I Hate Computers...

But cannot do what I do without them so...

My existing Dell desktop is continuing to have problems. Dell has been less than helpful in sorting out problems. First they said it was faulty memory and we replaced the 2GB memory. Didn't fix anything. Guess I shouldn't expect it to last more than 3 years 10 months. :-( So far have managed not to put my fist through the wall or toss the computer through the window. <~>

Anyway, I am about fed up with Dell. Looking for suggestions.

Plan to run Win XP which is what I have on all the other computers in the house. DO NOT want Vista

Need a pretty high performance machine as I am doing a lot with it including video and such. Had planned to up RAM to 4 GB, but then started with these problems.

Running dual widescreen monitors. They are fine, don't need to replace them.

Have a 2 drive RAID array, which has worked well to save my butt without interruption when one drive died.

Money is tight, no surprise. ETS Foundation is not exactly swimming in cash. Rather just fix the damn computer, but not having much luck with that. (I am NOT a techie type, computus ignoramus here, can follow directions, but...)

Suggestions welcome.

TIA,

More info in response to a post on another forum:

Sorry, was more looking for new computer suggestions.

Computer was giving me BSOD. After much effort, Dell said replace the memory, that didn't help. Still crashed, often on boot up, sometimes soon after. No patternb. We used the CD and tried a Windwoes Repair, but it won't reboot anymore after that. IOW, it wouldn't reboot at all after we did the repair and it reached the reboot point. Freezes up with the XP screen and the little blue things running across the screen. That's repeatable. At a friend's suggestion we installed a new copy of Windwoes in a new directory and it boots fine, but of course is naked and dosn't even see the second montior. That would seem to suggest Windwoes is corrupted, seems to me. Dell's answer is to reformat the hard drives and start from scratch. Given how much effort that would take, this computer took the better part of 1.5 weeks to get everything loaded and set up, rather just start with a new computer without a history of problems. :-( I do have, supposedly, full back ups, but who knows. My orevious luck withy those has been less than great. It's a Windwoes backup, no floppy, which supposedly means soemthing to someone who knows. Data is backed up online. I can see the C: drive using the new Windwoes and can likely copy it to a USB drive so I guess that's a good thing. <shrug>

Sounds like your having problems with the power supply and or motherboard not able to deliver enough amperage to the CPU or even possibly memory timings set incorrectly within the motherboard BIOS. Have you tried declocking the processor and the front side bus i.e. going from 266MHz to 166Mhz or from 166MHz to 100MHz etc by going into the BIOS and slowing doing the front side bus speed. The processor multiplier should be kept the same. This may make your system more stable and reduce the power that your PSU can't deliver. Also make sure your BIOS is setup for Plug and Play OS if running Windows XP. Normally you can get into the BIOS by pressing F1 F10 or ESC etc (depends on the motherboard make) just after booting the machine.

Making sure your motherboard drivers are up to date for the motherboard chipset can also help especially if they are defaulting to the generic Microsoft drivers.

There was probably nothing wrong with the memory, more likely the BIOS timings were set to aggressively.

Echo that, I'm leaning towards MoBo. General rule of thumb, if you pull a MoBo or power supply, pull them both out AND the RAM. But try the BIOS settings first.

That being said, I've seen a lot of Dell's just decide they don't like RAM any more. The RAM is usually still OK, but the glitch is on one of the controllers on the MoBo. When I did tech support in college we had them shipping us replacement parts pretty much weekly.

A NEW XP friendly computer is getting harder and harder to do unless you want to build your own. If you are going to buy one, don't do anything with any of the chains and big makers, spend a little more and find an independent who will work with you. The chains and builders is that they have deals with Meglosoft that bar them from putting XP on most machines these days. There was a special waiver for the netbooks and some other small, lower performance machines, and AFAIK, that's it.

Well, all that might mean something to a nerd, <g> but not so much to me. Just recall, it works just fine under the new Windows install. I really don't think there's anything really wrong with the damn hardware, just the frigging Windwoes got screwed up and the Windwoes rebuld made it worse. <shrug> We're working on figuring out how to do some sort of inline restore from an older copy of the backup, pre-FU, bearing in mind I'm computus ignoramus. Some thoughts that there's a corrupted driver involved and that's why the boot stalls. <shrug>

I have gone the independent builder route. Was not a happy experience, ended up in small claims.

You can still get Windwoes XP "downgrade" on business computers. With Dell we have a small business account. Most of the majors do that.

Like it or not, you will have to either

a) reinstall Windows

or

b) buy a new system

Either way you will have to spend another week and a half setting it up. Option (a) saves money, since it seems there is really nothing wrong with the PC.

