advice for a PC noob

Stiv · January 09, 2009, 07:19:27 PM

Quote from: delooch on January 09, 2009, 04:45:07 PM
Quote from: Stiv on January 09, 2009, 07:52:14 AMYour original install included Drivers. You will want to get all of your drivers before you whack it.
Monitor, Modem, Printer - what else guys?
your docs should be where you stated, depending on the user. make sure your girl isnt saving things in the root dir or on another partition. I lost 2 years of my wifes school work once, she still doesnt let me forget it..

This is no joke. My better half could care less where she puts stuff. She asked for my help the other day when she saved a doc to an invisible folder within the system folder. Click, click, click - oops now where did that doc go?

Chelle · January 09, 2009, 07:30:06 PM

Quote from: Stiv on January 09, 2009, 07:19:27 PM
Quote from: delooch on January 09, 2009, 04:45:07 PM
Quote from: Stiv on January 09, 2009, 07:52:14 AMYour original install included Drivers. You will want to get all of your drivers before you whack it.
Monitor, Modem, Printer - what else guys?
your docs should be where you stated, depending on the user. make sure your girl isnt saving things in the root dir or on another partition. I lost 2 years of my wifes school work once, she still doesnt let me forget it..

This is no joke. My better half could care less where she puts stuff. She asked for my help the other day when she saved a doc to an invisible folder within the system folder. Click, click, click - oops now where did that doc go?

Hee. This is where I am lucky. Ken has no computer skills. He NEVER touches this thing.

frailer · January 10, 2009, 12:10:38 AM

Quote from: delooch on January 09, 2009, 04:45:07 PMI lost 2 years of my wifes school work once, she still doesnt let me forget it..

...but for you it was a helpful "learning experience", right? :evil:

delooch · January 10, 2009, 09:56:15 AM

yeah, i learned to wait to spark up until AFTER the important stuff is done.

she doesnt let me touch her laptop anymore. its a bittersweet victory!

Joe · January 10, 2009, 12:03:53 PM

Hey delooch, I'm downloading the Windows 7 beta right now. Microsoft has released it for public use. I've got an older 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 I'm going to try it on. How much memory does the PC you are using have in it?

delooch · January 11, 2009, 01:43:16 PM

I have one AMD 1700 lappy with 512 mb its running on with no problem. That one has some generic intel video chipset, so it doesnt do all the aero features, but it still runs smoothly. - this one is primarily used as a portable dvd/media player for the kids, nothing to intensive.

The other is a dell lapptop with a dual core intel 1.83 w/1GB, ati x1400 mobility. - flawless. the only setback so far is i cant get my touch scroll to work on the touchpad, but its not i biggie. all the other vista/xp drivers have been working well- i just picked up 2GB ram off of pricewatch.com for it for $24 shipped, just in case.

ive been throwing large files at it with CS3 and no issues so far. Im not sure what they did to axe that Vista overhead, but so far i have to say that i like it. its nice on the eyes and runs smooth. i hope in a few months the final release will hit.

Joe · January 11, 2009, 02:12:52 PM

I've not had any luck installing it. Every time it gets to the "Expanding files" part it just hangs up and finally aborts. Trying a fresh install on an empty 80 gb hard drive with 1.25 gb ram. It shouldn't be this difficult and it's not enhancing Microsoft's reputation in my eyes at this point.

delooch · January 11, 2009, 07:32:38 PM

strange. i thought it was the smoothest and quickest install ever. it did take a little longer on the 1.7ghz amd, but i figured it was the 512mb ram, as disk cashing will always be windows mortal enemy. the experience ive had on my dell laptop has almost made me change my mind about MS, so far ive been very impressed, hence my "on windows7 nuts" attitude. Time will tell though, who knows what they will squeeze in the final release.

the original beta i grabbed was a pre-release snagged from the torrent world, but it appears to be the same distro as whats available on MS website today. I grabbed an official release this afternoon, ill try it out on a VM and see if theres a difference.

there is a 'patch' floating around which kills the time-activation service to let it run past the 30 days.

delooch · January 11, 2009, 08:19:01 PM

Quote from: Stiv on January 09, 2009, 07:19:27 PM
Quote from: delooch on January 09, 2009, 04:45:07 PMyour docs should be where you stated, depending on the user. make sure your girl isnt saving things in the root dir or on another partition. I lost 2 years of my wifes school work once, she still doesnt let me forget it..

