Originally Posted by rowan

I build my own computers and generally have no probs; it's when I start adding or swapping around hardware that things start going wrong. I swapped out an old celeron single board with a Pentium D 3.0 and an Asus deluxe motherboard, something that should have taken about 30-45 mins max... first problem is when I dropped the CPU on the floor and couldn't find it for about 10 mins. Then when I found it and was cleaning the old thermal grease off it I dropped it onto the tiles, JUST missing the cat's water bowl. That probably should have been a sign to give up then.

3 hours later I still had a blue screen a few mins after the Windows CD starts booting, a gigabit ethernet card that for some strange reason consistently auto-negotiates to 10Mbps half duplex (I'm surprised my switch even supports that!), and a sound card that doesn't work. I had also swapped over the PSU and memory modules in an attempt to cure the bluescreen.

The computer is working now but the point is I usually end up wasting a shitload of time because of my extreme bad luck...