Dave,

were you there for that speech as well?

Sorry couldn't help myself....

Try to cross the border without getting caught?

I wasn't there when he spoke it but I did write it.

...feel sorry for you?

Maybe the old bitty is a tad smarter than you assume. She knew it could be fixed easily and now has a bug inside your home.

well Jesus answered me last night... i turned it off for the night after watching some videos, and seemed to work fine...

this morning tho, little bit different...

it started making the same F'd off noise it did when i first got it, its like a fan noise, which i thought thats what it was, but its not... i turned it on, and the blue screen came up (it took 8 minutes or so to even get to the blue screen)

error code 0x0000007b (0xF7B4A528,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)

wich, is a motherboard/hard drive issue... mother drives and hard drives are fairly cheap... well, a mother board would be, hard drive would require the re install of Windows XP, and its either 75 installed with no disk, or i buy the disk for 100+ dollars... hard drives are about 80 bucks for a 120 gig, and with this being a 30 gig, it will actually up grade it... i could even get a 60 gig for probably around 40 bucks..

so i will be into it about 150-200 bucks, i can do all the work myself as its fairly easy, so i wont need to pay some shop 50 dollars an hour to do something i can do...

so im gonna keep it... because Jesus just basically told me to...

but first, i will tell her what the issue is, and how much it will cost, as this was probably a 700 dollar computer, and 150 isnt much to fix it really... she may want to just fix it...


oh yeah, and to the smartass that said this was a cry me, attention post... i get enough attention already if you havent noticed, once again, i was just asking other members a question... if you would like, go back to not posting and stop reading what i type... oh wait, you cant do that, that would be stupid right? some peoples kids

anyways thanks guys, looks like i have another project on my hands...

It is easy to be cocky when you are clueless.

Work that "magic", redhook.

"MEASUREMENTS"... still cracks me up.

clueless? yeah ok...

i will still be fixing it, and it will still be cake... i ALMOST fixed it without spending a dime...

far from clueless...

also, if i wanted to, i probably could keep messing with it and get it to run again, but what would be the point if its just going to take it all away?

clueless....


yeah...

ok...

I didn't start this. You're the one talking yourself up about "working magic" and fixing a computer that is now still broken. Just sayin'.

You've managed to unite people on this board that wouldn't want to drink the same water.

i work plenty of magic... like when my dads 2200 dollar Toshiba crashed (we dont need to talk about "why")... and i took it to one of the computer shops down the street, and they said the hard drive was fried, and will never work again, and took 45 dollars from me, for doing nothing... then i had some work done on our big computer at another shop, and was talking to the guy there about the whole ordeal, i told him that i stopped system restart, and the code popped up... we tracked it down to a software issue, NOT a hardware issue that the other shop said it was, after taking my 45 bucks...

so i went home (and worked my "magic") and got the thing to fire up just fine... the problem was, is that the other shop had completely erased my entire HD...so i lost everything regardless... pictures of my dad, grandfather, great grandfather, jobs we did, ect... all because they were to lazy to stop the process and check the codes... oh well... i still need to get a OS disk for that one too, but im upgrading the HD from 80 Gigs to 160, so i havent done it yet...


and the last part of your comment... that was my whole intention... some of you guys need to loosen up, and stop being blatant dicks to each other, and have fun once in a while... its almost pathetic the way you treat each other... go ahead and do it to me, but be warned, you wont win, ive dealt with far worse... so your just wasting your time...

live, laugh, have some damn fun once in a while... change your tampon, or whatever you need to do, but just live life and enjoy it...


ahhh screw it, you aint gonna listen to me LOL...

You did make sure the drive was seated properly didn't you?

Late lunch today......

The 8600 is just a an older P4 running the mobile variant of that chip. It's good for a door stop and that's about it.

I wouldn't bother spending any time on it and I'd just donate it to one of the computer charity places. Take the write off on your taxes.

Or, sell it on ebay. I bet you'd get $50 for it. Maybe.

1. Run a hard drive diagnostic.
Take a look under the hood and see what make it is.....they all have their own free diagnostic utilities.
I believe that they are all on this free diagnostic disk...
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

2. If the HDD is declared physically OK after the diagnostic...
Some Dells have a "hidden" recovery partition. You'll have to Google around for the procedure.
It's there to recover the operating system after a fatal crash and restores the system to an "as shipped" condition. All personal data is lost, which doesn't matter in this case.
You can also ask the woman if she has any of the disks that came with this Dell.
(having these will simplify everything)

3. There should be a product key taped to the bottom of the lappy.
All you need to do is borrow an XP disk and input that product key at the prompt during the install.
Note:
The XP disk must be the same variant as the original, for example...
Chances are greatest that this machine was loaded with an OEM copy of XP Home.
The product key will identify variant and it will be an OEM copy (as opposed to Retail)

4. Cleanup.
After you get up and running with a generic XP disk you are also running on generic drivers.
Install security software and update drivers.
Recommend custom install (turn off what you don't need) of AntiVir for the best freebie AV solution.

