Dell Wars « Chomper Stomping

Posts Tagged ‘Dell Wars’

Fixing Dell XPS 410 Front Panel Error Codes 3 & 4

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Does your Dell XPS 410 just sit there with a solid green 3 & 4 and refuse to boot up? Mine does!
Have you tried the suggested Dell method of removing RAM to find the bad stick? I Have!
Does your computer, even with no RAM in it still indicate that same error code? Mine does!

Well good! For a limited time only, I have the solution to your problem! That’s right, turn that paper weight into a super great! (Huh?)

Unplug it. Wait 30 seconds. Plug it back in. Try turning it on again. It should:

1. Boot up fine! (this means your RAM is A-OK, and that the error codes are just indicative of the fact that your computer is a piece of crap. Duh! You got a Dell!)

2. Error code again. (Take out a RAM stick and put a different one in and repeat the process of unplugging etc. till it boots up)

3. Error code different. If you hear beeps and just have a 1 showing, it means you took them all out and unplugged it and waited 30 seconds (or two minutes or longer) and then plugged it back in. That’s what I finally did. It accomplished some sort of hard reboot or something and cleared it’s memory or whatever. Torn it off, throw in some RAM (one stick if you don’t mind), and plug her in and boot her up. Should work unless you threw in the bad RAM.

If all this fails it means that all your RAM went bad at once. If so, please comment so i can know there’s someone out there more hated by their ocursed Dell minion than me!

So, again, the lesson here is that Dell sucks and no one should ever buy a Dell ever and that I hate Dell, and that I will never buy one again (and have put my money where my mouth is and although I have 10 Dells in my home, my most recent purchase was an HP).

Tags: computers, Dell, dell sucks, Dell Wars, Fixing, hardware, Troubleshooting
Posted in autobiographical, hardware | 2 Comments »

“Dell Wars” Episode VII – Death of an Empire

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Hey, wait, I thought I was done with Dell? Especially after the first six episodes? Yeah, and I thought Lucas was done making movies, but they keep coming, and it just keeps getting worse.

So, yesterday I decided to buy a new laptop. I’m recording an online Lecture series with IUPUI CSCI Dept. and I need a laptop to do it on. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Surely… surely, he didn’t buy a Dell… right?” At this point, you’re probably expecting me to say “wrong”, but actually, I’m not a fracking idiot. I’ll never give Dell another red cent in my entire life. I bought an HP.

Modest 15.4″ Screen

4 GB Ram

2.1 GHZ AMD Turion X2 Ultra 64

Vista Home Premium

ATI RADEON HD 3200 Graphics card

WiFi

LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling DVD Burner

SD-MS/Pro-MMC-XD media card reader

Removable Remote Control thingamabob (so I can use it as a TV)

Lots of lovely little ports some of which I don’t know the name for (USB/eSATA/HDMI/Network/phone/monitor/etc)

So, I get this thing home. Get my wifi network back up and running, and low an behold, aparently this pissed off my Dell.

She must have gotten jelous of the new girl in town, because when I walked in the room after getting my lappy all up and running, the dell was deader than a doornail.

She won’t even turn on. She just sits there with front panel error codes indicating she has bad memory. No bios screen, nothing. Just a number 3 and a number 4 lit up in green, as if to say, “Fine! I’m leaving!”.

I even ripped out all the memory and hit the power button to see if it would give me the correct error codes for “no memory found”, but nope. It still claims to have memory, but claims the memory is bad.

Well, guess what Dell? That’s BS! You were going to remain my primary, but now it really does look like I’m abandoning you to the cobwebs of irrelevancy! Good ridance you over priced piece of crap! You never worked right in the first place!

If I didn’t think there was a chance I could fix it (probably have to buy a new motherboard, this will be it’s third one) I’d take it out back and beat the snot out of it with a baseball bat.

I HATE DELL COMPUTERS!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Tags: computers, Dell, dell sucks, Dell Wars, HP
Posted in autobiographical, hardware | No Comments »

“Dell Wars” Episode VI – Return of the… Sith?

Monday, November 26th, 2007

I’ve chronicled my disastrous flirtations with Dell computers in the past, and thought that my struggles were over. Alas, here is episode VI…

Every computer I own is a dell. Why? Because they used to be good. After a year of fighting with dell, they finally sent me an xps 410 (to replace my crappy xps 400).

I upgraded my RAM a while back because the 1GB just wasn’t doing it.

So now I’m playing through Half Life 2 Episode 2 with the developer’s commentary on. I’m going after the larva in the chapter where the antlion gaurdian chases you through the tunnels. Just after you have to break through the boards to escape him and you drop through the floor. As soon as I run down the hall, at the exact moment I am approaching the medic passing the hall light on the left side the game freezes and there is a memory error. It happens every time. I have done everything short of uninstalling my antivirus program to try and fix it. It has happened at the exact same moment every time for the last 12 times.

This is not happening to anyone else, just me. Why? It has to be something to do with my stupid freaking dell. Probably the built in (to the motherboard) sound-card. At least now I’m not getting the blue screen of death, it just quits the program.

I am never buying a dell again. Ever. Yes, this is the billionth time I’ve said that, but this is just a nail in the already soldered shut coffin for dell with me.

dell == hell.