5 computers and nothing working right!

[stev]

Well, I've had a BiG turn of events in the past few weeks.

Five of the computers around the house have all decided to croak on me for one reason or another!

Two computers are finally back and running right while the other three are still wacked out.

I'm not sure if any of this deals with MS's automatic updates or if by a freak chance some evil demons decided one night to poses the machines!

To add injury to insult, I've tossed out every inkjet printer in the house but one. Either I've been all thumbs during this time doing the re-fills or I like my hands black and multi-colored spots.

So, does anyone know of a good low costing BW laser printer. I've gotten a few leads like the HP 1018, 1022 or the Dell 1110. The 1018 has a $65 rebate going for it right now. The fact is, the 1018 is now cheaper that the ink cartridge that goes into with the rebate going on!

OK, enough of my ranting. I'm hopfully back ... Well, back with the wife's comtuer that is. Mine is wacked out or just plain spaced out right now.

RANT -- CRY -- RANT -- CRY -- RANT -- CRY

[KnightRid]

Welcome bakc - sorta I guess Hope you get the other computers up and running!

Cant help with the low cost laser, but i have bought Canon printers for YEARS and have refileld them because they are so SIMPLE!! Individual ink cartridges for each color, clear resevoirs so you can see the ink going in, oh it is awesome refilling them!! Just in case you wanted color ;)

Mike

[bubba]

At work we have a couple dell laser printers and a large HP, but the one we have loads of are brother laser printer, I can't remember the model number off the top of my head but I will check in the morning when I get back in the office.

[camaroguy1998]

I have a used 1300N if you're interested! It has the network adapter and is ready to go!
I dont use it so its been sitting in my closet collecting dust and needs a good home!
You can email me at [email protected]

[stev]

Well guys, thanks for the heads up on the laser printers.

I'm focus on getting a new unit with some warranty benefits. Plus, as a help I get an employee discount on HP hardware. When I apply my bank card, I'll get some travel miles too.

OK, back to the computers at hand.

I have found the problems with the simple computers, the Dell GX1 with the PXE problem. They are working well as long as nobody messes with the BIOS on me. It's great having teenagers interested in computers to change things.

Well, the gaming machine, the most important machine, would boot, get past the WinXP logo screen and then just go black blank. I thought it was a HDD problem since the drive wouldn't make any sounds after that. I swapped out three drives and tried to reinstall XP without much progress.

After messing with the cables on the 100th time, I had noticed that the heat-sink was popped off of the graphics card. This seemed strange. After taking out the card, securing the heat-sink back on and then for gins adding a 40x40x10 fan, the computer boots just fine and has been running now for just under a day. Now, the only issue is the 3COM network card isn't being recognized.

It seems that I take a step forward and a 1/2 step back in this saga. My goal was to migrate one system over to this newer (to me) system. The Intel board was replaced with a MSI 865P-Neo that can overclock well. It was somewhat hard to find a 800Mhz FSB board that can overclock a Northwood 3.0Ghz cpu and use DDR400 ram.

As for the Gateway machine, it's been a faithful for the last 8 years until the last MS updates that has been freaking it out.

OK, so much for the late afternoon rant for now. When things finally work right, I'll dip into liquid cooling soon again.

Stev

[DMB2000uk]

Time for BIOS passwords?

Dan

[stev]

As Jimmy Newtron would say, " ... I going loopy! "

One moment the 3COM nic isn't working, but now it is. All I did was power down, walk away for the evening and restarted a few moments ago. Is that wacked or what??!!??

I can't blame anyone for this computer and it's problems since the teenagers don't have ID on that machine.

The only draw back now is the Northbridge heatsink. It's held down with those spring-wires to the MOBO's hook-loops. Well, the spring-wires broke off. So, the engineer that I am, got some double sided stick tape around the bottom periphery and used thermal paste to stick it on. Sure, it's a band-aid for now, but something else to go wacko later. I've read on the web that these hook-loops can only hold so much pressure before they pop out of the board. To bad I can't drill some tiny holes into it. OK, more rambling thoughts going through my mind.

I told the DW that we have till the end of this month to get the $65 HP 1018 laser printer before the rebates finish out. Plus right now, it's FREE shipping! I'm ready to push the BUY button and say good bye to those messy inkjet cartridges.

Well, I've just taken a recent inventory of the machines here.

Gateway Select 750
Dell GX1 (3 of them)
eMachines AMD 2200+
Packard Bell Ledgend Supreme 930 (Actually not bad vs the others I've fix) This MOBO is awesome to OC and tweakable.
HP Vectra 1Ghz 370 Celeron
HP Compaq V3000Z AMD 3100+
XCLIO MSI 865P Neo (home built) Northwood 3.0Ghz
3COM Link-Builder FMS-2 24-port hub

The sound on the V3000Z has a problem with the mute button. No sound.

Three are liquid cooled and OC'ed, hoping to get the MSI to make it four.

OK, I'm nuts having all of these on the hub. The XP machines do very well in the network, however, the older machines on Win98SE only connect as individuals to the internet. So, those machines use jump drives to tranfer data.

[stev]

Alright, I'm limited on the XCLIO for HDD space. Newegg has some good buys lately. I've had so-so reliability with WesternDigital that I'm looking at some of the Seagates.

The MSI board in the XCLIO has a bad northbridge heatsink. It seems that the wire-clip busted and needs to be replaced.

The 160~320Mb range would be ideal, however, there are talks about bigger drives on the horizon. Do I wait or do I take the plunge now?

BTW, I went ahead an ordered the laser printer. Good bye silly injet technology and the high cost of little cartridges!!!

One last option latey is to upgrade the older Dell GX1 650Mhz to WinXP. It's getting somewhat annoying doing the USB dance from it to the other computers lately. I'm not even cetain that XP will work on the critter, but I'll swap in a spare 4Gb drive to try it out.

Computers seem to be evil at times. LOL

[stev]

A bad night ...

The DW's eMachines W2247 died a bad death. The PSU sizzled, the MOBO fried like chicken and would not boot up anymore. I was able to save the HDD, but the CPU, memory and network card may be toast.

On a positive note, I did back up many of these computers when the problems had hit a month ago.

I did post the possible undertaking of making the Dell GX1 a windows XP machine. Well, due to the current problem, it's now under way.

One booboo I had made was to upgrade the BIOS from A06 to A10. In doing so, the upgraded processor in the GX1 isn't recognized. So, I spent an hour finding the older BIOS on the net.

This will be another long night indeed.

[stev]

The Gateway Select 750 after nine faithful years bit the dust this past weekend. This was my most dependable machine until a M$ update came down the pipe. So, I've learned not to run with the auto updates going now. Most of the parts either went to the XCLIO machine or the Dell GX1 with XP now.

The Packard Bell Ledgend Supreme 930, got the memory and now XP. I have a PCI NIC card ready to try as well. This 930 board is one of the better non-proprietary PB boards. No special riser cards are in this machine. To bad it was the second to last model sold by PB before they were sold to NEC.

So much for the low ended machines in the house. The high end machines are working along except for the Compaq laptop that just went in for warranty repairs.

The DW keeps asking why we need so many machines in the house. I tell her that it gives me more things to break and fix.

[Apoptosis]

can't complain about 9 years of use though!

[vicaphit]

I had an emachine go for 5 years with no problems, no BSOD, no hardware issues, and no problems with XP. I eventually dismantled it after getting a new computer, and giving the ram to my girlfriends parents.

I was just so surprised... I had tons of people telling me how terrible the hardware for emachines were, and that it wouldnt last. now, I wont ever buy another emachine again, but Im glad I could just proove them wrong!