i need some help. you dont need to read this long story but it would help if you knew what ive been through up to now.
recently my laptop started acting funny. it had a message that said there were inconsistencies on one of my drives and recommended i to a system check. it then proceeded to do a system check without my permission and subsequently cancelled it as well. then booted vista. this went on for about a week and then i noticed my dvd drive wouldnt read any disks. i got on dell chat (dont say anything about dell cause i've alreaedy heard it and dont care) and have spent at least a good 7 hours cumulative talking chatting and remote chatting with 3 different people probably stationed in india or something. the first person concluded it was my operating system (Vista) that was the problem after he attempted a firmware update to my dvd drive and deleting the upper and lower filters in the registry. (i had already read about and tried this before and it didnt work). the second person tried a few various things and then told me to run the dell utility partition diagnostics system tests. except i have formatted my hard drive and split it into 4 partitions with linux and vista a swap partition and a media partition for all my stuffs. so i couldnt do his tests. the guy that called me back was a third dude who after talking and having me do some obscene tests that would seem to have nothing to do with anything, said to reseat the optical drive. he's going to callback on friday to see if things have inproved and take further action if not. he has been the most helpful so far. but i highly doubt it will personally be him that calls on friday so it may not matter. reseating the optical drive did nothing. and further more, after playing around online and looking for help elsewhere, i cant even boot vista anymore. i barely even get a blue screen of death. it pops up for a split second not letting me read what it says and reboots the computer.
so heres the challenge. can anyone help me fix, solve, restore, etc. my computer without the need of a dvd drive.
impossible? maybe.
guess whos getting a sony vaio! me thats who. screw you dell. screwwwww you. never again will i purchase from you.
n/a
Deleted User
4th March, 2008 at 13:00:48 -
I learned my lesson after like 4 tries: never to buy from HP (and Compaq) or Dell. Their laptops slow down to a halt after a year of use.
Buy a macbook--you can install windows on it and it works like a charm. You can use bootcamp or Parallels (which lets you run windows on mac, and import windows-only applications, etc. I don't find it practical, but MMF runs in mac--though it's more like an imported window from windows).
Since I've had it (like 1.5 years ago), it hasn't slowed down a bit. It runs HFA at full 65fps, all the time.
Agree with Alonso there are few manufacturers I trust. Dell for monitors (ANY problems with it, even just 1 dead pixel, say you're a designer and need a perfect display and they'll ship you a new one. In my case a whole new model too), Apple and Sony for computers, Apple for MP3, Canon for cameras. Oh and Microsoft for peripherals (except keyboards). It's a hodge podge setup of various brands but I've never had a problem with any of their products for years.
Originally Posted by Alonso Martin I learned my lesson after like 4 tries: never to buy from HP (and Compaq) or Dell. Their laptops slow down to a halt after a year of use.
Buy a macbook--you can install windows on it and it works like a charm. You can use bootcamp or Parallels (which lets you run windows on mac, and import windows-only applications, etc. I don't find it practical, but MMF runs in mac--though it's more like an imported window from windows).
Since I've had it (like 1.5 years ago), it hasn't slowed down a bit. It runs HFA at full 65fps, all the time.
I will never use a Mac based piece of hardware unless I know I can have at least Windows XP installed. You make it sound possible, so you've got my interest, but unless it is, I wont buy.
At the moment, I'm basicly running a custom built computer inside of an eMachines case. I bought the computer around 3 years ago, and since then my motherboard went bad, and replaced it, then replaced it again for DDR2 Ram support. I use a different video card, different sound card, new hard drive, new ram, new PSU, etc. So for all intensive purposes, this computer is a custom built. Just never bothered to replace a case that I never really ever look at.
Thanks, Alonso. I'm also interested to hear about running Windows on a Mac. I know it's possible, but are all applications compatible?
Originally Posted by Dr. James there are few manufacturers I trust.
I honestly don't completely "trust" any manufacturers, because there's always a chance that you can end up getting a duff product from anywhere; it's the returns policies and after sales care that make more impact with me. In other words, I don't ever see myself getting to the point where I'd blindly make a buying decision just because of the manufacturer's supposed reputation. I don't think think that's pessimism, just bring realistic. Everyone has stories, or knows someone who has stories of how they tried to return product X and the company shut the door in their face. Apple, although I'd love to bitch about them for so many other reasons, have excellent customer service in my experience. On the other hand, contrary to all the positive talk of Sony here, I know someone who's now on their 4th Sony laptop in 3 years, and they refused to take back any of them. My PC is neither "Dell" or "Sony" of any of the others and it's been going strong for 3 years.
As for Cecil's original plea - sorry, I just don't know a lot about computers when they go wrong! Hope you find help from somewhere.
Originally Posted by Alonso Martin I learned my lesson after like 4 tries: never to buy from HP (and Compaq) or Dell. Their laptops slow down to a halt after a year of use.
