I finally got my Vista Express Upgrade, ran it, and it decided it needed to upgrade my BIOS(Doubt it), failed, and now my usual PC won't run.

To be specific: http://www.futurehardware.in/572375.htm

I'm going to see if resetting the CMOS works for me or not...

Dell sucks. Yeah, welcome to like, 1984. I wish you luck getting it working. Your sure gonna need it.

But 1984 wasn't like 1984.

But Dell has sweet sales...

This is really true. My Inspiron laptop cost me 35% less than it should have. It's not perfect, but it works pretty well. I'm trying to take good care of it as I really don't believe it to be the sturdiest system though.

Falcon is the best.

Funny, my Inspiron's hard drive just died this weekend, not that I shouldn't have seen it coming.

dell does suck, anyone who repairs computers will tell you this.

It probably is the best. Too bad not everyone likes to blow 3-5 grand on a laptop.

Heh. Here's my Dell Inspiron 4100 that I'm using right now.

The laptop's keyboard doesn't completely work (keys on the bottem stopped fuctioning). The touchpad is broken, the buttons around it don't work. Sometimes it goes completely bonkers and throws the mouse all over the screen (I fix this by actually banging my hand on the touchpad area of the laptop several times). The only USB port sometimes quit working, cutting power off to the USB mouse. The laptop screen cannot be touched AT ALL otherwise it goes completely crazy and unusable (I can fix this by banging my hand on the screen until everything settles down normally). I broke the hinges that hold RAM chips when I was updating the RAM, so one of the RAM chips is held in place by a plastic piece of wire tie. Lastly, the laptop BURNS with the power of the SUN (hopefully doesn't go up in flames in the future).

It's almost 5 years old. And I'm surprised the harddrive didn't die yet. People in dorms say I should chuck this thing out the window. They say it's a laptop "on life support that needs to be unplugged for good." :saddowns:

kill it with fire

It's like a former girlfriend's mother that wont leave you alone, but still cooks good meals.

I have a 75mhz IBM thinkpad that is in better shape than that Dell.

Also, my IBM Thinkpad 750mhz I had for highschool is still running fine. The hinges look like they're wearing out, and the sensor for the screen being closed no longer works, but otherwise it functions fine.

Odd. Usually it's the power jack that breaks first. That's what happened to my compaq. Everything else still, presumably, works fine. I've even still got it's hard drive handy as a replacement. Most HP models are pretty sturdy, though their packaged software is just as crappy as anyone else's.

My Latitude D610 is still chugging along strong...

Build quality of Inspirons is crappy. Build quality of Latitudes is much better (also why they generally cost a bit more), especially current gen Latitudes. D620s are quite solid.

The battery in my Inspiron is dying, I think. I've had it since September.

I love my Dell desktop...it was dirt cheap, and it's running way more crap than a 305w power supply should be able to...lol...

Dell ripped me off by a stick of RAM...

but it was a good computer nontheless.

Dell can't possibly be worse than Compaq. (which is what I'm currently stuck with until my budget allows me to upgrade)

But then so does e-machines, Compaq, HP, and Gateway. The key is 300$ PC. People need to stop thinking that they are awesome deals and realize that they get what they pay for.

Tell me about! The laptop my sister handed down to me is a compaq and that thing is suck a ghetto piece of junk. I'm glad Compaq no longer exists anymore so no one else has deal with their crappy computers.

Dell's higher end PCs aren't that bad to work with.

I should know, I've owned three out of complete laziness.


I have an Inspiron E1705 laptop. It's pretty awesome so far, it came with a 7900GS which overclocks REALLY well. (Well, it runs it's normal clock really well. They gimp them to give you better battery life. I ungimp it for when I'm going to stay plugged in, and re-gimp it when I'm going to like go outside or something)

I have a 6 year old latitude with a P3 in it that still works GREAT.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's not really Dell's fault that people think you can make a 300 PC with out putting in crap generic parts.

