Never buy a f***ing HP!

[moodyskydiver 0]

I didnt describe the problem in my first post b/c since the sys recovery had already been completed I didnt see the need to give details on things that were too late to do anything about. I had someone post the prob here earlier in the weekend and had numerous comp savvy people from dz.com try to help,including remote assist from those that make their living working with computers.I talked to my ISP and HP and no one could figure out what was wrong with it,hence the reason for the recovery.I described everything in minute detail to everyone I talked to not just "it doesnt f'ing work". I DID buy a 3 yr warranty from the company I bought the computer from and they were also one of the numerous people I talked to today and they said that the warranty didnt cover this type of error.

"...just an earthbound misfit, I."

[GroundZero 0]

Hey girl...

you need a computer geek living (sleeping) with you...

other than that, you're forced to learn everything and deal with the consequences. They all break sometimes.

If you need help feel free to call, e-mail, pm or whatever... but long distance it does get tough to troubleshoot.

I might have to refer you to our guy Beezy, he can walk you through the F-disk procedure and make you feel his enthusiasm!

Hope everything gets solved,

Chris

[ripper0289 0]

If you don't want to build a custom computer, which can be cheaper than buying retail, buy an Alienware PC, they rock.
Also, look into a piece of software called Powerquest Drive Image. I bought that, got my drive set up exactly how I wanted it, and made a complete image of it. Now I can recover from a total meltdown in less than two hours.
http://www.alienware.com/

[testpilot 0]

HP boycott enabled.

Dave
D830
http://www.skydiving.co.za

[Casie 0]

Girl....that sucks! I'm sendin ya some **VIBES&HUGZ**.......oh go drink some, that usually makes me feel better!

~Porn Kitty
WARNING: Goldschlager causes extreme emotional outbursts!

[turtlespeed 212]

Dell = No problem at work or at home.

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[happythoughts 0]

Quote

Quote

I then spent the next 3 hours working with a guy who had less english speaking skills than my boston terrier

Hey...that's the 'future' of customer/tech support, GET USED TO IT!!!

Thank corporate America for that and the fucking money hungry executives.

I feel a rant comin' on, a rant comin' on...

Most of your call center and support centers are moving to India. They even coach them to pick an English name. "Hi, my name is Steve" sounds better than Randslirsla.

AOL, Verizon, Bank of America.

I called Bank of America about a loan and got to talk to "Tania". I won't do business with a banker who isn't sitting in front of me.

Darnit, it is the Bank of America. How come no Americans work there?

[happythoughts 0]

Quote

Hey be sure to fire off an e-mail to HP Customer relations. Contrary to popular belief if enough people get tired of the outsourcing crap that has decimated the IT ranks.. MAYBE just MAYBE the companies who use that kind of option will STOP, especially if people threaten to not buy their products and to TELL everyone they know what kind of crappy service they got.

Nope. I just evaluated a project. The management wants to outsource to India, even though it doesn't work right when it comes back.

Cost of US contract software team - $70/hr. Indian team $15/hr. Steel, cars, stereos, tvs. Now software too.

[RevJim 0]

Quote

uh Windows 2005

Jeanne, I realize you work for them, so probably can't say much, but if that's really what you are running, can you offer us some insight? How's the stability, GUI, memory leakage, hardware compatibility, ect?

Enquiring minds want to know!

It's your life, live it!
Karma
RB#684 "Corcho", ASK#60, Muff#3520, NCB#398, NHDZ#4, C-33989, DG#1

[fudd 0]

hmmm...
You had to do a system recovery. Sure you don't wanna blame Micro$oft?

Computers break and a hard disk WILL fail soner or later.

Sorry about your pictures and personal files, that's the real loss.

mp3's are replacable.
Next time, make backups. (buy some sort of backup device (CD-RW, DVD-RW, Portable Hard drive...etc)

There are only 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

[Harksaw 0]

My philosophy is not to buy any of those large brand computers. They make their money by using the cheapest possible parts and providing a warranty so you won't complain as much when they break. (From what I hear, Gateway is the worst with these tactics) They do provide cheap computers in an aerodynamic case, but your computer will still break causing you hassle.

