, if I turn it on again it works fine. I believe something was timing out due to all the junk happening on startup, and it could never recover.
Coming out of sleep or at startup the mouse cursor freezes for a while, same reason no doubt. I found that if I log in before it unfreezes (which it does) it stays frozen. If I wait until I get control of the cursor, it is fine.
And yes, I know I should get rid of stuff. No time.
When i start playing a game my computer will reboot itself after 10-15 minutes, like it had overheated. After it reboots i can play for hours or days and it will not happen again, in fact as long as the computer stays on it will not happen again. As soon as i turn it off it will happen again the next time i play a game though. I have changed the videocard three times and the motherboard once and it still happens, so i have no idea what could possibly be causing it. Actually, i guess that is fairly consistent.
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