Unfortunately there is no way to do this without expending any effort. No-one likes to be told that, but they all know it to be the case. You should have a better backup strategy so that if this happens you can quickly restore and get under way again (no-one likes to be told that either). RAID is not a backup strategy. Supposedly having a backup "but who knows?" is also not a backup strategy.

There are a few things you can do to get back to where you were. First, check the RAM. A good way to do this is with the free 'memtest' software. A good way to get this is to get hold of a Linux live CD such as Ubuntu or Mepis (or make your own bootable CD with only memtest on it). Run it overnight and see what it comes up with. Next, the quickest solution I can see is to just start using the new Windows install that you made. It works, so just add all the bits that are missing. Another thing, have you tried rolling back the drivers to a previous state? You might have to boot XP into safe mode, but I have never needed to do this, so I don't know the procedure. These days I run Linux.

HTH,

A

Option C: Shut down ETS, Knife Rights and all the rest and go get a job that I don't need a GD MF computer to do, like flipping burgers at McDonalds. Likely pays better as well.

Right now I am leaning towards C...seriously!

Aargh, I feel your pain, having recently run into a similar problem. I wanted to throw the thing against the wall. Wish I could help but it sounds like you know more than I do about these things. I could buy some ETS gear if that'll help fund repairs or replacement of your computer.

Try this;

http://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=5097

If this fails to resolve the problem, you could have permanently damaged sectors on the hard drive. Sometimes these are repairable (if only for a short period of time to allow you to back up the data from the damaged part of the hard drive)

To check for this, many Hard drive manufacturers will have a down-loadable utility such as the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics/health check utility to burn to a bootable CD to check the hard drive health as the hard drive might be approaching the wrong end of the bathtub curve.

Don't you have a tame geek nearby?

I'd gladly help, except I am in Korea.

A

Ok... I hate 'em too. Ours died a couple of years ago and I just couldn't get it fixed and had to buy a replacement. It's a good thing we had it as I got laid off and had to spend half a year job searching and it was a life saver. That said, when I got some money ahead this last year I got a Mac laptop and didn't look back. You can get by on the cheap but I would advise going for middle of the road and going with name brand. Get a new computer and rebuild.

I'll recommend you find a knowledgeable kid - some boy scout or rural area outdoor type in your area and they will be willing to help with all sorts of hands on computer assistance in exchange for some Equipped to Survive gear.... barter in other words. If you are really in a pickle, just let us know here and the group will rally - we will buy some stuff, toss a few bucks into the hat and what ever else it takes to support you like you have supported us with all the good gear, advice and this great site!

I'm in the land of the walleye (Minnesota) otherwise I would just stop by and try to help out. Anyone you can call on near by? Good luck and keep us posted and let us know what to do to help. McDonald's will thank us too I think....

Paul -

I realize you are frustrated, but since you're tight on cash, I would explore why the new windows version works fine. It does sound to me at least, the Windows Registry is corrupt. The only surefire way to fix it: reinstall.

I think your best bet is to find a knowledgeable geek as everyone has suggested. Maybe even go to one of those big-box stores and see if they can repair it for nothing!

Don't hate computers...Hate the operating system.

Then switch.

Any recent Mac can also run Windows. Often, faster and more reliably too.
Although god knows why anyone would want to continue accepting such abuse.

Yeah - I know where you're coming from. My job is computers and writing software, and they frustrate me too.

So to relax, I go upstairs and play the piano. Which happens to be, uhm, made by Roland. So it's a computer with an 88 key keyboard rather than the standard 101 key PC keyboard. Oh well, I do have an acoustic piano up there too, if I totally want to abandon the electronic world. Even the Nikon camera sitting next to me is ... a computer. That thing must have about 972 "keys" on it - front, back, top, sides - most of 'em I have no idea what they do.

Doug,

Two things....

I am currently in Austin Texas, want me to go put a rock thru Mike Dell's window?


Can you say MAC???? They can now run windows mind you. Four in our house and they are going strong. And if anyone can foul up a computer, it's my kids.

PS: For work, I HAVE to have a PC. I am back in the field consulting for wireless companies. I just last friday destroyed an HP from vibration. (it's mounted in my F350.) I went to a Panasonic Toughbook CF30. Thick as a brick and twice as heavy, but almost indestructible. I got a demo from a company here in Texas. I know where some more are. Going for about half price.

get my email from the records and shoot me a note if you have questions.

My laptop is a Toughbook.

Not doing the Mac thing. Can't afford it, both cost and time to get it all going with everything else.

I've played with Macs and been plenty pissed at them as well.

All my tame geeks grew up and now manage geeks or found a life. Side effect of getting old.

