I Need Some New PC Advice
Thursday, July 24, 2008 by PoSmedley | Discussion: WinCustomize Talk
* I tried posting this 3 times in the Personal Computing section, but the content would never show and I am unable to post any replies in thatg section as well.
Okay..so ZA starts telling me my IP is under attack by some IP as soon as I boot my PC. After 20 or so of these alerts in 3 minutes, ZA shuts down and Avast starts popping up virus alerts quicker than I can send them to the vault. About 25 or so (Literally) alerts later, everything goes apeshit.
My taskbar starts coming and going. Nothing 'WIndows' will work right because as soon as I open it, it starts vanishing with the taskbar. Avast..I run it ans it finds nothing. It won't let me see whats in the vault. I ran it 3 times. I did a diskcheck...it says all is fine. Run Avast and spybot in safemosde..it says all is fine. Can't tun Trends Home call. I run Hijack this and the parser cannot parse the log and says there is a fatal error in the log that will not let it parse.
My systsem is fried. After a year of upgrades (2 gb memory, a 5500 Nvidia card, etc) it seems all is lost. There is a good chance the memory is infected and I have no way to even tell by what.
SO..here is the situation. I have a new Acer 19" widescreen monitor, so I m good there. I just need the rest.(maybe a new keyboard) With the baby and all (life, etc.) I am on a budget...but, because I have the monitor, I have a chance to do a little better on the CPU than the little Compaq that got me through these past 5 years.
Budget..I (my wife) would like to see me keep it under $400. It needs to able to handle all the SD programs graphically (per pixel) etc. I don't have a clue about 64 bit except the complaints I see about lack of support, etc. AND, I guess I will make the Vista leap. I love to do my graphics, love music. I was looking for one that had the memory, HD, and graphics card I wanted and just the OS without all the garbage thrown in. My step-son got an e-machine for Xmas from his Dad. I have never been impressed with them. (We have three dead ones at the office that didn't last a year). He has Vista Basic and it runs nice. I hate to ask because I can imagine the negative feedback..but any thoughts on emachines are welcome.
Here is what I am looking at currently, to give you an idea. Advice, warnings, better deals are all welcome. The last one is really closer to what I want. I don't know if any of them will meet my graphic needs to run dESKTOPx, wb AND ALL THAT. I'm also looking for the most memory and HD for my money. My little compaq only had 80GB and it was about 70% used because I save all my graphics for reference and such for PSP.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3809126&CatId=2627
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3718399&CatId=2629
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3876222&CatId=2627
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3776545&CatId=2627
I am open to suggestions.
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Reply #42 Friday, July 25, 2008 10:32 PM
lol
I need to get my very, very old Compaq (96MB ram) up and running. I'm on here from work. Then I can get with you yrag and some of you others and maybe see if the PC can be rescued.
I would love to build my own, but the last time I put a new heating coil in the clothes dryer I had extra parts left over. Granted, it ran for another two years...but I had a box..a whole box of extra parts.
It's clear..I will not install the HD in anything else. The memory can not be infected. My company IT guy smokes banana peels. This was confirmed yesterday when my DM lost the password and admin password to their computer. The IT guy kept telling me to press control-alt-delete and enter the admin password. I kept saying..'We don't have the password." Then he would say 'Press control-alt=delete and enter the password." I repeated myself and he said OH, then enter the user's passowrd." sigh.
I will try to get the old compaq up this weekend and get back to you all. Thanks.
Reply #43 Saturday, July 26, 2008 7:32 AM
WWW Link
I have seen some folks say they had issues with Object Desktop and laptops. Should I not even bother looking at laptops for what I want and like to do with graphics?
Reply #44 Saturday, July 26, 2008 7:41 AM
Reply #45 Saturday, July 26, 2008 7:48 AM
I had a feeling that heat would be the issue. Thanks, Bebi.
That's why I started this post. I don't want to buy something and find these things out after I get it home. And when I talk to the so called 'experts' at the stores...bleh. I have yet to find one that doesn't look at me like I am speaking Klingon when I ask if the video card can handle per-pixle graphics.
Reply #46 Saturday, July 26, 2008 8:36 AM
Check NewEgg.com also. They usually have some great deals and very reputable (imho). Personally I've purchased from both Tiger and Newegg with no problems from either one. Some stuff they are comparable on price and some things they aren't.
