New Laptop is no joy...

December 07, 2005 @ 12:03 am

<sigh>… why can’t life be a little easier just sometimes?

I bought a new laptop from Dell and I was pretty excited to get a more up to date machine that would work a little bit better with Visual Studio 2005. So the thing arrived yesterday after almost getting misdelivered to the wrong house…

Unpacked, removed the default Dell installation and installed Windows 2003 Server on the machine. Everything seemed to be fine. Machine was working great, so all of yesterday I spent a fair amount of time moving most of my stuff over onto the new machine. What a pain in the ass! And it literally takes the better part of a complete day to move everything.

Everything was still fine. Machine was running smoothly and fast… all is well until I decided to close the lid on the computer. Well, closing no problem, but when the box came back from stand by it instantaneously rebooted. First few times it happened I didn’t quite pay attention, not quite being sure whether I shut the thing down before I closed the lid. Interestingly enough putting the machine to Sleep with the Sleep button worked fine. But whenever the lid was put down, then let the machine sit for at least a few minutes it would either instantaneously reboot, or blue screen (to a different message each time).

There were a few issues with the stock Dell drivers that didn’t want to install on Win3k – both of the network drivers didn’t want to install due to OS checking. Why the heck do manufacturers do that??? Anyway, I played around with installing different drivers for video (ATI Omega Drivers) and network drivers specifically for Win3k etc. all with slight changes in the result, but all crashing or restarting the machine.

At this point I’m of course frantic. Having Win2003 on the box, Dell won’t give me support – they won’t even talk to me on the phone or at least they didn’t in the past – hardware problem or no. So I bit the bullet blew away everything and re-installed XP Pro. Same damn problem… so now I can look forward to deal with Dell on the phone all day tomorrow and probably wait a week to send the machine in and get it back. What a pain…

I’ve had really good luck in the past with my Dell’s and my only big complaint with Dell has been the lack of support of my OS installations. Everytime I call support I lie about what I use… Why should they care what software I’m running? I’m buying hardware from them not software.

So, now I am still debating on whether I want to install Win2003 once the box works or stick with XP Pro. No matter what I can’t trust a stock install from Dell (or anybody) with all the shit they install on those machines. I have to do a reinstall from scratch.

But choosing between XP and Win2003 is a tough call. I really use IIS and multiple sites frequently for testing so I can quickly test full installations and throw them away on new Web sites. In addition the 10 connection limit in XP can cause problems in some debugging scenarios (especially AJAX running through Fiddler which apparently eats up a lot of connections).

I’m rambling but I’ve just wasted a whole day completely for nothing – so these 10 minutes are hardly going to count <g>…

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re: New Laptop is no joy...
by Ken Buch December 07, 2005 @ 12:36 am

You are probably well aware but just in case, my Dell (almost 3yrs old) has settings on the power page that tell the machine what to do when the lid is closed. The default is shut down but I changed mine to keep running.

re: New Laptop is no joy...
by Rick Strahl December 07, 2005 @ 12:50 am

I don't think there's an explicit option in that Windows dropdown that says: When closing the lid show a Blue Screen of Death <g>...

These options are part of Windows. But it doesn't do any of those things ... It just shorts out. It doesn't 'shut down' - it just turns off without the shut down sequence.

In fact the whole lid is screwy. In some situations when I close the lid, the computer doesn't go to sleep. When I open it back up it does. At other times, when I open it back up I just get a black screen. And sometimes it even works correctly... Even odder if I close the lid let it stand by, then open it back up right away it usually works. It's only after it's been in stand by for a few minutes that it starts screwing up.

I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with with the hardware... I just wish I would have caught this while the original Dell install was on there still... that way I would know whether it's a defintie hardware issue and not some driver conflict.

re: New Laptop is no joy...
by Kevin Wright December 07, 2005 @ 1:50 am

Oh dear - I have just ordered my new desktop (Precision 380) from Dell, with thoughts of putting W2K3 on it when it arrives...

