GeekTech
Friday, February 22, 2008
Technology - Friend of Foe?
I love computers and other electronics and I'm good at what I do with them. However, sometimes things don't go smoothly and it all just turns into a losing battle. I have many a tale to share and what place better to start than at the beginning?
My old eMachine computer just couldn't handle the stress that I was putting on it. So I decided that purchasing a new one would be a good idea. I had just recently joined ebay and after I had made two purchases on there (a DVD drive and a 4.1 speaker set) I decided that there are good deals on ebay and I should pursue them to find my new desktop PC.
My first encounter was with a whitebox custom gaming machine. The specs were outstanding and the bid was starting at 99 cents with no reserve. So I wanted it bad enough and I was willing to pay up to $250. Unfortunately, the system sold somewhere around $600. That's alright, I'll keep looking.
I noticed that eMachines and Acers were starting off at $.99 with no reserve. I watch a lot of them. When the time came down to it, there was a beautiful Acer there with 10 minutes to go priced at $175. I wanted it pretty bad. I ended up winning the computer for about $219. I payed 35 bucks in shipping and I even got charged $35 in TAXES. I was kind of ticked but it was still a kick BUTT deal. sweet.
---Later---
It arrives, I rip open the box and guess what the first thing is that I do? Of course, I take off the side panel and start exchanging hardware! I switched out DVD drives because the one I had just bought has light scribe, I added my old hard drive in to transfer files, and I just wanted to take a look at the guts.
Now I know that it didn't come with an operating system installed. And I was ok with that because I've installed about 5 copies of XP and 2 copies of Vista before. So now what OS to choose? Well I was pretty pleased with Vista when I used it so that is my OS of choice. Now to pop in the DVD and install.
Didn't work. I kept getting a 0x80070017 error while trying to install. Something about missing files and corruption. So I really needed to get this thing going so I just installed XP.
During the setup process, I thought it would be a good idea to format the hard drive after Vista had just tried to install. So I chose to format as NTFS. It took TWO AND A HALF HOURS to format. (I have a 400 gig HDD). So now I installed XP. Oh, let's try to install Vista as an upgrade. I get the same error again! Now there is no working OS AGAIN! XP again! Let's try upgrading from the ISO off my hard drive. I do this and what-do-you-know? It worked.
My PC came with a key but that just had to be invalid which I don't get because it is even the Certificate of Authenticity. So I installed it with that key anyway but when I tried to activate it, it said that it was invalid. GR. So I get an activator and it patches. That night I shut it down and the next morning when I boot, it says BOOTMGR is missing. AHHHHH!
So install from the ISO again (which was an extracted ISO) and the whole process is repeated.
So I run the DVD and chose Repair Vista. After that's through I try to boot again and this time I get NTLDR is missing. (NTLDR loads the kernel into memory and BOOTMGR loads/boots/starts up windows). I officially gave up at this point.
Thanks to the Big Nerd, I got a Vista Premium install CD which finally worked with no problems. Oh my goodness I think my computer hates me. Not to mention that the optical mouse that came with the PC doesn't work and sometimes my USB ports decide to turn themselves off and my media reader sometimes dies. Other than that it's a pretty good computer.
Acer Aspire E380
AMD Athlon LIVE! 64 X2 2.5 GHz
2 GB RAM
370 GB HDD SATA
160 GB HDD IDE
DVD +/-RW DL with Lightscribe
9-in-1 media reader
7.1 surround sound integrated audio card with HD audio with Digital coaxial and Optical out.
Gigabit LAN
Firewire
That's only half the story. The second half will be much shorter though.
I also bought a laptop on ebay. The seller listed the wrong price so they wouldn't sell it after I had purchased it. I reported them to ebay.
---Meanwhile---
I find a different laptop and decide to buy it. A Toshiba Tecra 9100. It's really nice and the only bad part is that the sound does not work. It does have WiFi though. I'm probably going to sell this one to my father.
---After purchasing the Toshiba---
I get an email from the seller of whom I reported and they decided to sell to me after all. Great!