Also sounds like Yrag and IR have also given you some great advise on your system. Please be careful when buying from Best Buy and Wally World. Best buy has some very restrictive return policies if something would happen and Wally World is....well....just Wally World.
Reply #48 Saturday, July 26, 2008 10:30 AM
WWW Link
Don't go gateway. While many people have had good success with them more often then not, you will have too many problems with them. Maybe they've gotten better over the years, but I've fixed more of my friends Gateway's than Carter has liver pills.
Reply #49 Saturday, July 26, 2008 10:35 AM
Reply #51 Saturday, July 26, 2008 12:41 PM
Actually for 300$ they are really good basic pc's.If you want power tho,go dual or quad core.I can only get certain hi def movies to play on mine...higher bitrate hi def movies NEARLY play smoothly...but tend to skip a little.
Photoshop will run fine on a simple basic pc...3d apps will really benefit from more power and speed.Movie encoding...POWER!
Reply #52 Saturday, July 26, 2008 3:39 PM
I know that first hand. My son's computer is single core (running Vista) and when he is doing animations with the Blender program, it gets all buggy and glitchy. I have a dual core (with Vista)and I get no glitches or bugs. The difference is dramatic.
Reply #53 Wednesday, July 30, 2008 8:31 PM
I got a Compaq - Presario Desktop with AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4200+ --NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE graphics with TurboCache and 128MB dedicated video memory; up to 319MB total video memory as allocated by Windows Vista; high-definition audio (6-speaker support)--Vista Home premium (I NEVER thought I would have Vista.lol) 329.00
I then went to RadioSHack *ALERT...I went to get a MadDog HD Enclosure for SAT and IDE drives. They were 26.98. I got there and they were 39.(( in store...then..found out they were on sale for 19.99...so I got a couple of em. I used them to rescue all the stuff from the 2 drives in my broke PC. All worked well. Now, I have 2 reformatted back-up drives to boot.
All is installed. My SD apps all run great. No borks with Vista at all (Except I miss my IconX..it says it's not compatible with Vista)
ONLY down side...I wanted to transfer the 2GB od RAM from my old PC, but as NEW as they are...apparently they are not new enough for the NEW PC.
Thanks everyone for all your help!!
and advice and sympathy.Overall, this PC is slick, faster, smoother than the old one..and I have to admit, I am liking Vista.
I think the BIOS is infected on the old one. When I booted it the last time, I got the bluescreenofdeath. If I can figure how to clean it up, it would make a good server or something.
Reply #54 Wednesday, July 30, 2008 8:54 PM
Maybe a plant stand or a door stop?
Or you could take it apart and put it back together [B]with out any left over parts[B]. that's what i used to do, it's a good way to learn, i would also do things to the bios that i would never do to my pc! lets see what this does.. 
Reply #55 Wednesday, July 30, 2008 8:55 PM
Reply #56 Wednesday, July 30, 2008 9:47 PM
I got a Compaq - Presario Desktop with AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4200+...
Good for you, Po`... I'm glad that you're up and running again and are happy with a slicker, faster machine. :CONGRATS:
Reply #57 Thursday, July 31, 2008 11:07 AM
I do have a cool chair and a nice big monitor tho.
Reply #58 Thursday, July 31, 2008 2:35 PM
Me too... tho I wish somebody 'd warm it up some first.
Was minus 1c here last night and the heating felt like it was off. Reply #59 Thursday, July 31, 2008 4:28 PM
Mine has 1GB of RAM also. Expandable to 4. The two from the broke PC won't fit it. Anyone wanna swap? I have 2 - 1GB sticks..maybe a couple of 512's around and alot of very interesting pics of Zubaz that he would probably pay buku bucks to keep private.
Reply #60 Thursday, July 31, 2008 4:53 PM
The cheapo HP I bought only had 512Mb.Nowhere near enough,even with home basic.I found a 1Gb stick of Kingston on sale at Best Buy for $34.95.I also have 2Gb of readyboost.(also Kingston)
I see the drive running at times so I know it's being used. Not sure if anything is faster,but it was free. ( My sis got it with Pepsi points!)Maybe you can use readyboost if you have a capable usb drive around til you find something.
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Reply #41 Friday, July 25, 2008 10:22 PM
I wasnt sure the MBR could still be infected after a reformat or install so I assumed they would be clear...I WAS pretty sure that a crossinfection would be unlikely if he was careful about what he copies over.
If the bios got hit...hmmmmmm...good luck.(try flashing it)YRAG be tha man around here...listen closely.