Lots of times they use refurbished parts in their "new" computers. I know Gateway does this, and it wouldn't surprise me if HP did also. Again, after 6 months when your hard drive crashes, no one thinks about that, you just get the warranty to replace it, thank the manufacturer for helping you out, and figure crashes these often are unavoidable.

I usually go with local assemblers or buy a barebones system and parts off Ebay. When you buy individual parts (like your local assembler does) the retailers of these parts know that if their part breaks, it reflects badly on them as this is their entire business.

__________________________________________________
I started skydiving for the money and the chicks. Oh, wait.

[shmali 0]

One of the easiest ways to backup our stuff is to buy an external hardrive. They have them at compusa bestbuy etc on sale every now and then for $100-200. Usb, firewire whatever you have. If you don't want to go that route you can split your current hardrive so it looks like 2. Partition magic is probably one of the simplest programs for this. BUt if you said you were having to replace your hardrive every couple of months then the external is probably the way to go. Sorry you lost all your stuff.

Pineappe Death Juice, If you have to ask you'd rather not know!

[nightjumps 1]

When I was a SysAdmin in a previous life, I used to build my own desktops. At our company, we used Compaq Servers & HP clients, so when my desktop computer needed upgrading, the price of desktops had come down so much that it was cheaper to buy off the shelf than to build one. I bought an HP Pavilion 6730 PII Win98 4.1. 96 meg of ram, 40 gig hard drive (1999).

I took it home with the understanding that it would probably shit the bed eventually and was religous about nightly backups (another geek trait). I took all the proprietary software bullshit off and just used MS Office/Outlook and a couple of web design tools. I ran a scheduled maintenance program of HD cleanups and disk defrags. That HP served me perfectly for four years - not one "restore" the whole time. A couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to upgrade.

I spent two weeks researching HP, Compaq, etc. I went to the Gateway store where a friend works and busted open the case to look at the components. Another friend works at a local CompUSA and he and I busted open Compaqs, HP, Sony and eMachines. Interestingly enough, they all use the same components (I didn't look inside a Dell or Alienware).

I settled on two eMachines. Both are T2542's with Intel Celeron 2.5 GHz processors, 256 DDR Ram and a 40 Gig HD for $399.00 with a $50.00 mail-in rebate. Nothing major as these are home computers with wireless network connectivity used mostly for the occasional website build, chess.net, emails and cruisin dz.com. I went into this with the knowledge that they were clones and the opportunity for disaster was as equal as the others. My backup now consists of a 256 MB Bus memory card which I wrote a batch file that dumps from "My Documents" to the Bus Card nightly. The really really important stuff, I back up weekly to a folder on a webserver which does nightly backups.

My thoughts are that for $349.00 - even if they last a year, that's roughly $28.00/month. My other thought is that with the ever-increasing, software-driven processor/ram requirements, we're looking at a two year cycle to upgrade the entire machine.

The point to this is; If most of them are using the same components, go cheap, do regularly scheduled maintenance, and backup often. Even the best will shit the bed. And, figure that every couple of years, you're going to need a new one.

Personally, I don't think we're far from ISP driven ASP servers and a home client that consists of a monitor and a keyboard.

[rmsmith 1]

Quote

...or buy a barebones system and parts off Ebay.

Like playing around with a hot-rod car, this is the most rewarding way to compute, IMHO. Rock on!!

[indyz 1]

Quote

Jeanne, I realize you work for them, so probably can't say much, but if that's really what you are running, can you offer us some insight? How's the stability, GUI, memory leakage, hardware compatibility, ect?

The word on the rumors sites is that Longhorn is just like most other alpha software: Not especially usable or stable, but all of the basic stuff is there. Last I heard they were rewriting the filesystem from scratch and it'll have some cool BeOS-type functionality (i.e., every file is a row in a database with customizable fields; mmm, metadata).

Then again, I've been using an alpha-release bootloader for years with zero problems.

[RevJim 0]

So, basically, what you are saying is Windows 2005 should be ready for release sometime around 2008?

I still can't stand XP, so I'll stick with 2000 for awhile longer.

I'm just begining to toy with '03, and I've got Linux, but I've got a bad disk or hardware compatibility problems with that one. Linux will be on the system I'm builing now though.

