I hate setting up computers from scratch.
3 days of my life were just wasted as I tried to do a simple clean install of Windows 7 on my new SSD, along with a wipe and re-purpose of the previous hard drive.
What did I do wrong, you ask?
As far as I can tell, I only made one true mistake. And, yes, it was a big one. After messing around with the wiring in my huge tower with multiple hard drives and optical drives (more than can be counted on a hand), hours into the project, I was short (pun) on leads from my power supply. I was using an adapter and I think I connected hot plugs to both male and female ends of the same adapter. Whatever I did, the wires on the 4-pin power plug to my audio card actually caught on fire, with serious flames and smoke, within 3 seconds of power-up! A rather exciting moment.
Surprisingly, the audio card (a Creative X-Fi Elite Pro) still works perfectly, but apparently I cooked the motherboard and video card (which was almost new). I had been looking for an excuse to upgrade the mobo (AM2 w/ DDR2) and I got a new power supply for good measure.
After many, many, many hours of heartache and dis-assembly, wiring, and carting of heavy equipment up and down, I finally discovered that the new Gigabyte motherboard simply refused to boot with certain powered USB hubs attached.
Yes, these were cheap Chinese hubs (2 identical items), but I have been using them daily for at least a year, with my old Asus mobo, with no problems at all.
With all my gear (dual printers, scanner, camera hookup, external hard drives, etc) I need the hubs, and one has had a permanent home behind my monitors specifically for swapping and testing keyboards and mice.
So what do I hate?
Random incompatibilities for no apparent reason!
Isn't the "U" in USB supposed to stand for "universal" anyway?
