I have become an expert on technology, because nothing ever seems to work and I need to spend days trying to find a solution

After two whole months away from blogdom, I finally have something to say.

Fucking Nvidia GT 240.

10 days ago I bought a new computer for gaming. It worked okay for the 6 days and then: disaster. My game crashed, then my computer crashed, then my computer did nothing BUT crash, and I got to see the blue screen of death so many times that I have learnt what it tells me (I'm not kidding there, but it helps that I wrote everything down). After the first six hours of dedicated searching online and problem fixing I came to the realisation that the problem was too big. I had to completely uninstall and then reinstall the operating system. Oh the joy.

But then came the need to update all of my drivers again, and the next two days were spent in utter frustration as ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY THREE problems were detected that needed to be fixed, and I tried to solve them all one at a time. Finally I came to the same old realisation that I had done something wrong again, so I had to uninstall and then reinstall the operating system. Again.

This time I was going to install all of those pesky programs and updates one at a time and see what was fucking everything up. Soon I had it narrowed down and then four hours ago I was overjoyed when I locked in on the problem: Nvidia GT 240 and its assosciated drivers. At first I figured it was just the drivers that were causing the problem, but after trying to install several others from different companies and even freeware ones that were compatible, the computer had a hissy fit and it was the blue screen of death all over again.

It appears as though everyone at Nvidia has died on gone on a zombie rampage, because I am not the only one with this issue and all the forums are clogged with demands and comments that look like this: "Hello? Is there anyone at the company reading these things? Where the fuck are you and why have you given us shitty software and hardware that doesn't work???"

I've been at this for 4 days. Four almost constant days. All up I have spent about 30 hours trying to fix my new computer.

Jumping back to November, my girlfriend bought me a happy graduation present: Empire Total War. I tried to install it on my computer. It didn't work. I spent about four hours trying to figure out why, installing the despising Steam program and all of the patches, only to find that, no, it wasn't going to work and I needed a new computer to run the game.

Back to now. I have the game. It's the only game I've been trying to play. So I have spent around 34 hours now trying to get the game to work, which is more time than I've spent actually playing the game. It was supposed to be my holiday away from doing anything remotely stressful, and nothing has ever caused me more grief than ETW and Nvidia.

If I can't figure it out by Sunday evening, I'm ripping the video card out of the computer and buying a new one.