PC Rant Thread

[G-Benz]

No questions just a rant:

I think I may have stumbled on an ancient PC curse somehow.

I lost the boot sector on my hard drive on my PC about a month ago. After a slow week of recovery, it crashed again less than a week later. This time I decided the drive was faulty and went out and bought a new (and bigger) one. It's now up as we speak.

Same week, my wife notifies me that my daughter's PC won't boot (operating system not found). I can't even get that one to bring up the BIOS menu! Before I take a mallet to it, I check the cables in the case and one of the drive cables had worked loose...VOILA! It boots up fine...everything is ok.

Today, my dad calls me to tell me his 18-mo old Dell won't boot up. This, after talking to an offshore Dell support rep over the phone for a couple of hours, who gives up and tells him they can get him up and running for $200!

I talk him through the BIOS boot sequence changes and reinstall of XP and now he is humming along doing the rest of the recovery himself.

I'm now waiting for my laptop and my wife's workstation to get hit next...

[suginami]

When things like this happen to basically good people, my answer is always:

Your life would be better with a Mac. They are stable and they just work.

[boneheaddoctor]

DO regular backups of important data.....this will happen to all of us sooner than later.

[diametricalbenz]

Originally Posted by G-Benz

No questions just a rant:

I think I may have stumbled on an ancient PC curse somehow.

I lost the boot sector on my hard drive on my PC about a month ago. After a slow week of recovery, it crashed again less than a week later. This time I decided the drive was faulty and went out and bought a new (and bigger) one. It's now up as we speak.

Same week, my wife notifies me that my daughter's PC won't boot (operating system not found). I can't even get that one to bring up the BIOS menu! Before I take a mallet to it, I check the cables in the case and one of the drive cables had worked loose...VOILA! It boots up fine...everything is ok.

Today, my dad calls me to tell me his 18-mo old Dell won't boot up. This, after talking to an offshore Dell support rep over the phone for a couple of hours, who gives up and tells him they can get him up and running for $200!

I talk him through the BIOS boot sequence changes and reinstall of XP and now he is humming along doing the rest of the recovery himself.

I'm now waiting for my laptop and my wife's workstation to get hit next...

I have a NEW client now since she had the same useless results with Dell! She paid $200 to have them tell her...."we don't know what it is". Turns out it was the Symantec GO Back reloaded a bad backup image....Sheesh, I wish I was paid $200 per incident and I GET results. Even if the system is unsalvageable I can tell them what happened at the very least.

Computers are very much like cars. They have similar component problems. They overheat, the drives can die prematurely, they have electrical shorts, they have shock damage, cables tear, get wired backwards etc.

By the way, you can download updates for the BIOS on those Dells they often help stabilize problems with the board and I/O devices.

Out of curiosity, what brand of drive did you have in your system. A few systems I have fixed are Dell desktops with IBM 20GB drives that are only 20 months old and are now paperweights.

If you need any specific help or if other forum members do, save your money and shoot me an email and I will see if I can help.

[iwrock]

I get paid 35$ an hour to fix problems like this with my side job. Most problems are very easy, common fixes. If you do run into trouble, post a thread here, and I am sure that at least 10 percent of members here can help you with your problem.

I own/run a computer repair business as a side job. With my PC's, I barely have problems with them, as I maintain them regularly with updates and upgrades. I commonly have problems with dell's, hp's, compaq's, and Acer's. They are fairly basic problems, as it is just the bios not seeing a component. Ususally though, it is a printer not wanting to talk to the computer. They don't know you just have to restart it to take care of the most common problems.

[rg2098]

Originally Posted by suginami

When things like this happen to basically good people, my answer is always:

Your life would be better with a Mac. They are stable and they just work.

Amen to that. I trashed windoze 6 years ago and will never go back. Great example; New laser printer, plug it, click print, great document (mac). Windows XP, plug in, new hardware found, can't find drivers, won't install off disk, download new ones off manufacturer website, install, prints come out garbled, give up and transfer document to mac, click print, it prints. True story.

[TheDon]

reason why i am waiting for the intel powered macs i need the intel chip for my engineering programs

[MTI]

Originally Posted by TheDon

reason why i am waiting for the intel powered macs i need the intel chip for my engineering programs

How long have you been waiting . . . aren't the emulators (software or hardware) compatible?

[G-Benz]

Originally Posted by diametricalbenz

Out of curiosity, what brand of drive did you have in your system. A few systems I have fixed are Dell desktops with IBM 20GB drives that are only 20 months old and are now paperweights.

I'm a software developer so I am somewhat computer literate. I might ask my Dad about his hard drive when I get a chance, but listening to him reciting commands, I believe he has a 40GB drive. He lives several states away, so I had to talk him through the steps, not really knowing what his real error was.

Originally Posted by suginami

When things like this happen to basically good people, my answer is always:

Your life would be better with a Mac. They are stable and they just work.

amen brotha.

[diametricalbenz]

Originally Posted by G-Benz

I'm a software developer so I am somewhat computer literate. I might ask my Dad about his hard drive when I get a chance, but listening to him reciting commands, I believe he has a 40GB drive. He lives several states away, so I had to talk him through the steps, not really knowing what his real error was.

I have had problems with many of the IBM drives in both 2.5" and 3.5" IDE variety which is the reason I inquired. I stick with Western Digital drives, and use the old 4-8GB drives for recovery purposes and they're just as reliable as the 74GB Raptors which I might add are quite nice for PC's

Nonetheless XP and MS products in general still have their problems once the hardware is sorted out.

[suginami]

Originally Posted by MedMech

amen brotha.

Can I have a witness brotha, amen...

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by MTI

How long have you been waiting . . . aren't the emulators (software or hardware) compatible?

lets see you try to draw a part with a load of cuts and fillets and all the funny cad talk with an emulator.. i asked about it and even the windows guy said it'd be near impossible the lag would be horrible

[mac2]

Originally Posted by MTI

How long have you been waiting . . . aren't the emulators (software or hardware) compatible?

He won't be waiting much longer, Apple announced that they will switch most of their product line to intel in early 2006. Should be able to run both MacOS and :Shudder: Windows

[Botnst]

Originally Posted by TheDon

reason why i am waiting for the intel powered macs i need the intel chip for my engineering programs

You're screwed. Even if they go Intel, your software wont like the Mac.

Mac engineering and science software is lean--like Ethiopian lean. I use a PC at work because of that very issue. Stick with the PC. You know the hardware. You know the software. I doubt that the high-end sci/eng software will ever get ported. Too much legacy and too many software engineers within the software companies that are Mac-averse. Except maybe sound engineers. I think that's a Mac-dominated domain.

But I have Macs at home. In 2 minutes anybody is a Mac user.

Bot