Another new guy

[hex1848]

Oh Gezuz, the mere mention of "StogieChat" here is probably not a good thing to do as the site owner Eric Turner is nothing but a complete asshole and he seems to have quite a following of some similar like minded assholes on his lame board.

I'm glad to see members escaping that shitty site and coming over here Threads don't get locked and posts don't get deleted here and the level of cigar knowledge and overall intelligence of the membership on this site far exceeds that of StogieChat.

So welcome to the board Rubie and MarkF150 but I'm tellin' ya right up front, I have nothing good to say about StogieChat especially it's site owner Eric Turner who is nothing but a pathological lying piece of shit. I've got very good reasons for speaking about him the way I do and if you can't find the threads here that lay it all out for ya, let me know and I'll find them for you.

So Rubie, I have a Compaq computer that is about four to five years old with a 100GB hard drive. The hard drive is so infested with viruses and spyware that it gives me quite a few error messages when I boot it up and now it no longer connects to the internet or works with my network here at home. I figured I could wipe the hard drive and use the recovery discs and start fresh BUT I really didn't want to lose lots of files (mostly Word and Excel files) so I bought a new 250GB hard drive and figured I'd use the original as a slave or spare hard drive. Well, the goddam thing won't take, I've tried other hard drives and I absolutely cannot get Windows to boot up. We then did wipe the hard drive and tried to reinstall everything from the factory recovedry discs and it STILL won't fuggen work. The guy who was working on it for me thinks the mother board is bad. He swapped out all the cards, changed the hard drive cables, etc.

What do you think or what would you recommend?

Tell your tech guy to check for a bio's upgrade for the motherboard. You may get better compatability for newer hardware. Granted it is a Compaq, I've never had any luck with Compaq...

[Hap]

Welcome from Maryland!

[SuperChuck]

So Rubie, I have a Compaq computer that is about four to five years old with a 100GB hard drive. The hard drive is so infested with viruses and spyware that it gives me quite a few error messages when I boot it up and now it no longer connects to the internet or works with my network here at home. I figured I could wipe the hard drive and use the recovery discs and start fresh BUT I really didn't want to lose lots of files (mostly Word and Excel files) so I bought a new 250GB hard drive and figured I'd use the original as a slave or spare hard drive. Well, the goddam thing won't take, I've tried other hard drives and I absolutely cannot get Windows to boot up. We then did wipe the hard drive and tried to reinstall everything from the factory recovedry discs and it STILL won't fuggen work. The guy who was working on it for me thinks the mother board is bad. He swapped out all the cards, changed the hard drive cables, etc.

What do you think or what would you recommend?

With the price of hardware where it is, it could be worthwhile to replace some of your computer's guts. You can probably get a new motherboard/CPU/memory for WAY under $200. Just last month I built out a 64-bit machine for $163 shipped. And I imagine you don't need that much processing power.

[illilli]

Well, I reside in South Dakota. I can already hear the sheep jokes. My favorite cigar of all time is the VSG. Bar none, the best cigar ever. Other than that, I'm a college student, I read comic books, play a lot of video games, build computers... Basically a big nerd.

I didn't think there were any sheep left in South Dakota; I thought they had all fled south to Nebraska.

I welcomed you already, but I'm glad to see there are other "Geeks Of The Leaf" around.

[CoventryCat86]

With the price of hardware where it is, it could be worthwhile to replace some of your computer's guts. You can probably get a new motherboard/CPU/memory for WAY under $200. Just last month I built out a 64-bit machine for $163 shipped. And I imagine you don't need that much processing power.

I was hoping to do something like that but what pisses me off is that the only discs I have are the Compaq ones which means I doubt I could upgrade the mother board. They don't give you the Windows XP discs, etc, just their own garbage.

[CoventryCat86]

I didn't think there were any sheep left in South Dakota; I thought they had all fled south to Nebraska.

I welcomed you already, but I'm glad to see there are other "Geeks Of The Leaf" around.

I think Scotty scared them out of Nebraska, they must have headed south to Kansas.

[ukyfan]

...

So Rubie, I have a Compaq computer that is about four to five years old with a 100GB hard drive. The hard drive is so infested with viruses and spyware that it gives me quite a few error messages when I boot it up and now it no longer connects to the internet or works with my network here at home. I figured I could wipe the hard drive and use the recovery discs and start fresh BUT I really didn't want to lose lots of files (mostly Word and Excel files) so I bought a new 250GB hard drive and figured I'd use the original as a slave or spare hard drive. Well, the goddam thing won't take, I've tried other hard drives and I absolutely cannot get Windows to boot up. We then did wipe the hard drive and tried to reinstall everything from the factory recovedry discs and it STILL won't fuggen work. The guy who was working on it for me thinks the mother board is bad. He swapped out all the cards, changed the hard drive cables, etc.

What do you think or what would you recommend?

As another computer geek, I would say just go to your local computer shop, and buy the parts to build another (or buy one of their custom rigs). When you build your own you get everything that you want and none of the useless crap that a lot of these vendors put on there. Best of all, you have your very own copy of Windows, and not one of those crudy restore cds or worse the restore partition

Now that is just my .02 worth

[SuperChuck]

I was hoping to do something like that but what pisses me off is that the only discs I have are the Compaq ones which means I doubt I could upgrade the mother board. They don't give you the Windows XP discs, etc, just their own garbage.

Well, I wouldn't know about that stuff...

Now if you go over to www.ubuntu.com, maybe I can help you out! ;)

[ukyfan]

Well, I wouldn't know about that stuff...

Now if you go over to www.ubuntu.com, maybe I can help you out! ;)

I tried to dual boot ubu, with my xp box the other day and it screwed up my MBR. Don't know what I did wrong but I am going to try a different flavor later. Maybe Fedora.

[SuperChuck]

I tried to dual boot ubu, with my xp box the other day and it screwed up my MBR. Don't know what I did wrong but I am going to try a different flavor later. Maybe Fedora.

Did you follow a HOWTO? That seems like that would be a pretty common thing to do.

I'm pretty impressed with Ubuntu. It's somewhere between "Linux for Dummies" and something more nitty-gritty like gentoo (my previous obsession)

[ukyfan]

Did you follow a HOWTO? That seems like that would be a pretty common thing to do.

I'm pretty impressed with Ubuntu. It's somewhere between "Linux for Dummies" and something more nitty-gritty like gentoo (my previous obsession)

I just followed the steps that were on the screen. I set up a dual boot with Caldera (a long time) ago and everything worked fine. Thought I would give Tux another go around and then this happened. It wasn't a hard fix from my Windows point of view but I haven't fixed the dual boot prob yet. going to work on it again this weekend.