My PC was too noisy
My PC was making whirling noise and it was even vibrating. I thought it was too noisy, but I didn't fix it for a year because it was working anyway. When the PC died eventually, I found that the bad was the power supply. I replaced it with a new 500W power supply at around $30, and the PC is back, and this time, with no big noise. The PC had an extra HDD and 4 extra PCI cards. The original power supply couldn't handle that much of load, and that's why the fan was whirling to cool it down.
DVD writer was suddenly dead
When I installed my internal CD/DVD writer, it worked fine for a few days. Then all the sudden, it became flaky and eventually stopped working for writing; reading was OK. Later I bought another set, and it died in the same way in a few days! I thought that's reliability issue of the DVD writers, and I stayed away from them for a year. Then one day, when I replaced the power supply of the PC, I found that the DVD writer was back to operation. I had never had a problem with cheep power supply, and thought there was nothing bad about beating power supply to squeeze power. This was the first time I saw something stopped working due to power supply.
Sound from ATI All-In-Wonder was jumpy
When I recorded a TV show with ATI All-In-Wonder, and played it back, the volume of the sound went up and down in a cycle of a few seconds. I found the audio output level of ATI card was lower than other cards. It seemed to be around the threshold of the audio card input (I uses C-media), and the audio card probably tried to raise gain from time to time. The first solution was to place an amplifier between ATI card and the sound card. It worked well. The second solution was to replace the sound card. It also worked well.
Notebook Maximizer icon doesn't go away
I was very satisfied with my new Toshiba Satellite notebook PC. I bought the cheapest model, and it does all fine. I only have some aesthetic issues with them. I cleaned up all the ugly applications preinstalled, except one: Notebook Maximizer. When I removed it, the power button stopped working. So I decided to keep it. However, this software installs its icon on my desktop in boot time. It comes back even if I delete it. One of the ugliest design decisions I've ever seen. For now, I'm using a script in Startup folder to remove the icon. They also put "Buy at ToshibaDirect" in Start Menu. I haven't been able to remove it yet.
MP3/WMA player was too slow
My Panasonic MP3/WMA player worked fine for playing WMA files recorded on CD+R or CD-RW with my Windows XP PC. There was only one problem: When I changed the disk,
it takes around two minutes. The player said "Reading" for two minutes, then started playing music. The problem went away when I used write-at-once type of burning tool (Ulead Burn.Now); it takes only a few seconds to change disks now. When I had the problem,
I used add-data type of burning tool. Even if I closed or finalized the disk, the problem didn't go away.
One of the garage openers didn't work
When I moved into the current home, the landlord gave us only one garage opener. So I bought one more by my self. I tried to set up the new opener. But the garage machine didn't talk to the new opener. So I reset the garage machine, then it talked with the new opener. however, this time it doesn't talk to the old opener. The garage machine talks only one of them, not both. After some web search, I learned that my garage machine can talk in two protocols. The catch is it talks in only one of the protocols, not both at the same time. I gave up the old garage opener, and bought one more new one. Now the garage machine can talk to the two new openers.
Image on the screen was shaking
I saw jitter on the screen. The displayed image was shaking a tiny bit. I was using dual monitor using two PCI video cards. The jitter happened only on one screen. The reason was the power supply again. I replaced the 250W power supply that came with the PC with the new 300W. Then the problem went away.