Some of the dells you can plug a USB stick in and it works as RAM.
A very cheap way of adding it!
The Sock

I generally suggest avoiding the "find a knowledgeable kid" route. If it is something simple, like swapping a bad network card or RAM, sure, ok, that they can do. If you need to set up or integrate with an existing network, be sure you don't lose critical data, or deal with any kind RAID, it is often beyond their knowledge.

When I was doing consumer tech support, about a third of what I did started with "my kid tried to fix it".

I just one of our geeks was closer, Doug.

Do you have a tech store nearby? Maybe it would be a good time for us to donate to ETS...

I know you said you are fed up with Dell, but the Dell Outlet has some options at decent prices. I have purchased a few systems through the outlet and have been satisfied. Also, Vista isn't that bad once you get used to and will likely come on any system you purchase, you can always wipe it and install XP when you get the system though assuming you have the XP software.

http://www.dell.com/content/segmenter.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dfo

Good Lord, Doug, I wish I was there to lend a hand, or a shoulder, or my Super Redhawk with 300 grain JHPs as a "final solution".

Any company makes bad and good models, don't dismiss one company just becase of a bad model.
If your really relying on your computer then look at the business models rather then the home models, those have better supoort and less "free" stuff loaded on them.

it is a "small business" model, had the great warranty that wasn't worth much in the end. The big issue has been the poor quality Dell support, not so much the computer.

The small business ends up being a greay area, some of those models are the home pc's and some are the business pc's so you tend to get random support centers. If it was an inspiron for example even though it may show up in the small business menu it still gets the home support call center. Any other brand does the same thing.
Though your problems sounds more like a windows than a computer problem. If you really don't want to buy a new computer and don't want to format the drive thas in there spend $50 on a new drive and stick it in then reinstall. Then if its stable buy a $20 usb enclosure and stick your old drive in it then copy the data over. I do that myself and the old drive becomes the backup and after I'm back and running normally then it gets the data copied to it and goes in the gun safe.

...is the right answer.

You still have to do the 1.5 weeks of effort to set it all up. If you'd started yesterday you'd be one day closer.

A

And as you do it put all your cd's and dvd's in order and put them in a nice binder, remember blasts binder, do that but along with your important papers put all your software. Even better copy as much as you can on to one dvd to consolidate it and have it all in one place. Then if/when you do need to rebuild everything should be right in place. If you rely on computers for anything then this is as important as keeping your first aid or water or food rotated and fresh. I have a nice document listing everything important to me as well as any software I've installed. Now this is a little easier for me since I just have the os restore cd that came with my netbook, linux distro that I use, one with the garmin software I've bought and one more with openoffice, firefox, thunderbird etc. In a survival situation like NOLA you may be forced to rebuild your system since it could be lost to fire/flood/theft/etc and you need to have everything available as well as have practice rebuilding it. This is one reason I swap in a new drive every couple years just to make sure my docs are up to date and that I can recover.

Doug,

I'll chime in here with the sad news that a 4 year old computer is actually OLD and you need to get ready to say goodbye.

Unless you're running really advanced video editing stuff, you actually don't need a lot of processor power. RAM is the magic, and if you want a lot of RAM you need a modern OS that can talk to all of it well - like Windows 7 or - dare I say it - Mac OS X..

But the real issue here sounds mostly like a hardware durability issue, and in that area, we're quite happy with HP hardware these days. I run a system at work that's used for high-end data visualization and we've got some kind of fancy Nvidia card, 2 drive RAID and 4GB of ram in there and it's on 24/7 crunching numbers and no problems at all.

We also - like others have suggested - build our own systems from time to time. Decent motherboards, RAM and especially a solid cooling system is all a good idea.

But have a look at the HP stuff, you might find a system you'll be happy with.

I'm with Mike_m on this one, Dell Outlet has some unbeatable deals on systems (defn: I can't build an equivalent PC for less $ from newegg or fry's). Its a bit late but I recommend you purchase a service option for your next PC, while it may double your outlay a. it will still cost less than a Mac :-) and b. if your PC goes on the fritz Dell sends a local tech to your home to triage, replace or repair. My disclaimer: I've never bought the service option myself but it has worked well for one distant aunt who reads email but can't deal with the innards of a PC. Nor do we expect her to.

Doug,

I am a programmer and network consultant and I live in the Phoenix area. I personally have had great luck with HP's notebooks, and since Service Pack 1, Vista has been quite stable. If I can be of any assistance to you, please PM or email me.

There's a lot of misinformation here:



Not true. It was adequate when purchased and is adequate now. A problem has occurred that is most likely software.



Hmm, so he doesn't need a lot of processing power... so I'd suggest that something 4 years old is adequate. And the claim that only a modern OS will 'talk to' all of your RAM properly is ludicrous. Not to mention that Windows 7 is not actually available yet.