Buy a macbook--you can install windows on it and it works like a charm. You can use bootcamp or Parallels (which lets you run windows on mac, and import windows-only applications, etc. I don't find it practical, but MMF runs in mac--though it's more like an imported window from windows).
Since I've had it (like 1.5 years ago), it hasn't slowed down a bit. It runs HFA at full 65fps, all the time.
I will never use a Mac based piece of hardware unless I know I can have at least Windows XP installed. You make it sound possible, so you've got my interest, but unless it is, I wont buy.
At the moment, I'm basicly running a custom built computer inside of an eMachines case. I bought the computer around 3 years ago, and since then my motherboard went bad, and replaced it, then replaced it again for DDR2 Ram support. I use a different video card, different sound card, new hard drive, new ram, new PSU, etc. So for all intensive purposes, this computer is a custom built. Just never bothered to replace a case that I never really ever look at.
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You can install XP or Vista on it, it comes with the drivers and everything on the OS X install disk .
Yes, you can split your system (system partition) giving x amount of memory to Mac and y to WIndows. I'm not sure how it works, but I know Ben has one.
A while back I was an intern in the IT department of a business school. I spent 3 months working with Dell laptops (they had a service where students could buy Dell laptops cheap through the school, and our IT department offered free support on the laptops purchased).
The school received a new bunch of laptops for the newly started students. These were laptops with 2 GB of Ram (as far as i remember) Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GHz CPUs and the whole shabang.
But not long after students had gotten their new Dells, they would come back complaining about it being really slow. At first I dismissed it as people just being impatient, but after the first couple of laptops I couldn't deny it - they were extremely slow. They could take 10 minutes to boot Windows XP, and another 5 to log on to the domain.
We started playing around with the laptops to try and figure out the problem. In the end, we did a clean install not using the Dell discs.
Without the all the bloaty crap software that usually ships with computers they were actually quite fast.
I think also in a lot of cases, computers slowing down is due to people being totally ignorant about how to treat and maintain a computer. I mean, my 1,3 GHz laptop that's really old is the computer in my house that boots the fastest and the others i live with have Core 2 Duo computers and stuff.
Yea of course you can instal Windows on a Mac now. Vista or XP SP2 (or with a little hacking any Windows I think). No compatibility issues since it's just the same hardware only with an emulated BIOS to get XP booted up. Everything runs natively, no slowdown, no emulation. You're even provided with the drivers and everything required to instal Windows. Just need OSX Leopard DVD and an intel Mac.
Basically you boot into OSX. Run Boot Camp installer. Allocate a certain amount of HDD space to each system. It partitions (being careful of course, OSX can resize and partition itself without format any number of times but I don't think Fat32 or NTFS can do that). Insert XP/Vista disc and reboot. Tadaaaa.
I repartitioned my NTFS drive without formatting and now disk access takes a long, long time.
Though I changed the file system of two 60GB drives from NTFS to FAT32 without formatting and those are both fine. I should probably reformat my main drive at some point...
sorry for not posting for awhile. been setting up my old emachines as well so i can do my homeworks.
i will never buy a mac. if i have to do any kidna of modding or emulating to get something to run, i will not have it. linux is the exception with wine.
my dell has worked fine for the...8 or 9 months ive had it. since last july. no slowdown. but maybe thats cause the first thing i did was system restore and delete everything but the OS from my hard drive. no problems at all. it has been quite good to me, and so has dell hardware suppoert chat... the one time i used it before to get my wireless n card to work.
ive heard some bad stuff about sony for computers. are they reliable and fast? or are people just bitching about the cost for the little of what you get. they are damn expensive laptops for some general stuff. a couple hundred more than my dell for nearly the same specs.
one kid in my computer science class had an ASUS G1 notebook and it looks sweet and he likes it and has had no problems with it. its only about $1600 - $2000 and its specs kick ass. i can't find a lot on it tho. reviews and ratings or what not.
as of now my dell wont boot, wont read dvds or cds, and gives me a blue screen of death. btw the tech guy fixed the blue screen lol. it actually shows the whole error now. glad they fixed SOMETHING. im waiting for a senior technician to give me a call. if he cant do shit for me im requesting on site tech support and/or replacement of my laptop. this is stupid. inspiron was supposed to be a good laptop, and so many people say its actually a good laptop as far as dells go.
There is no modding or emulating. Nothing to break warranty, nothing to go horrible wrong. The only emulation (which I only recently found out) was the BIOS kick start or something. The first 2 seconds before the XP load screen starts up. Heck Vista uses a Mac's EFI so there's no emulation at any single point there!
Windows is not emulated. Which you can't say for Wine
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there are few manufacturers I trust. Dell for monitors (ANY problems with it, even just 1 dead pixel, say you're a designer and need a perfect display and they'll ship you a new one. In my case a whole new model too), Apple and Sony for computers, Apple for MP3, Canon for cameras. Oh and Microsoft for peripherals (except keyboards). It's a hodge podge setup of various brands but I've never had a problem with any of their products for years.
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