My son's new PC - Trouble and solution

TCPMeta

My step son has been buying parts for a cheap gaming PC and finally got the last of the parts in. I slapped it together and even showed him how to put it together. When it was time to install Windows we ran into a huge problem. The latest version of Windows I have is 7 and for the life of me I couldn't install it due to asking for drivers for the hard drive controller and every driver I tried it was a no go. So to surprise him I bought a copy of Windows 8 and it did the trick.

I just hate the fact that Gigabyte let alone AMD have Windows 7 and even XP drivers for this motherboard but the AMD SATA driver set is crap. Even with the controller set to legacy IDE mode it still needed a driver and poking around the INF it does have the correct device ID for the controller. So if anyone runs across a Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM-H don't bother with Win7.

Icon

That's rather odd. I have a Gigabyte GA-G41M-E2SL and neither Windows XP nor Windows 7 has never asked for a SATA driver during install. Then again, this particular board uses an Intel chipset.

Your situation is just another reason why I will never use an AMD chipset again. The last new laptop I purchased had an AMD chipset - USB 2.0 was slow as hell and very problematic not very late in its life. Finding the appropriate software was a nightmare as the Catalyst software didn't install all the necessary drivers.

dosbox

For me, the biggest pain in the ass for building PCs was getting the front panel connecters plugged into the motherboard.

po lu

Icon wrote:

That's rather odd. I have a Gigabyte GA-G41M-E2SL and neither Windows XP nor Windows 7 has never asked for a SATA driver during install. Then again, this particular board uses an Intel chipset.

Your situation is just another reason why I will never use an AMD chipset again. The last new laptop I purchased had an AMD chipset - USB 2.0 was slow as hell and very problematic not very late in its life. Finding the appropriate software was a nightmare as the Catalyst software didn't install all the necessary drivers.

I am using AMD.

TCPMeta

Honestly I always prefer AMD and Gigabyte but for some reason this was the first problematic board I have dealt with. Come to think of it the last AMD and Gigabyte system I built was my old AMD Athlon 64 that had a nVidia chipset.

Icon

TCPMeta wrote:

Honestly I always prefer AMD and Gigabyte but for some reason this was the first problematic board I have dealt with. Come to think of it the last AMD and Gigabyte system I built was my old AMD Athlon 64 that had a nVidia chipset.

nVidia made pretty decent chipsets as far as I remember. The last board I purchased was an MSI socket AM2 with an nForce500 chipset (rebadged nForce 4). I never had a problem with it.

dosbox wrote:

For me, the biggest pain in the ass for building PCs was getting the front panel connecters plugged into the motherboard.

At some point in time somebody has to standardize the header layout and wiring polarity. I'm always having to use a magnifier and flashlight to see what I'm doing.

TCPMeta

The front panel header pins mostly use a standard configuration.

TCPMeta

Well the computer is still running fine expect the Wifi extender I gave him. I came home the other night and he told me he had to reset it. As I was shaking my head in disbelief he realized that was stupid. So I told him I'll fix it when I get a chance, it's been three days since and it is killing him.

garirry

WiFi extenders/cards are the bane of humanity, there are ALWAYS problems with these.

TCPMeta

The thing is it was perfectly fine until he messed with it. He messed with it because his internet connection was going slow but failed to realize four other people in the house were also using the internet. Younger set of kids on youtube with their tablets, the wife on netflix and the middle son downloading a massive update to Elder scrolls online.