Oh, I don't just refer to the quality of their products. Their customer service, for instance, is absolutely horrendous. You can't seem to get any help from them at all when you need it. Heck, I've got buddies who are Dell technicians and even they say that their customer service is total crap and the majority of their techs wouldn't know a processor from a video card.

One plus about Dell...no Windows activation crap...no key required...Dell OEM CDs install on a system with a Dell motherboard - works beautifully.

Just like every other major manufacturer. :p

Update: Resetting CMOS, did nothing...

You see, the problem is not exactly that BIOS is screwed up, it's that I don't think there is a BIOS there anymore. The only thing that actually functions is the tower itself. The monitor displays nothing. The keyboard does nothing. The mouse, which normally can be spotted from orbit via it's red light, is black as night.

The hardrive runs, the disk drives light up. Nothing else works though...

This seems hopeless short of getting a new motherboard, unless anyone else has some secret they aren't telling...


The most annoying thing is that none of the [scarce] documentation included warned that following the on screen instructions could cause severe damage to your machine or that maybe it should be booted or run in safe mode or something that the "average person" is probably oblivious to, and all before we even touch the Vista DVD.

Well uh... most customer service is utterly worthless. More or less all they do is read over a FAQ and ask you the same questions you can find on the support section of the website. I learned this a long time ago.

look up a maintenance manual for your motherboard. if it's remotely up to modern spec there should be a jumper you can short to reflash to the original factory BIOS. If not, you'd have to get the ROM reflashed through some other means (which is often more expensive than buying a new motherboard).

Edit: If you qualified for a vista upgrade then your computer is probably still under warranty. Dell should cover the problem. If it's not under warranty you should still be able to get a replacement motherboard.

Yeah, jumpers. The Dimension E521's motherboard appears to be unique in that it has two two pin jumpers with one little plastic thingy on the password reset jumper. Fooling with these is what I meant by resetting the CMOS...which worked about as well as a pair of goggles.

Dude, every time I've called or e-mailed dell I've always gotten what I wanted. Always.

Yeah, it takes a while, but they seriously go out of their way to make sure you're happy.

Dell's really not as bad as some people think.
I've had no problems with my Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook except the HDD and the video card runs a little hot, but in a laptop that's not unusual. Luckily I've never had to call their customer service. I'm sure if this laptop ever dies it's not that big of a loss (aside from the $800 I paid for it), and I save everything on an external USB hard drive, so all my data is safe.

Yeah, I literally just realized that, like just five minutes ago.

On the subject of quality, I haven't had a problem that I didn't cause, short of this. Whoever put together this upgrade and wrote the "sub-pamphlet" of instructions should be shot though.

according to the link he provided, resetting the cmos using the jumper didn't solve the problem. wonder what the problem is...

The only good thing I hear about Dell is their monitors.

Problem? Bad ideas. I say that because I don't think it was ever a good decision to put a potentially hazardous BIOS update on a disc that WILL be running from your desktop 90% of the time, exactly where it shouldn't be run.

I just spent an hour with Dell tech support in, if the background noise from what I assume was their supervisor's mouth is any indication, India.

I'm still not sure if taking the RAM out and putting it back...twice was actually going to help anything...

Maybe I would have gotten an American or at least English speaking tech if I had written down my express service code...or tried one of the other six numbers listed... They're supposed to call back tomorrow.


Honestly, I feel kinda...violated. I trusted Dell to not screw up my machine...

*shrug* Never been my experience. Or anyone I've known who's owned a Dell. They've never been able to get help from the customer service there.

Dell is going to start installing Ubuntu on their computers, all of their problems are now irrelevant and unimportant.

umm. I'm not talking about resetting the CMOS. The CMOS stores your BIOS settings. I'm talking about re-flashing to the factory default firmware.


The problem here is that Commander 598's motherboard is sorta... you know... missing a BIOS. When a computer starts up the first code it executes is in the BIOS, and since the code there is corrupted the computer cannot start up. I use very specific, precise language good sir.