So now I have two laptops and a new desktop PC and an old desktop PC. My room is turning into a BestBuy.
My old eMachine computer just couldn't handle the stress that I was putting on it. So I decided that purchasing a new one would be a good idea. I had just recently joined ebay and after I had made two purchases on there (a DVD drive and a 4.1 speaker set) I decided that there are good deals on ebay and I should pursue them to find my new desktop PC.
My first encounter was with a whitebox custom gaming machine. The specs were outstanding and the bid was starting at 99 cents with no reserve. So I wanted it bad enough and I was willing to pay up to $250. Unfortunately, the system sold somewhere around $600. That's alright, I'll keep looking.
I noticed that eMachines and Acers were starting off at $.99 with no reserve. I watch a lot of them. When the time came down to it, there was a beautiful Acer there with 10 minutes to go priced at $175. I wanted it pretty bad. I ended up winning the computer for about $219. I payed 35 bucks in shipping and I even got charged $35 in TAXES. I was kind of ticked but it was still a kick BUTT deal. sweet.
---Later---
It arrives, I rip open the box and guess what the first thing is that I do? Of course, I take off the side panel and start exchanging hardware! I switched out DVD drives because the one I had just bought has light scribe, I added my old hard drive in to transfer files, and I just wanted to take a look at the guts.
Now I know that it didn't come with an operating system installed. And I was ok with that because I've installed about 5 copies of XP and 2 copies of Vista before. So now what OS to choose? Well I was pretty pleased with Vista when I used it so that is my OS of choice. Now to pop in the DVD and install.
Didn't work. I kept getting a 0x80070017 error while trying to install. Something about missing files and corruption. So I really needed to get this thing going so I just installed XP.
During the setup process, I thought it would be a good idea to format the hard drive after Vista had just tried to install. So I chose to format as NTFS. It took TWO AND A HALF HOURS to format. (I have a 400 gig HDD). So now I installed XP. Oh, let's try to install Vista as an upgrade. I get the same error again! Now there is no working OS AGAIN! XP again! Let's try upgrading from the ISO off my hard drive. I do this and what-do-you-know? It worked.
My PC came with a key but that just had to be invalid which I don't get because it is even the Certificate of Authenticity. So I installed it with that key anyway but when I tried to activate it, it said that it was invalid. GR. So I get an activator and it patches. That night I shut it down and the next morning when I boot, it says BOOTMGR is missing. AHHHHH!
So install from the ISO again (which was an extracted ISO) and the whole process is repeated.
So I run the DVD and chose Repair Vista. After that's through I try to boot again and this time I get NTLDR is missing. (NTLDR loads the kernel into memory and BOOTMGR loads/boots/starts up windows). I officially gave up at this point.
Thanks to the Big Nerd, I got a Vista Premium install CD which finally worked with no problems. Oh my goodness I think my computer hates me. Not to mention that the optical mouse that came with the PC doesn't work and sometimes my USB ports decide to turn themselves off and my media reader sometimes dies. Other than that it's a pretty good computer.
Acer Aspire E380
AMD Athlon LIVE! 64 X2 2.5 GHz
2 GB RAM
370 GB HDD SATA
160 GB HDD IDE
DVD +/-RW DL with Lightscribe
9-in-1 media reader
7.1 surround sound integrated audio card with HD audio with Digital coaxial and Optical out.
Gigabit LAN
Firewire
That's only half the story. The second half will be much shorter though.
I also bought a laptop on ebay. The seller listed the wrong price so they wouldn't sell it after I had purchased it. I reported them to ebay.
---Meanwhile---
I find a different laptop and decide to buy it. A Toshiba Tecra 9100. It's really nice and the only bad part is that the sound does not work. It does have WiFi though. I'm probably going to sell this one to my father.
---After purchasing the Toshiba---
I get an email from the seller of whom I reported and they decided to sell to me after all. Great!
So now I have two laptops and a new desktop PC and an old desktop PC. My room is turning into a BestBuy.
Labels: Stories
1 Comments:
Happy to help with the vista dvd. By the way, I think you misspelled "grr." Not that its a real word or anything.
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