Fair warning: This post is probably going to be lengthy, so I apologize in advance for the excess number of words I'm going to use to describe a relatively small problem.

I want to become a regular YouTube video uploader. To that effect, I have purchased a graphics card, established a PayPal account, and chosen a recording program that I think will do quite nicely for me. The only problem is that this has been an ordeal months in the making. My frustration shall become apparent as I explicate the situation.

First, my graphics card. I have patiently waited to allocate funds for this ever since Christmas last year. Suffice it to say, money's been tight. With a financial windfall appearing in late April, I went over to my local computer electronics store and bought what I thought was an appropriate graphics card for what I wanted to accomplish. Being that my computer is not a tower, I had to choose from among graphics cards that enabled me to install it to my horizontal case. I spoke with a knowledgeable member of the store staff and chose what he recommended me to buy, given my budget and computer needs. I took it home, wrangled with installing my first graphics card for over 3 hours (to which members of Community Chat can testify), and finally managed to put it in and start my computer.

Within 10 minutes it froze.

Confused, I powered the computer down, and powered it back up. Same result, this time with a BSOD.

The next day, I took my computer and graphics card back to the store and explained my situation. This time, a second gentleman from that store identified that the card I had chosen was drawing more power than my computer had to allocate for the entire machine. Suffice it to say, my "knowledgable" first staff member had overlooked that particular problem. So, we turned to another graphics card, albeit less powerful than the first, and I exchanged the cards and went home feeling like I had solved the problem.

Wrong. The heat sink on the second graphics card was too wide for the slot in my computer.

Nonplussed, I returned the next day to the second gentleman who had sold me the second graphics card. He consulted with yet another gentleman who managed to find a graphics card that both met my original card's specs and which wasn't a power drain on my computer or a physical space hog with its heat sink. Finally, believing myself to have fixed the problem, I took this third graphics card home after a second exchange. This graphics card was more expensive than the second one, but less expensive than the first, so I still came out roughly ahead of where I had started on this monetary odyssey.

I plug the graphics card in, and enjoy hours of entertainment, only to encounter a random freeze, similar to the first graphics card. I restart the computer, go along a few more hours, and the same problem occurs again, also with a BSOD.

Meanwhile, between all the hardware problems with the graphics cards, I manage no less than a half-dozen installs, updates, and removals of various sets of graphics card drivers (each graphics card had its own CD). Thank goodness my hair is very difficult to pull out, because I was near that point by the end of the third day.

Meanwhile, in order to purchase my chosen recording software online, I found myself unearthing my long-forgotten PayPal account and updating all the information that had changed in the interim. What left me confused was that I could not identify why my bank account was unconfirmed with PayPal. After scouring the online "Help" files, I finally gave up and called their customer service. They managed to discover that I had neglected over a year prior to identify the two deposits that were made by PayPal to the account I wished to confirm. This happened after I added and deleted this very bank account no less than three times over a 3-week period, trying to see whether or not these same "deposits" would occur.

So, having successfully fixed my PayPal account, I selected for the amount of the item I wish to purchase to be transferred from my bank account to my PayPal account, knowing that PayPal states a three business day minimum for any such transfers. I click over to the site to preview the purchasing process for the software, only to discover that in that process is an option for an "instant" transfer from the very same account through PayPal to the vendor that negates the need for the three day waiting period of my money transfer. I called PayPal back and they said that once the transfer process begins, I cannot rescind the order. So, I am stuck waiting for the amount of money I had transferred from my bank account to reach my PayPal account so that I don't overdraw those same funds through the "instant" option I had at the purchasing menu for my recording software.

This is where I sit currently. I am going to take my computer back to the store for my graphics card for the sixth time in order to resolve why my graphics card (which supposedly fits all my computer specs) continues to freeze in the same fashion as my first graphics card. I am waiting for my money to clear PayPal so that I can purchase the recording software by which I intend to record videos on my computer for such purpose which I bought a graphics card in the first place!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!


Thank you for reading this insane process. It seems like whatever can go wrong has gone wrong and I'm hoping to see the end to this tomorrow.

My roommate had a Dell micro-tower machine (4 yrs old) and her graphics card crapped out. In trying to find a replacement, she went through 4 different cards and two re-installs of Windows. So I feel your pain. (She finally gave up and bought an e-Machine!)

What are you trying to do? Record tv on your pc?

Nope. I want to record what's on my screen and record my commentary on it. I'm thinking video game talkthroughs.


Hah! My computer is a Dell, too. Maybe there's a connection?

Using Fraps? (http://www.fraps.com/) that seems to be the video game capture thingy I see mentioned most often.

If you don't already have an audio app, audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) would probably work well for you.

How do you want to capture the video game footage exactly? Does the graphics card have an extra output for a recording device or how does that work?

I think the connection is the small formfactor case.

Lesson to learn: Don't put big stuff in small case ... without upgrading the PS first!

First, NEVER buy a computer, always build your own.
It is MUCH easier than it sounds. It would probably be more
correct to say you should assemble your computer.
Most (if not all) computer makers (IBM, Dell, HP, etc.) say you
can upgrade their computers, but they usually mean you can add
RAM to them. I have found most manufactured computers to be
too Proprietary to be able to upgrade them.

4 years ago I built my 5th. computer. I did lots of research to
decide on what Motherboard I wanted to use, along with a CPU.
It has been a great computer, but when I built it, HD Video
did not really exist, and I had no interest in it.
Several months ago I decided to start shooting some Cooking
Videos. I bought a HD Video camera and began. My computer had
trouble with the HD Video, especially with the Video editing
aspect of it....money was (is) tight so I went with a cheap
new video card. I bought it on Amazon.com, the reviews for it
were mostly good. But it had problems that got worse.

Here is a link to the videos I have shot and edited.
http://www.youtube.com/user/CookNGobble

In Windows 7 the video driver would crash, constantly. I
searched the Internet for a solution, and found that
Windows 7 has problems with some video cards from various
manufactures. None of the solutions I found worked, so I did
some more research on Video Cards and bought a more expensive
one for $109. I just installed it yesterday....it works GREAT.

If you want to build your own, I use the Magazine "Maximum PC"
for reference. They build computers all the time
and they list the parts and prices for everything they use.

Here is a link.... http://www.maximumpc.com/

Here is a link to some computers they have built and how you
can build one too... http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/buildapc

A belated thanks to everyone for their shared sympathies and stories and potential solutions.

To make a long story short, things have happened in the interim that have left me with one basic problem: my computer is just not up to snuff. The closest I have gotten is with a graphics card that is rated about 25 watts over the power supply my system has. Because of this, it causes my computer to freeze randomly at some point in time after it powers up. This makes it very difficult for me to record videos, process them, and upload them to YouTube because I am never sure when my computer is going to freeze.

As far as the graphics card goes, it is the type of card that is not very amenable to external power supplies, and the cards that are are too big for my low-profile machine. On top of that, I was going into this expecting only a graphics card expense, and to purchase an external power supply in any case would practically put me in the realm of just buying another computer, regardless of the fact it is not possible for my machine to accommodate it.

So, I am basically operating a computer with a limp. The graphics card I need to do what I want causes my computer to freeze, and I cannot record without the graphics card because FRAPS (and Minecraft, the game I am recording) need to be at full processing strength to work together.

In other news, I passed up a video recording software for half the FRAPS price for my Mac, but my Mac is full of music and podcasts and wouldn't have the processing power (or storage capacity as mentioned) to do what I want anyway.

Sounds like a typical Owner's lament. You apparently need to suck it up and shell out the cash like a man ...