'Quite stable' is praise indeed, but he doesn't want it. And for every person who has great luck with HP's notebooks there is probably 0.15 of a person that has been severely disappointed by them. When did we start talking about notebooks? What has happened here is that the OS has become unstable and must be re-installed. Doug says this will take 1.5 weeks. Doug doesn't want to do this. Too bad. It will also take 1.5 weeks on a new or replacement PC (whether purchased, donated, or provided by Dell under some warranty).

So, the plan of action should be:

1) Test the RAM. I recommend running memtest overnight.

2) Reinstall the OS. Actually, this has already been done, and it works. It just needs 1.5 weeks of effort to get it to the state it was in before. Eugene's suggestion is even better, since it eliminates the possibility of a bad hard drive, allows a clean install without affecting what was already there, allows for an orderly process to copy data from the old drive to the new one *and* provides something of a backup.

Finally, I mentioned rolling back the driver, but I don't know how to do it. I still don't know, but have you tried this (How to Restore Windows XP to a Previous State)?

A

Thanks for the offer, I may contact you.

Not sure where anyone got the idea this is a notebook. It's a desktop.

You'd probably freak out at the old P-III 1Gz 768kb machine I'm typing this on right now! Yes, it's a Dell, a Dimension 4100 - and I bought refurbished at that. I don't even remember HOW old it is (10 years?) but it just keeps going and going. All original parts, including the fans. I have upgraded the original OS (Windows 95 I think).

I'll admit it's the oldest of our seven (!) computers, but it works fine for what I require of it. Windows 2000, Firefox, Thunderbird, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Visio, Photoshop Elements, iTunes, The Sims game (my kids), Warcraft III, etc. I have other newer and more powerful computers, but no reason to trash this one. I don't expect to edit videos on it, but I have other computers that could do that (not that I actually edit videos!) I also sometimes run a minimal Linux on it (totally running in memory, not from harddisk or CD) and it runs like a scalded ape in that configuration. It's a workhorse.

I'm chiming in late on this, so most of my thunder has already been stolen. Aside from the video editing you mentioned, I don't think you really need much in the way of hardware for the tasks you mentioned. More memory is always better, storage/processor appropriate to the task.
All that said, it does sound like an OS issue. I generally keep my data in a couple different places (server, external hard drive) and the really critical data (vital docs and family photos) also on several encrypted USB thumb drives. With a setup like that, I don't feel so bad when I need to nuke from orbit and start over.
Fortunately if you do go the route of purchasing, you get a lot of bang for your buck these days. I just got a $200 netbook that beats the pants off the desktop I bought 13 years ago for $1600.

Oh, and I am also happy to help with questions and/or monetary donations toward new equipment. I appreciate what you and ETS do for the preparedness community.

I have found that if you're a casual web/email forwarder/digital picture manager then yeah, an old computer is fine.
I tend to push all my computers to the limit and I am VERY impatient with all of them. If you're impatient, RAM matters a lot (contrary to the other person who suggested that processor matters) because more ram means less trips to the disk for swap space and the trip to disk and back is usually slower than the time it takes for a processor to mull over something and come back with something else.

Just to give you my perspective on this.

At work, I typically have 10 to 15 applications running at once, on two large monitors. My "desktop" is usually configured as 3,840 Pixels by 1200 Pixels for my main computer, plus I have a laptop, another desktop for certain secure applications and I also access an array of test systems remotely. So my perspective is from a position of big jobs need big hardware.

But it's also from a perspective about old systems that comes from having a lot of them around. For most people, older systems, and yes, it's older WINDOWS systems, get flakier and stranger over time, and the answer always seems to be re-install Windows, and the problem with that is it takes a week for things to stabilize after a re-install and unless you're like me - so obsessed with protecting my data from computers - you're going to have to rebuild a lot of your file organization and storage, not to mention application settings and all that.

I make a living with my computer, and my time is worth money and faced with a week of lost productivity and hours of twiddling settings, I'll take the hit and dump a system that is exhibiting signs of brain rot, wipe the drive with an install of Ubuntu and give the darn thing away or move it into a non-important part of my life (like the workshop).

Definitely agree on the "old Windows box = increasing brain rot" statement. I think that's what Doug is running into, not a hardware issue. It is rare to get more than two years of performance out of a Windows system without having to reinstall the OS. Not "repair" it ... reinstall it clean from scratch. And it does take a few days to get everything back to normal after that. I keep all my documents, important data, printers, photography, music, etc. on a Slackware Linux box and make that available to the Windows boxes via samba. The routine Windows OS reinstallations on the client computers are less painful that way, but still painful. However, I do admit some glee in walking up to one of my Windows boxes on it's deathbed and running "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=63" from a LiveCD. There's something immensly satisfying in doing that!

