NullSmurf
Das Bruce
My wife works at home, one of those folks who answers the phone when you call vendors like 1-800-Flowers. Yesterday morning, her computer slowed to the point that it was not functional. Everything looked fine, but it would not launch IE, her Outlook pst files were all corrupt, and McAfee was just flat doing weird shit. She has the paitience of a fruit fly and kept rebooting ungracefully, which I'm sure didn't help. About half the time, it would come up in safe mode, but mostly it just looped while loading the kernel.
"Looks like wiping time. How's your backups?" Not bad, actually, so I get out the Windows disks - I have four XP home licenses, but which one is hers? Shit!
Turns out the point is moot since it fails to BSOD shortly after it loads the disk drivers :angry:
I did network consulting, built boxes, did most of the geeky shit for most of 10 years. I can fix YOUR computer in 10 minutes. Mine ALWAYS takes DAYS. Shit, shit....SHIT! I do NOT want to spend the next 24 hours locked in mortal combat with a computer. I drove down to CompUSA at 8PM. There was one customer in the store with a HP desktop that looks like somebody threw it out of the 3rd floor window. The poor guy was trying to quote him diag fees. I looked over the counter at the mess, gave the tech my best "I feel for ya, brutha" look. He quoted the guy $125 in diag fees just to make him go away, I think. I'm thinking shotgun approach, so I stepped up and asked for a new drive, motherboard, CPU, and a gig of RAM which took all of 2 minutes. We spent the next 10 talking shit about the customer experiences that should really be written down somewhere. I pay up and leave. $500, but there are $50 in rebates that I'll never send it.
He asked whether I wanted Intel or AMD and I replied Intel. I don't even know what I got or what the speed of the motherboard is. I don't care. I just want to see the power up self test when I plug it all in.
I think my Karma is good. The mother board actually fit the case, all the wires were clearly marked, even though the motherboard was not. What it did have was this poster sized picture that even I could read, once I found the English labels. I swear, each connector was labeled in 12 languages! Moving on, everything is hooked up, including a brandy new 260GB Seagate. First thing I find out is that even XP can only see about 130GB. I don't care - I install and move on. I get XP up, download all the patches, the go back and clean up all the device drivers with the CD that came in the motherboard box. She runs two flatscreens, side by side, so I got that fixed. Sound works. Internet works. I installed Office and Yahoo messenger and called it a night at 12:30. Life is good! I'll wait till tonight to tell her that I called Al (PuffStuff) yesterday and spent $280. :thumbs:
I wonder if her stuff would have run on a Mac...
"Looks like wiping time. How's your backups?" Not bad, actually, so I get out the Windows disks - I have four XP home licenses, but which one is hers? Shit!
Turns out the point is moot since it fails to BSOD shortly after it loads the disk drivers :angry:
I did network consulting, built boxes, did most of the geeky shit for most of 10 years. I can fix YOUR computer in 10 minutes. Mine ALWAYS takes DAYS. Shit, shit....SHIT! I do NOT want to spend the next 24 hours locked in mortal combat with a computer. I drove down to CompUSA at 8PM. There was one customer in the store with a HP desktop that looks like somebody threw it out of the 3rd floor window. The poor guy was trying to quote him diag fees. I looked over the counter at the mess, gave the tech my best "I feel for ya, brutha" look. He quoted the guy $125 in diag fees just to make him go away, I think. I'm thinking shotgun approach, so I stepped up and asked for a new drive, motherboard, CPU, and a gig of RAM which took all of 2 minutes. We spent the next 10 talking shit about the customer experiences that should really be written down somewhere. I pay up and leave. $500, but there are $50 in rebates that I'll never send it.
He asked whether I wanted Intel or AMD and I replied Intel. I don't even know what I got or what the speed of the motherboard is. I don't care. I just want to see the power up self test when I plug it all in.I think my Karma is good. The mother board actually fit the case, all the wires were clearly marked, even though the motherboard was not. What it did have was this poster sized picture that even I could read, once I found the English labels. I swear, each connector was labeled in 12 languages! Moving on, everything is hooked up, including a brandy new 260GB Seagate. First thing I find out is that even XP can only see about 130GB. I don't care - I install and move on. I get XP up, download all the patches, the go back and clean up all the device drivers with the CD that came in the motherboard box. She runs two flatscreens, side by side, so I got that fixed. Sound works. Internet works. I installed Office and Yahoo messenger and called it a night at 12:30. Life is good! I'll wait till tonight to tell her that I called Al (PuffStuff) yesterday and spent $280. :thumbs:
I wonder if her stuff would have run on a Mac...