Here's a question for ya:

I'm looking to set up an internet proxy server in my new house. That would basically be it's only task. Know of any freeware - cheapware stuff out there for that purpose?

It's your life, live it!
Karma
RB#684 "Corcho", ASK#60, Muff#3520, NCB#398, NHDZ#4, C-33989, DG#1

[Amazon 7]

There is supposed to be a Beta Release soon and its a SERIOUS sweet bunch of features.

And that my dear is about all I can say

But there is some info out on the web that I can't comment on

http://www.zolknetwork.com/windows_longhorn.php

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/longhorn_alpha.asp

[kai2k1 0]

I own a DELL as well, i havent had so much as a blip out of it! I love my DELL.

There's no truer sense of flying than sky diving," Scott Cowan

[lummy 4]

I hope it's not Red Hat.. She's a dead horse....

I've set up a few FreeBSD boxes doing nothing but routing and firewalling. REad this . I used to run my home gateway thru an old Toshiba laptop that was a P166. Had Apache on it too.

I promise not to TP Davis under canopy.. I promise not to TP Davis under canopy.. eat sushi, get smoochieTTK#1

[RevJim 0]

Shweet, and Noice too. Off the record of course.....

It's your life, live it!
Karma
RB#684 "Corcho", ASK#60, Muff#3520, NCB#398, NHDZ#4, C-33989, DG#1

[RevJim 0]

Bingo!

Thanks Lumster. That will work nicely on the PII400 that will be doing routing and firewall duty.
Now, to finish the damn house so I can set it up!

It's your life, live it!
Karma
RB#684 "Corcho", ASK#60, Muff#3520, NCB#398, NHDZ#4, C-33989, DG#1

[bodypilot90 0]

Quote

The point to this is; If most of them are using the same components, go cheap, do regularly scheduled maintenance, and backup often. Even the best will shit the bed. And, figure that every couple of years, you're going to need a new one.

my HP 763n is year old never a problem. I do regularly scheduled maintenance, and backup often. Hope yours gets fixed soon

[indyz 1]

Quote

I'm looking to set up an internet proxy server in my new house. That would basically be it's only task. Know of any freeware - cheapware stuff out there for that purpose?

Do you want a router, or do you want a proxy? There is a significant difference. You can configure Linux or FreeBSD to act as a router doing NAT for Internet connection sharing. You can use a program like Squid to set up a web proxy.

If you want a router instead of a proxy, your best bet is to buy a ready built solution from Linksys or Netgear. They're small, they're easy to use, and you can get one that's plenty good for home use for under $100. And if you are sharing broadband, unless you have tons of users, there isn't really a great reason to spend the time and effort setting up a proxy. OTOH, if you are sharing a slower connection like ISDN or dialup, then a combination of a proxy and a router can help you more efficiently utilize your available bandwidth.

Edit: Spelling... and d'oh, didn't notice the flurry of posting while I was writing all of this.

[RevJim 0]

I already have a Linksys Etherfast router, which works great. Here, right now, there are only 2 computers hooked up.

the new house, well, I have my computer, my laptop for the road, my wife's computer, my wife's laptop (she uses it in the kitchen, bedroom, and on the couch, so i hardwired the whole friggin house, even the bathrooms), and each kid also has their own computer (4 kids). Theoretically, I could see 8 seperate connections to the proxy at any given time. I want to set up a proxy server. I also want to limit access to cetrain websites to certain users (porn to pre-teens, yahoo adult chat to teens, you get the picture).

It's your life, live it!
Karma
RB#684 "Corcho", ASK#60, Muff#3520, NCB#398, NHDZ#4, C-33989, DG#1

[indyz 1]

Squid has porn blacklists. Updates to blacklists are less reliable with freebies like this because, well, money is a great motivator and these guys aren't getting any. But hey, it costs a whole lot less than something like Websense.

What I'd do: Keep the Etherfast for doing NAT. Run the users into a 10/100 switch and uplink it to the Etherfast. Give the proxy a static IP and put it on the switch too. Configure the swtich to block outbound HTTP traffic, except for from the proxy. Get familiar with Squid's ACL system and build an access control system to suit my specific needs.