OK folks, I love the concept of a $400-$500 computer, BUT I never seem to be able to get there.

Based on comments about HP, I went over to HP Small Business and configured a computer pretty comparable in the features to what I have now, less the keyboard, mouse and **dual monitors** which I'd keep. I selected a processor from middle of the pack, no idea what a best value pick would be, whether there's any advantage for me to going up to a Core Duo Quad processor. I do hate waiting, that is a trade-off I realize. I upgraded the video card to more or less what I have now, I think, with required dual monitor support, I think. I moved up to 4 GB RAM, as had planned to do on the current machine.

See it here: http://tinyurl.com/ysav3

I don't want to buy something and then start mucking with it to get where I need to be. That is time and trouble I don't need and then warranty becomes an issue. Many of you might be comfortable with basic warranty, you are comfortable digging into the damn thing when it breaks, which it will. I very much prefer they jump to fixing the damn thing when it breaks. Every penny I've paid in warranty has been a good investment, dollar-wise. Though the service from Dell under warranty has been less than stellar of late, they eventually got it fixed previous times it died. If I have problems, I need someone else to fix it ASAP. Whether I'd need the 24/7 4hr option is debatable. <shrug> but the 3/3/3/next business day is my minimum. Since it is hard drives and motherboards that seem to go most frequently, I want those covered, which means buying the HDs OEM.

While I obviously need to come up with a better back-up plan than Windwoes, the RAID 1 in the current computer saved my butt when I needed it too, allowing me to finish a critical project on time. If I decide to get a new computer, that project paid for this computer, though I still would prefer not spending money these days. I wish HP offered larger drives, but 500GB is double what I have now. If I proceed, I may look at DELL again as well, but..... <~>

I just want a reliable, FAST computer with enough memory to not slow me down, RAID HD for quick recovery from HD disaster (BTDT) and good responsive warranty service when I need it.

This computer has worked fine for 4 years under Windwoes XP. No reloads, etc.

My primary software, from memory, is:

Office Pro 2003 w/ serious heavy duty Powerpoint presentations
Corel Photopaint (an older version, works great, I prefer it to Photoshop)
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Acrobat Pro
Adobe Premier
Adobe Illustrator
Homesite
Dreamweaver
CAD stuff, mostly as readers
ACDSee
Eudora (probably moving to Outlook soon)
Firefox
avast! AV and some other such complimentary software
Skype
Carbonite
There are 160 programs in the Program directory, including a bunch of small utilities and programs to make me more productive, many of which are semi-ancient, but work well for what I do.

I expect to be doing much more video work going forward, so that woudl help drive requirements.

Here's what was configured at the above link, in case it doesn't work:

-Configurable- HP Compaq dx7500 Microtower PC FN838AV
-Configurable- HP Compaq dx7500 Microtower PC
Genuine Windows Vista® Custom Downgrade to XP Pro
Intel® Q45 chipset integrated
HP dx7500 Country Kit Includes a Quick Setup & Getting Started manual in English and a country-specific power cord.
Intel® Core 2 Duo E8600 (3.33GHz L2-6MB) processor
4GB PC2-6400 (DDR2-800) 2x2GB
ATI Radeon HD 3650 (512MB, DVI-I, (2) DisplayPort ) PCIe x16 Graphic Card
Integrated 1394 Port
HP 500GB SATA NCQ HDD SMART IV Hard Drive
HP Backup and Recovery Manager Software standard
HP 500GB SATA NCQ HDD SMART IV 2nd Hard Drive
RAID 1 Configuration (If RAID Configuration is selected, both hard drive 1 and hard drive 2 are required and must be the same capacity hard drive)
HP 22-in-1 3.5" Media Card Reader
SATA 16X SuperMulti LightScribe drive
No keyboard
No Mouse
Genuine Windows Vista® Business32 System Recovery DVD Kit
No Item Selected
HP 3-3-3 (parts/labor/next business day on-site) warranty Microtower

$1,132.02 plus shipping, etc.

3-year 24x7, 4-hour response on-site coverage, desktop only (electronic) (for 3-year warranty selection only) ADD: $159.00

Thoughts and comments welcome.

May I suggest running every thing important off an external hard drive? I run two laptops and a netbook. Both laptops are second hand. I also pay very close attention to the windows update's and to my antivirus updates. Ignore them and watch your computer die.

Hi Doug -

Looks like a nice computer setup you've configured.

One thing to remember (you probably already know this): RAID can only protect you from disk failures. Human or software errors are not helped by RAID (say you accidently delete a file, a virus infects a file, or a program corrupts a file). For those types of errors - which are actually more common than disk failures - you cannot rely on RAID. You need to have backups. Do not consider RAID as your "backup". It is not.

