PC gaming horror stories

[RockyRan]

I love PC gaming as much as the next guy, but I think we can all agree here there have been times when we've had problems so bad that we literally want to either tear our hair out or get in the fetal position and sob quietly in a corner with the lights turned off. So in here we post the absolute worst experiences with our PCs that we can remember.

 

Mine probably has to do with a little game called WarSow. It's a freeware Quake-like FPS that's pretty neat (except for the fact that I can't play it worth a damn), but for some incredibly strange reason the game wouldn't start up on my relatively-new laptop (at the time. Now it's well over 2 years old).

 

You all know the drill. You went for Google, yet it showed nothing of use. After scavenging around the 'net for many hours I found that the game uses OpenGL, if the game wouldn't start in the same way as mine did, I didn't have OpenGL properly installed. Except there's no way of "installing" OpenGL other than through updating the drivers (or at least that's what everyone said every time someone asked where to install OpenGL. "Just update your drivers, it should install OpenGL too", they said). So I did, and the game still didn't work. How in the world can that be? Well, I had a laptop (a Toshiba one at that) and well, let's just say Toshiba laptops and ATi drivers don't get along. Like, at all. Period.

 

Mobility Modder, here I come. For those who don't know, it's a third party program that FORCES driver updates on laptops, because the vast majority of laptop manufacturers are (or were at the time) retarded enough to outright block driver updates just to make it easier on their customer service. And I didn't really want the drivers, I just wanted fucking OpenGL. I spent well over a week toiling away at obscure registry hacks, countless uninstalls and re-installs of the drivers, even installing a dual-boot of Linux to see if that would run the game. It was fucking PERSONAL now. I didn't care about the game as much as I cared about beating this stupid problem.

 

After god knows how many hours I got it. I GOT IT. The exuberance ran through my veins and I pumped my first in the air triumphantly. I could almost hear the 80's inspirational music and the transition to slow-mo with a cue of the credits roll. I knew this problematic dragon had to be felled, and I stopped at nothing to see its demise. I was ecstatic beyond all reason, as the simple act of seeing the game run meant I triumphed over the previously meaningless hours lurking in and out of unhelpful message board posts trying to get the damn code to simply execute properly.

 

I started up the game, connected to a server, got my ass beat, and uninstalled the game.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

 

that story is the exact reason so many people laugh at people who game on laptops

 

 

i don't think i've had any particularly ridiculous issues ever, just the usual "one tiny thing is fucked up, spend 3 hours working on the fix." The most recently I can think of is max payne 1 and getting sound to work right on it, which wasn't too bad (just installed creative alchemy.)

[slatz_grobnik]

My horror story is that I was a PC gamer during the extended/expanded memory years.

[Cyber Rat]

Granny.dll