How not to have fun with computers.

[Boldstorm]

Well I have had an intresting last few months with computers.

Started out my main box stopped working, couldn\'t get it to boot up at all. After much testing and playing around I find out the motherboard is dead. So I go pick up a new motherboard and a dvd burner while I am at it, get home get everything installed. For sanity sake, since it is an XP box, I do a complete reformat and start reinstalling everything on the box. Spend a few days messing around with this and as soon as I am done with this bam computer won\'t start again. Now it has a blown power supply which will probably take me another week or two to get my hands on one. So after all that work my main computer is still dead.

Well I am thinking all is not lost I just recieved a new (used) laptop from work about a month ago. So I start up the laptop and it is telling me it is missing the OS. I go grab the recovery discs and a copy of XP Pro and Red Hat 9 to get this taken care of. Pop the cds in and find out the laptop has a dead dvd-rom drive. Ok now I am thinking I am going to have to attempt a network install, one problem this is an older Sony VAIO with a BIOS locked from the company so I can\'t get into the BIOS to change my boot settings. After a few calls to Sony tey tell me I am going to have to fax the original reciept of purchase to them so they can verify ownership and then within 72 hours email me back the BIOS password or I can buy a new drive off them for $700!!! I say screw it and after much searching I am able to get my hands on a new drive (pretty cheap) and get it installed. Get everything working on the computer to find out work is giving me another laptop (a much better laptop) and I have to give the laptop I just got working to someone else. So I am ok with this until I get my new (again used) laptop and find out that it too has a dead dvd-rom drive. I swear at this point I can\'t win. So after some major surgery I am able to disassemble the dvd-rom drive and take some parts from another old drive and finally get this laptop working.

I was almost feeling completly out of options during all this and really missing a computer, but I felt all is not lost I still have my linux box in the other room. So I go to get my linux box all set up and because of my stupid wireless router no matter what I do I can not get the wireless network card to work. I am really starting to hate this d-link router.

Well after all is said and done I finally have a working laptop and a working linux box (just with no internet connection).

I guess I am just really glad that in all this time messing around with these computers to try and get them working right I am happy CB didn\'t come out yet. I would have been really upset if I had been missing out on that for a while also.

Well thats the end of my ranting and raving, I just had to get all the fun I have had with my computers off my chest.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest, now back to reading all the old posts to try and get caught up on all I missed.

[Ineluke]

Yeah not to rub it in or anything but you should ALWAYS check your power supply before assuming something is wrong with your motherboard. And you should ALWAYS check your power supply before you install a new motherboard.

I have a d-link wireless adapter as well. There is a petition to texas instruments somewhere on the internet for them to make linux drivers for that adapter.
They make it throught d-link I think.
I\'ll tell you if it goes through.

Sorry bout your m\'chin though...

[Taldor]

Another way of not having fun with computers:

Yesterday i tried to install Fedora core 2, with a hard drive install, but I did something wrong with the startup configuration. When I restarted my computer this morning, nothing happened: nor windows nor fedora nor a boot loader started. I couldn\'t reinstall or repair fedora (and the boot loader) becaues that\'s only possible from cdrom (I dunno why).

When i tried to remove the linux partitions with the rescue disks from partition magic, it scewed the partition table. The only thing the fedora installer, the windows cdrom an the partition magic rescuedisks wanted to do was formatting my entire hard disk.
 
Now i back-uped my files with my bro\'s comp but I don\'t have a clue how it comes windows can handle my \'bad\' drive. Maybe I\'m going to format it now...

Boldstorm, look for someone with a WLAN card (with existing linux driver) only using windows, and ask to swap.

[Boldstorm]

Ok put the new power supply in and motherboard is dead also. It seems that somehow when the mobo went out I somehow shorted the Power supply also. I don\'t know its been frustrating with that machine lately. Actually went looking for a tall building to pitch it off the other night but it\'s an ANTEC server case and I was afraid what I might do to the people below. Oh well got a new mobo coming soon so maybe I can finally get the box working again.

I moved my Linux box in the mean time so I could just use the NIC card and be done with it at least until I get my Windows box fixed, then I will start messing with the wireless card in it again.

I also resized the partions in my laptop this week and installed redhat 9 as part of a dual boot. Wasn\'t going to go with redhat but since its what is getting used around the office i went with it. I was actually suprised I had no issues resizing the Windows partition and getting redhat installed. Now my only projects for the weekend are getting the pcmcia conflicts to stop happening and to get the soundcard working and I should be a happy camper.

[Xordan]

lol, yeah, I nearly ran into that fedora problem. You have to enter your HDD\'s CSH when you boot the installer, or everything gets screwed up big time.

Or you can just get suse 9.1, which is better than Fedora.

[Taldor]

It\'s screwed now: \"error loading operating system\". I can\'t format, I can\'t install windows (or fedora), fdisk doesn\'t change anything, ...

[Xordan]

lol, ouch. Restore the MBR using the windows XP disk.

[NewPie]

Windows still sees some of my ex-hardware and tries to install it... quality thingy -.-

[Taldor]

Originally posted by Xordan
lol, ouch. Restore the MBR using the windows XP disk.

I (already) did that: I ran both \'fixboot\' and \'fixmbr\'. It didn\'t change anything except the message \"error loading operating system\" (in dutch) changed to the same message in english. I downloaded somewhere fdisk and ran \'fdisk\' and \'fdisk /mbr\', yhe last command made the warning(\"error loading...\") disappear.

[josephoenix]

Try using knoppix and qtparted to get your partitions untangled. After that, maybe you should try installing knoppix to HD ( at least temporarily) so you will have a working linux install. Knoppix is the answer to all problems!

josePhoenix

[theRealGorbulas]

Get an external DVD-ROM drive. You are going to keep getting \"new\" laptops with defective DVD-ROM drives untill you stop fixing them.
There is an ndiswrapper(or similar spelling) driver that allows you to use Windows wireless drivers under Linux. There is a Captive-NTFS driver that gives you RW NTFS access in Linux through the Windows NTFS drivers that you might find useful when you get things working. These Linux drivers won\'t be a requirment forever.

[Taldor]

A bit off topic:

Originally posted by Xordan
Or you can just get suse 9.1, which is better than Fedora.

Why? (the same for Knoppix) I read somewhere it\'s all the same... If there is a diffrence, I\'ld like to know it, before I try another distro.

[Boldstorm]

Originally posted by theRealGorbulas
Get an external DVD-ROM drive. You are going to keep getting \"new\" laptops with defective DVD-ROM drives untill you stop fixing them.

But I would have to pay for that  

Anyway I did a bunch of work on a bunch of stuff and am pretty much back in working order. Got my main box working again and the laptop switches at work seem to be at a stand still for a while. I hope so anyway since I spent all the work on this last one dual booting it and getting the dvd-rom to work.

Now hopefully everything can hold off and stop breaking at least until I get done moving at the end of the month .