Sorry - I don't mean to preach. But many people don't understand this. They say "I have RAID, so I don't need to backup my data." This is very very wrong.

1. Good system you configured.
2. Sorry, but to the point of "mucking with it" - a computer is - by far - the most complex device you'll ever own- for comparison, the computers in most aircraft are FAR simpler (the B2 Bomber runs a 286 based processor. yes, a 286)

In many ways, the car analogy is weak for computers, that said, I don't think most of us would attempt a transmission rebuild on our own, and in the same way, I think a lot of the guts of a computer are best left to people who are paid professionals.

So, "good system," but.... Take a look here:

http://tinyurl.com/po7qwu

and tell me if one of the other processor choices would be better/better value.

In the dropdown for CPU, four lines below the cpu you've chosen, is a "Promo Core 2 Quad" that is the same price as the cpu you selected. It says "free upgrade after instant savings of $100".

I saw that, but note it's 2.66 GHz vs 3.33 GHz, so it isn't clear to me that it is better/faster for what I do/the software I use.

Basically the central processor chip can now have multiple processors cores built into the silicon chip (a core is effectively another processor core, i.e the original Pentium 4 etc just had 1 processor core) so although the Q8200 runs at a slower speed it has 4 processors compared to the E7500s 2 processor cores.

4 x 2.66 Ghz (10.64) is > 2 x 2.80 GHz (5.60) so roughly around 80% faster


This is better for a multi-threaded operating system such as Windows XP and Vista. (if using the PC for video work, one of the cores would work uninterrupted carrying out video rendering, whilst you work on a spreadsheet for example)

An analogy would be comparing a slightly slower 4 cylinder auto engine to a slighty faster 2 cylinder; i.e. more power and smoother operation.

Edit - updated the processor speeds for the E7500 which runs @ 2.8Ghz

You realize that running everything from an external disk provides no benefit and just makes the system slower since your now reading all your data though a (slower) usb connection.

Oh. My mistake. I thought you were looking at the E7500 CPU, not the E8600 CPU. That's what the configurator webpage showed, but I guess that was the default CPU, not the one you chose (I should have read your post closer - I just went directly to the HP configurator).

I can't tell you which would be better: a dual 3.3Ghz w/6Mb cache or a quad 2.3Ghz w/4Mb cache. My gut tells me the quad, but I really don't know. Hopefully somebody here can give you a definitive answer.

I was incorrectly thinking you were considering the 2.8Ghz dual w/3Mb cache. I'm fairly certain the quad would beat that handily.

If your going HP, I'd go with one of these
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/12454-12454-64287-321860-3328896-3658081.html

Before the HP/Compaq merger I worked for a reseller and I would get on my reps for both companies about there SOHO systems. At the time they were taking the Presario and Pavilion lines and selling them in office supply stores. So small businesses would go buy one then when they had a problem get upset over the offshore support and go to the dealer locator and find a company like mine. They would then get upset because they would have to pay for someone to come to their office for warranty work so I would try to explain the difference between the presario/pavilion lines and the deskpro/vectra and how the small/home machines didn't have any onsite warranty where thee true business machines did.
Its like any other gear/tool, if your going to rely on it then you need to get something fit for the job. Imagine if UPS ran little hondas instead of aluminum box trucks how many more trips they would need to make to haul everything and how quickly they would wear them out, thats why they designed a big box truck. When your computing needs get to where you can't function without that systenm then you need to start looking at the system thats designed to be run longer.

Actually thats what I would assume as well, but according to Tom the Duo 3.3Ghz wins out. (the 3.1GHz E8500 is shown compared to the Quad Q8200 model, so the E8600 would most likely have the edge over the Q2800. I suspect power consumption would be somewhat similar)

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/athlon-64-power,review-31544-6.html

But the Q8200 certainly wins out over the E7500;

I myself would go for the Q8200 and save $189 for the little difference in performance compared to the E8600 and spend the difference on a Network Attached Storage (NAS) for network storage backup such as the BUFFALO 500gb Linkstation mini NAS 250gb x 2 raid 0/1 DLNA Gigabit Ethernet for around $220

http://www.eworldsale.com/buffalo-500gb-...5760_25745.html

There is no need to reinstall and set up everything when your system is corrupted or slow. All it takes is to make images of the system disk or partition at the beginning (after the first Win installation) and before any significant change. Then you can restore the system from those images with all (or a lot of) of your settings (depending how old the image is). You do not have to install and setup single application. There are several free and commercial applications specilaized for this like Seagate DiscWizard (free if you have Seagate hard drive), DriveImage XML (free), Acronis TrueImage (commercial), Norton Ghost (commercial) etc. The commercial sw has some features that might be very important but it depends how your PC is set up.