This is no joke. My better half could care less where she puts stuff. She asked for my help the other day when she saved a doc to an invisible folder within the system folder. Click, click, click - oops now where did that doc go?

back to saving to strange places:

I had her dump all of the stuff she wanted to keep in a folder on her desktop, simple enough. she 'said' it was all there.

what she really had done was place shortcuts in the folder to where the files actually resided. so when it came to restore time, there were mostly dead links and a few files/folders.

Joe · January 11, 2009, 10:34:36 PM

Quote from: delooch on January 11, 2009, 07:32:38 PMstrange. i thought it was the smoothest and quickest install ever. it did take a little longer on the 1.7ghz amd, but i figured it was the 512mb ram, as disk cashing will always be windows mortal enemy. the experience ive had on my dell laptop has almost made me change my mind about MS, so far ive been very impressed, hence my "on windows7 nuts" attitude. Time will tell though, who knows what they will squeeze in the final release.

the original beta i grabbed was a pre-release snagged from the torrent world, but it appears to be the same distro as whats available on MS website today. I grabbed an official release this afternoon, ill try it out on a VM and see if theres a difference.

there is a 'patch' floating around which kills the time-activation service to let it run past the 30 days.

Well, I tried it for 2 days and have finally given up. It's an older PC. No SATA, just older ATA drives. A simple 1.8 GHz Pentium 4. I tried burning 3 different DVD's at the slowest speed possible, 3 different brands of media, even copied to the HD and tried installing from there. All no goes. Hangs at expanding files until it eventually times out. Nice work MS...

delooch · January 13, 2009, 12:55:21 PM

Looks like i drew 2 lucky straws Joe..

The "official" beta distribution would not install on my VM, it choked while decompressing. It may be the VM environment, but talking to a couple of IT guys here, its been hit and miss with their installations as well.

looks like its the same old MS, wrapped in a prettier package.

Joe · January 13, 2009, 01:03:26 PM

Quote from: delooch on January 13, 2009, 12:55:21 PMLooks like i drew 2 lucky straws Joe..

The "official" beta distribution would not install on my VM, it choked while decompressing. It may be the VM environment, but talking to a couple of IT guys here, its been hit and miss with their installations as well.

looks like its the same old MS, wrapped in a prettier package.

Cruised the MS technet forums and came across info about memory stick problems.

I got it to install. The PC I was using only had 768 mb of ram and the minimum says 1 gb needed so I went to my buddies PC shop and he gave me a used 512 mb stick to use so I had a total of 1.25 gb and it would not install. Finally removed the used 512 mb stick he gave me and voila...it installed without issue. The used stick worked fine in the PC for XP but Win 7 puked over it. After I did the install I put the 512 stick back in Win 7 would not boot. Took it back out and it boots fine. Conclusion: Win 7 is very picky over memory chips.

Overall it seems a lot better than Vista. It's as fast or faster than XP on the same machine and it works with 768 mb memory which is less than the recommended memory configuration. My video card isn't up to snuff either and it still isn't bad. I could imagine on new hardware this thing might run well.

delooch · January 13, 2009, 01:08:49 PM

yeah, it installed on my old laptop with 512, and the HDD doesnt churn to bad - im guessing cause aero is disabled so theres less overhead.

weird how badly they screwed up vista, but 7 seems to whiz faster than XP...

strange issue on that memory though. thats just bad luck.

i got that 2 GB for my other laptop yesterday and popped it in. seems to run much much smoother vs. the 1gb from the factory.

delooch · January 14, 2009, 11:12:53 AM

not to keep this thread off-topic (but i will anyway)
So far the only thing i cant stand is that they moved the 'show desktop' button to the right of the clock. i feel lost, like im using a mac or something

peace flaps · January 15, 2009, 02:10:36 AM

yeah, don't mind me, i like hearing about how shite windoze is lol :cheesy:

but anyways - she is getting a computer shop near to her shop to sort it.easier for me even if it does cost her a few quids.

gonna do all that making a back-up dvd and stuff once know its working ok, having a kid using it most of the time means something will be downloaded to mess it up again soon.

one more dumb question before i leave this alone is - if there is already a 512 stick in there, can i add a 2gb to it so there is 2.5gb - or is it not that simple?

(thanks all for your replies, i'll be back once things go belly up again :laugh: )

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advice for a PC noob