Kevin

re: New Laptop is no joy...
by dominick December 07, 2005 @ 5:58 am

hey rick :)

no security this time...well we'll see :)

i am running w2k3 on my thinkpad t42p - goes really smooth...but even then most of the time i run all my asp.net stuff inside of vmware (like i did when i used WinXP)

..and this give you the ability to run as non-admin on your main OS....

cheers
dominick

re: New Laptop is no joy...
by rich December 07, 2005 @ 5:59 am

I commented on this blog before how the new Dell Laptops quality has taken a big nosedive. I hope you don't come to regret this purchase!

re: New Laptop is no joy...
by justin December 07, 2005 @ 8:59 am

i have been playing with vmware for the past 6 months. I did this because i am sick to death of having to rebuild my machine every 6 to 12 months. So i created a VMware image with all the software installed and configured the way i like. Then all i have to do is copy this image onto my other computers with no setup times..

its a big time saver and VMware is fast to

re: New Laptop is no joy...
by Boas December 07, 2005 @ 12:29 pm

Hi Rick
I've had always had problems with Dell PC's

Perhaps bad charma ;)
And the support in my opinion isn't even woth to mention it :-(

re: New Laptop is no joy...
by Rick Strahl December 07, 2005 @ 1:08 pm

Rich, yeah I remember, and and I feel a bit like an idiot now <g>. Well, no not really... but to be honest first hand experience usually serves me better (if available) than second hand experience. I have heard of problems with Dells, but everything I've heard has been with the low end machines...

Well, we'll see how it turns out. If support gives me a bunch of crap I'll just tell them to stuff it and return the machine...

re: New Laptop is no joy...
by Rick Strahl December 08, 2005 @ 12:10 pm

Thanks everybody for their thoughts. But here you can see what the problem is <g>. Everybody has a different opinion and view depending on their roll of the dice. I've had good luck with Dell in the past, but once screwed - trust betrayed - you know the drill...

Anyway, I've been looking around a bit and there aren't a large number of choices if you go out to high end. I've been looking at the Alienware 5570 which looks really nice (both hardware and design <g>) and also the Sager NP5790. Both have SATA support with large fast disks which is a big bonus. I see a lot of mixed reviews of the Alienware stuff though and that's a bit off putting - love it or hate it, there seems no in between. Usually is that way when it works all's well...

Both of those machines though don't have VGA ports! They only have DVI outputs which is a problem for me - I have to plug into projectors too frequently to not have a VGA plug. I've never seen a DVI plug at a conference <g>...

There seem to be lots of decent mid-range machines you can get cheap, but they're pre-configured with memory and drive or don't have the right screen resolution ofr the most part. I'd really like to get a big honker of a screen <g>...

re: New Laptop is no joy...
by Gabe December 10, 2005 @ 5:50 am

Just to add my 2 cents. I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 and have no problmes runing Windows 2K3 on it. All of the XP drivers install without a problem on Win 2K3. Be sure you install all off the drivers (like the Intel Chipset drivers). It also has both a VGA and DVI port. I think the 6000 is very simialr to the 9300 and you should have no problmes with that model either (at least from a driver standpoint).

re: New Laptop is no joy...
by Mayur January 02, 2006 @ 2:54 am

I installed W2k3 on my Inspiron 9300 last week. Hit a few driver snags but that was trivial. Only device i couldn't find drivers for are the SD Drive. The Device Manager still shows ?PCI Device. Let me know if you need help on driver installs.

re: New Laptop is no joy...
by Jon Melvin September 01, 2006 @ 2:39 am

I have an Inspiron 9300 and am working on the install of w2k3. Would like to exchange email with anyone (e.g. Mayur) who has had success. Looks like we're not to have email on this blog but can send me one via my web site at www.jdm-cs.com and I'll respond. Thanks.