I haven´t tested the restoring process yet because I have never needed it but I backup system disk images on a regular basis (before any significant change etc.). I´m using Seagate DiscWizard now. I think full system backup (disk image) is the best solution for OS failures/slowdown.

Maybe if you change hardware components a lot you will have to reinstall system from your Win CD and setup everything again though. I am not sure.

While there are many vendors of fine imaging programs, and certainly they work, XP itself has a perfectly usable restore function that allows the user to do the much the same thing.

Also the general description of the trouble seems to include both the normal, appalling but normal, deterioration of Windows over time, and a possible infection by one of the nastier trojans, like Virtumonde.

The wording of the issues seems to indicate that the major faults multiplied rapidly to complete disability. Which might indicate it is more likely to be an infection by malware rather than the sloppy nature of the Windows code. Windows does get unstable over time but, for the most part, the deterioration tends to slow the system and induce many small glitches that over time build to serious problems.

Doug,

Based on our extensive testing of dual core vs. quad cores you don't really get the advantage of quad cores unless you're running true multi-threaded applications. None of the ones I saw on your list are really going to take advantage of the extra processors. Most of the time the extra processors are just sitting idle. We have noted that multiple CPU graphics cards actually give more bang for the buck.

Having tested HP's and Dell's side by side I've come to the opinion that I'd rather have an HP. They seem better built, their on-site service is better and they last longer and generally perform better.

For a limited set of test results you can go here,

Andy,

That makes very interesting reading.

Thanks!

I'll buy your premise, but not clear why that model is better than the dx7500 I based my configuration on. All the model numbers are confusing. Don't see any names.

Doesn'gt seem to have RAID available. Even without that loks like 50% more money. That's a huge increase.

You are right, XP has some system backup options but I wouldn´t call them perfectly usable. For example restore points are unreliable - they can get deleted if system runs out of free space, they can get corrupted etc. and I believe they are useless when the system won´t boot or if it´s attacked by some malware (correct me if I am wrong). I once needed to go back to restore point I had created before but it wasn´t there, it just disappeared.

Another option would be to use NTBackup and backup the whole registry. It could work but I have no experience with this so I don´t know if it´s bullet proof method. But I am exploring this option right now. (I wish I had one more computer just for testing.)

As for the malware and Windows deteoriation that´s exactly why I mentioned disk imaging because it´s the most reliable solution for these problems. It´s almost like reinstalling your system from scratch except that all your settings and software will be there. The drive will be completely overwritten by the data from image so any malware gets deleted. Those disk imaging programs work even if Windows won´t boot.

If your system is slowing down over time you can just choose one of the early images (from your archive) that contains data describing how your system once was (fast and clean) and get back to it.

As far as I know Windows doesn´t slow down by itself. It is caused by installing and uninstalling applications, changing drivers, malware etc. If you use the same system with your main well written applications, without any "registry cleaners", without installing and uninstalling anything new, without browsing web, if you defragment the drives on a regular basis etc. then the system will be like new all the time. But that´s not always possible. That´s why it´s good to have disk image and to be able to restore the system.

Of course you have to plan in advance and decide what the image should contain (what are your main applications, how will you set up them and what can be excluded, which drivers are proven etc.).

The ones on this page are $500-$600 where the one you listed before was over $1000.
What do you need raid for?

It's at this point that I start filling the cylinder and give it a quick spin before snapping it shut, drawing a bead, pulling back the hammer, and concentrate on my breathing...

Any time I venture off into uncharted computer territory, the first thing I do before ever looking at equipment or software is find someone who knows what the heck they are doing that has or is doing what I want to do and glean all the information from them I can and maybe ask them for advice, assistance, or supervision. Research into what has proven successful is always my preferred starting point.

Or just do the option I said, if you fear touching your data then just pull the drive and put a new one in and plug in the vendor's restore cd.

I already answered that question. I'd appreciate it if you could read through the posts where I explain what I need in terms of performance, features and warranty and it should be clear why and why a $500 computer doesn't fullfil the requirements.

Back to the original question, what makes this one worth half again more?

TIA,

Easy for you to say. Want to come over and try that?

If you were close by I would. Its really pretty easy, the drive will have a couple cables plugged in and a couple screws holding it together. The hardest part is opening the computer case since there isn't any standard there, some the panel will remove, some there are screws, some the whole case opens in half. The most seasoned it person will sometimes have problems opening a pc they haven't seen before.

Sorry, too many threads on too many forums, after a day or two I can't recall what was said in what page of what thread, the one your looking at is the tinyurl link to the $1100 hp still right, thats the only one I see.

