I’m redoing a client’s Dell hunk of junk XPS tower right freaking now and I made the mistake of thinking the Dell Windows installer would autodetect the internal hard drive. Oops, of course not. The hard drive is SATA and so I have to create a floppy containing the SATA drivers just so the Windows Installer that shipped with the Dell can detect the hard drive which, well, shipped with the Dell. Nice. A freaking floppy!
I still find myself at this same agonizing task of very slowly committing suicide via Dell. I can boot into the current Windows installation from the internal SATA drive, but even with the floppy containing the SATA driver, the Windows installer can’t find the hard drive.
Comparatively speaking, all my Macs have been much easier to deal with than any of the Windows, or even Linux, systems that I have dealt with. Even though I enjoy using Linux and mucking about with config files, I’m never enjoying my job when I have to fool with Windows.
– and later —
Turns out the driver on the disc I received from the customer contained the wrong SATA driver altogether. Downloaded the newest SATA driver from Dell and it worked fine. Well until the printer driver reinstall failed, but then the printer was suddenly recognized, and IE 7 never showed up in Windows or Microsoft Update. Even though both said I had authenticated with WGA. I download the update manually and told the client to make sure it installed because I was 4 hours past do. I emailed her to check up on the system from hell. Oh did I mention downloading the HP driver via an optional Windows/Microsoft update crashed the system…hard..with a blue screen…some sort of fatal exception…buffer overflow. I had to roll back and get the heck out of there. I’ve got to come back to network all the machines after the FIOS install anyway so I can always rebuild the system software again then.
The XPS Gen 3, or whatever awful name Dell marketing came up with for the system, is an ugly hunk of junk with a case that didn’t fit quite right until I made a blood sacrifice. Literally. I have an inch or two gash on my thumb/hand area where I cut myself trying to get the case back together. When I picked the system up, the whole case was misaligned and wouldn’t close properly. I’m not sure what the Geek Squad did to this thing when they had it before me, but things were in dire shape.
[ed: I pulled this from here to show that, while pain can be found on all sides of computer maintenance, only Windows offers that perfect storm of frustration, anger, exasperation and thoughts of indirect violence — Matt]
October 9th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Just a tip: never, ever, do the optional hardware updates that are offered by Windows Update.
October 9th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Thank you for the tip SteveAx. I think that job was the first time I’ve ever used Windows Update to update a driver. Won’t be doing that again.
I was behind on the job because the printer drivers wouldn’t install correctly and then I thought, “Why not see if Windows Update has my drivers and I’ll save the hassle of hitting each manufacturer.”, and then everything fell apart. Fatal exceptions all over the place. Although, after a roll back to last know good state and a couple reboots everything magically started working again, including some of the hardware which had suddenly ceased to function, such as the PCI wireless card.
XP just sort of fixed itself. I thought I was going to have to rebuild the Dell again, but things have been okay for 24 hours now. Here’s to hoping nothing goes wrong for at least another six months.
Nathan