Parker, this is a 20 inch model i believe, or 19 or whatever... when i was watching videos on youtube last night, it had better quality than my Toshiba Sattelite Pro laptop... but, its not a very good computer, you can tell by the quality of contsruction... picture wise, awesome tho... we have needed another laptop for a while, but i refuse to buy the 359 dollar Compaqs from Walmart and Target... i was figuring that i could fix this one (likely upgrade everything), and my GF can use it for her school (she will be entering the Nursing Program this summer)... we really dont have 1500 extra dollars to buy a nice laptop... i refuse to buy junk, but i will take what other people consider junk, and see if i can change that...

but i could just sell it like you said, and upgrade the Toshiba with the money...

DD, thats what i was planning on doing today, is cracking it open, and seeing whats going on in there, and if i can fix it or not... the lady gave us litterally everything, including the box it came in... all driver disks, photo programs disks, ect... but they dont come with the XP disk as its usually factory installed... and you are correct, it is XP Home... i think however, the Toshiba is XP Pro... my question is:

if i buy the Home, and upgrade the HD in the Toshiba, will i be able to use that disk for both computers, or is the system on the Toshiba not compatible with it? would i need to buy both OS disks?

1. I wouldn't volunteer to buy a copy of XP Home...you already have a license for that (the key on the freebie)
You just need to borrow an OEM XP Home copy. I got one from a local 'puter shop for the asking.
It's just a copy of an official M$ disk but you need to input your key.

2. If you buy a single license it's only good for one instance (machine).
I've monkeyed with it and it eventually bites you.

3. If I wanted to upgrade the HDD in the Toshiba I would clone the current profile and reload it onto the new HDD. It helps to have a portable HDD or big thumb drive to do this.
Some portable HDD's come with cloning software and you can later use the portable for backups.
For cloning, I've used Acronis (paid) but there are some freebies....
Go to Major Geeks for free stuff....safe site to download from just click on the correct button and not an advertisement.

i have a 500 gig external, and a 1 Terra external, but thats at my brothers, 500 is here... plus a few 2-20 gig flash drives...

the other place screwed my hard drive up in the Toshiba, i lost everything, including the OS... so, instead of ever running into any problem due to that, im just going to scrap that HD and buy a new one, the computer shop has 160 gig ones for 60 bucks, and 300 gig ones for like 129 or whatever it was... i figured i would just start over completely...

the one thing that pisses me off about the Dell, is it needs to be hard wired into the router, or use a USB antenna to connect to the internet... and it sticks out a bit, and is irritating.. the Toshiba isnt like that, it has an internal lockable antenna... but the screen is smaller than the Dell, and the graphics card isnt as good as the Dell either.. which is why i want to try to fix it, if its not too expensive to do so... i probably should be focusing on trying to fix the Toshiba flat out... and by fixing, i mean fully upgrading the CPU and Ram and HDD... it would be nice to have this Dell as a beater computer tho, that i can bring in the car to check flow levels and such on the go, and even bug you guys while im at the river

or another option, that i just thought of... i could look on Ebay for a "parts" computer of the same make as the Dell with a cracked LCD or something, and pull the board and the drive out of it, and put it in this one, or the screen out of this one, and put it in the other... and if Parker is right about only being 50 bucks at most, that would be the easiest simplest and cheapest way to fix it...

Never sniff a gift fish.

That Dell sounds like the vintage that may have a card bus Type II slot and if so there are wireless adapters for that interface. About $20.
Not a big deal to run one and you don't use up a USB port.
(1/8"+ x 2"+ slot)


Stop it.
Don't buy someone else's junk.
And don't buy a new HDD until you test the one in the Dell.
If you have to buy, get it online from Newegg.

First run the hard drive diagnostic with the UBCD linked above after you determine whether you have a Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor or Fujitsu. Look under the cover if you don't have the Dell build sheet to determine HDD mfr.
Just burn the bootdisk on your healthy computer, boot up the sick machine with it and choose the correct diagnostic.

the hard drive is a Toshiba HDD 2181... i pulled it out, and turned the computer on... guess what... no grinding fan like noise, and it went to the "no bootable devices" screen rather quickly... put it back in, and its grinding away, taking forever to boot up again... you can also feel vibration directy over the top of where the drive sits in the computer... and its back to its slow ways of getting to the blue error screen...

i will try your link, but with the drive making this much noise, its almost a dead giveaway...

"you can also feel vibration"

Maybe your wife would like it?