Over the weekend I nearly destroyed my main computer. I got this harebrained idea about a week ago that I wanted to watch HDTV on my computer, even though I could already do that on the TV in my living room. I figured that I could multitask on my computer, surfing the Internet, writing e-mails, and watching TV at the same time. So I ordered an internal TV tuner card.
I picked it up from the post office on the weekend. I’ve installed dozens of cards over the course of nearly two decades in many different computers. I thought this was going to be quick and easy. Things went wrong almost immediately. There was an available slot in my computer but because this card just a tiny bit too big, I had to trade slots with my sound card. This was a tiny hassle compared to what I would have to deal with next. Thinking I was done, I started up my computer again and it promptly got stuck on the POST screen. It just hung there and never got any further than that. I feared the worst because it meant I could have broken any number of components while I was installing the TV tuner card. I began taking the cards back out and putting things back to the way they were originally. To my relief, my computer was able to get to Windows again. So I started putting things back in, one card at a time. After a lot of time, I realized that my computer would not boot up with both my sound and TV tuner card installed. It had to be one or the other. Then I tried something new. I took the power away from my Blu-ray drive and left both cards in. To my surprise, my computer got into Windows successfully. Of course, I then realized Windows couldn’t detect my sound card anymore. I turned off my computer, jiggled the card, and restarted. Now I could get sound again.
I finally got around to trying to watch TV on my computer but of course, the software couldn’t detect any channels with the antenna I was using. All that work and I still couldn’t get TV on my computer. I decided to cut my losses and just watch TV on my real TV for at least one more night.