OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!
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This is by far, the worst format I've ever done on a computer, in my entire 7 years working with computers. I plead with you all, if you ever have to get a computer, DO NOT buy from Dell.
First of all, the disc they sent with the computer, ya know, that nifty windows installation disc, that's supposed to let you format the computer?
Ya, it doesn't fucking work. I ended up working with a few friends to get this system up and running, and it took forever.
Before I continue, I'd like to thank big time Ikari and Direwolf for all your help. You guys really helped me out.
Now. My XP installation disc wasn't working, the burned version Direwolf sent me wasn't working. So, we tried to do this the hard way.
Myself and Ikari spent about 6 hours with a Windows 98 floppy bootdisk fixing my computer. Formatting it, deleting partitions, etc. Of course, we couldn't do anything with the BIOS of the computer, since dell has their own "BIOS" which gives you access to very few options. Eventually I got my grandfather to allow me to look through his room for the disc I needed, and found a working disc.
heh, you thought this was over? No fucking way, this is a dell, after all.
So, I get WIndows XP installed, figured everything was working fine and tried to connect to the internet (to update my computer and whatnot, as well as to check back here to let everyone know I was still alive), it wouldn't connect.
Okay I thought, no big, I try to set up an internet connection. That's when the errors started. Alll saying essentially that it couldn't find the Controllers to my Ethernet Card (which was on board), On board Video card, On board sound card, and one other thing, I forget.
Needless to say I was a bit perplexed at this point.
I start running the other CD's that came with my computer, mainly the Dell Resource CD (which was supposed to have the drivers), none of which helped me at all until later on. None of them had anything self extracting, which I found out later when I had Ikari and his dad look deep into the depths of hell (Ie: Dell.com) and find the names of the drivers I needed.
So, we found the driver for the ethernet card, after having to search the disc for any and all .exe files, then finding the one I needed. While this sounds simple, it's not, since all the .exe's were all just numbers, no names indicating what they might be for.
After a few hours, we finally get the Ethernet card up and running and I connect to the internet to update my system.
No, no. We're not done yet. Fucking Dell's.
After fully updating windows and getting some parts of my system working, I still had the issue of getting the soundcard (that came with the dell system) to work. I explored Dell.com for about an hour before I finally squeezed the driver I needed out of that shithole.
No, not done yet.
Guess what? The driver they had listed for the device wasn't the right fucking one (despite them SAYING it was the one I needed) and had to go back in search of the driver. I found it, installed, etc. Working fine now.
I'm sure some of you are wondering why I didn't call Tech support.
"But Tech support is there to help you with problems" you say.
Dell has a nice little scam going on, almost ingenious. You see, they won't allow you to do shit with your computer, and make it virtually impossible to do anything yourself (such as format a computer) so you have to send the computer into them, while they charge you an arm and a leg for them to fix the computer (which you could have done yourself, if Dell didn't suck so goddamn much).
*huff, puff, cough*
Okay... now that I have that out of my system (no pun intended).
I'm back! Computer is fully formatted and running correctly, I'll be installing FFXI etc soon and hopefully be back in game by tomarrow.
Admins, if you feel this is too flameish to be on the Reality Sinks In board, feel free to move it to the flameboard.