Have you considered the option of haveing one built by a local pc shop, this way any support you need is right there. If you do want name brand there are local shops that will do those too, I used to work for one, we did mostly government but sold to smaller businesses too. Some of those small local companies will donate time and/or parts to organizations such as yours, I did a couple donation jobs myself.

This is an interesting article on the capability of multiple core processor is available here and gives some interesting information on various benchmark testing.

It all depends on the software application and whether the software is capable of multiple threads for quad core support;

Video editing software such as Corel VideoStudio Pro X2;

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/u...mp;tabview=tab0

benefits from Quad Cores having quad core support. A free trial for 30 days might be useful for testing if you intend to edit High Def Video such as 1080i and 720p video and even has Blue Ray writing support for archiving HD video.

Well, it's been about 1.5 weeks since you reported the problem. If you had re-formatted and re-installed you'd be done by now, so what solution did you finally adopt, and how are you getting on?

A

I didn't want to go to Vista either, but I have to admit that my fears were unjustified. As long as you have the power to run it, Vista is as good as any other MS product. (Ha! It's actually better.)

I was also replacing an old Dell, and wanted to avoid the layered crap software that comes packed on every mass-produced machine now (free trials of a dozen things I never wanted).

I bought a refurbished Velocity Micro. It's set up for gaming, but that also gives me the power to handle photos and video. It has 4Gb of RAM and quad processors (2 dual processors running parallel, to be exact) and a smoking video card. It came loaded with Vista 64bit Pro and NOTHING ELSE. It boots in about 12 seconds flat.

$800. $5 shipping. That's with no peripherals, but I had everything else. I did go buy a nice new monitor to take advantage of that video card, though. I got mine through one of the deal-of-the-day sites (1saleaday.com). dodtracker.com is a good place to start, or, as others have said, get a local shop to build you a machine.

The only peripheral for which there was no Vista 64bit driver was my scanner, but that was 10 years old and free, so I was not heartbroken about needing to upgrade. I run a home network with older machines using various versions of Windows OS, and have started to stick my toe into Linux, and so far (six months in) there are no glitches. Don't fear the Vista.

My semi-retired resident geek finally took pity on me and said he'd give it a shot. I dropped it off Tuesday. If he can sort it out by next week, great. Otherwise, I'll probably bite the bullet and buy a new one and have it shipped while I am on the road for a couple weks coming up. Really don't want to do that, but...

FWIW:

If you have to buy a system, settle on the dual core processor. It is worth the performance and your applications can utilize it. Skip the quad-core processor. For RAM, the 32-bit version of Win XP can only take advantage of about 3MB of RAM. The rest will be unused, but there is no harm in having it installed.

Regardless if you buy a system or not, invest in some disk imaging software, like those that have been mentioned earlier. Image your system onto an external hard drive or some DVDs when you get your system back. Or if you buy a new one, image it the first day you get it, install all of the applications, updates and stuff you want and take another disk image. Then maintain some form of regular backups and annual disk images as software changes. That way you can always restore yourself back to a known good state in little time.

Good luck!

Exactly, anyone who works on computer should come up with his own good backup plan. As far as backup software is concerned if your budget is low you can get decent free solutions. But if you don´t like fiddling with too much software and combining it, buy some complete backup/imaging solution, it´s worth it.
In my opinion one of the essential things is to install the system on its own partition or better separate HDD and save all your data to the second HDD/partition. This means that your data will be independent of the system. You can even relocate "my documents" directory to another partition. If anything happens with the system you can restore or reinstall it and your data remain itact.
As far as backup hardware is concerned at least one external HDD for mirroring your data on regular basis is must.

If the "things" are pixels or such across most or all of the screen that points to the video system.

If the "things" are the "Knight Rider" panning blocks XP always displays when booting then it doesn't point to the video system.


If you *did* install a driver for your video system and the second display wasn't seen then that may point to the video system.

If you *didn't* install a video driver then not seeing the second display is reasonable.

Make sure the fans are turning and that there isn't a lot of dust in the computer.

Just keep in mind RAID is not backup. My description is that backup makes sure good data is available somewhere (even if recovery is a nuisance) whereas RAID makes sure your trashed files are always immediately available. Entirely different goals. Arrange good backup first, then worry about RAID after backup is solved.


My MacBook Pro runs faster with an external 1394b disk than the internal disk. Any eSATA connector ought to be as fast with an external disk as any internal disk.


I call this deterioration "barnacles" - Windows updates over Windows patches etc, add-ons like Flash accumulating over time, multiple printer drivers, etc. Any Windows system accumulates barnacles over time which makes it slower as time goes by, causing little failures that grow until it doesn't work at all any more.