Why do all my PC problems seem to be caused by Microsoft products?

[Chris from Washington]

good grief, been spending my entire day with this PC.

The other day, my PC crashed.
I figured OK, fine it's about 4 or so years old. I'll backup what I can and reformat, and reload XP Pro.

So did that this morning, got XP Pro reloaded. So go to windows update,
first it wouldn't validate. Searched through all the MS Newsgroups, and found that this is common!!!

Found a link to a differernt, page that would allow me to validate it.

So got that problem fixed, and started to the updated.
Got through about 2 of them, and then I get an error that xx updated failed to install.

GRRRR!!!

So I reboot, and attempt to try again. but now, IE locks up!!

comeon!!!!

So after fighting with it for an hour. I decide to screw it, and just reformat again, maybe it just didn't load right.

So reformat, and this time everything seems to be working OK.

Got all my updates loaded and now have SP2 installed.
So cool, now to start loading my programs back!

First on the list, Office 2003

Put the CD in, and about half way through (error!) Some error about the CD being corrupted or something.

Give me a break, it's always microsoft products that seem to give me these troubles!!

All of these are legit copies too, not something I got off the internet, or copied from a friend. So this stuff should work!!!!!!!

[Chris from Washington]

ARGG!!
Now trying to install office again, and now when I enter the product key, it says it's not valid!!!!

I've checked it 3 times, and redid it.

I hate you microsoft!!!

[Chris from Washington]

oh, and did I mention that the problem with the validation for windows update is a common problem!!!
searching the MS newsgroups. Looks like many have the Office 03 problem too. Their 'fix' is to copy the entire CD over to your hard drive, and run the setup from there.
way to go MS

[Ryan from Ohio]

MS is gay like big gay bird.

I reloaded XP Pro also as the internet kept draggin and my hard drive was full of mysterious stuff that I cant find...

Now after a few months of the reinstall the computer acts goofy. Sometimes it just locks up for the fun of it...

I dont get it. Just time for a new PC and be done with it. THis one is like 5 years old...

[William from NOLA]

I feel your pain.
Just yesterday, when I booted up after getting home from work, my registry decides to take a crap on me. SOOO, I can't get into windows at all. I found the solution, it just involves putting in a separtate hard drive, installing another xp to that extra hard drive and copying over the part of the failed registry.
Sounds easy right? Well, now my computer won't boot to windows cds. Linux works fine (which is what I'm on right now), but it does not recognize my orignial drives as raid grr. SOO in order to get the cd to boot to windows again, I found a floppy disk boot solution. Now this requires 6 floppy disks. My old ones from my old house didn't get flooded, so I popped those in and made the 6 disks.
...
So far, 3 of the disks failed or became corrupted (physically something wrong with them, I mean, well, they ARE like 10 and 12 years old minimum). I just have to go THROUGH them until it finds it corrupted or just plain fails.
So right now I've taken a 20 hour break after a 20 hour day of it.
Excuse me while I vent:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Thank you.

[solacedagony]

That's alright my 300$ graphics card just went on Friday night :-X
Btw, with the Microsoft Office product, you need to use the main install program, not the individual install programs on the CD.

[Chris from Washington]

Well tried 2 of the 3 so called fixes for this.

And so far no go.

The error is 1335: bla bla 'insertnameoffile'.cab is corrupted

I guess it's a common problem, that MS refuses to fix.

The last option it says to go into msconfig and mess with your memory managment! Why in the world can XP not manage it's memory correctly to allow me to install this!!!!

this is pissing me off. Been spending the whole day on getting this PC running again!!

[Chris from Washington]

OK,
The memory thing didn't work.

BUT
This time, instead of installing everything at once.

I just installed word. and it worked.

So maybe if I do them 1 by 1 I can get this installed.

[Chris from Washington]

Finally,
after another hour of messing with that, installing them 1x1 worked.

Now I get to update all the Office patches !!!! woohoo!

[NViejeP]

I've had numerous things happen to my computer. Errors where my registry crapped out, hard drive broken, power supply broken. Random stuff like that. I hate reformatting, its a lot of work.