depends on the EULA/warranty information associated with the laptop, it could very well be procedure on RMA's to restore the system (or they could have just screwed up royally)

I feel bad for your experience, but that sounds about right for HP/Compaq customer service. One of the many reasons I would never own one of their builds.

However, the obvious lesson here is to never trust them with your data/configuration. If at all possible do a complete system backup to a DVD/external HDD using whatever backup or imaging software you feel comfortable with (there are plenty on the market) and at least you know it's safe.

Again, my condolences, but they just follow policy no matter how silly.

I had a suspicion, but it was pretty funny anyways:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/revocation.asp

Hey there w2as:

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

This handy little utility will tell what kind of motherboard you have, who made it, what socket type it is, revision, the type of memory it supports, and other useful information. From there you can look up what your motherboard supports at the manufacturers website.

Have fun!

Nerds (as I understand it) are typically folks that display very high aptitudes for a lot of subjects like math, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc (think of the pocket-protector stereotype). However, in contrast to their intellectual prowess they typically (but not always) suffer from less developed social skills when interacting amongst people who are not in their peer group.

Geeks on the other hand (of which I would classify myself) typically exhibit obsessive attraction and behavior towards a variety of subjects (think Trekkie at a comic book convention) and are interested in knowing vast amounts of details and what would be considered "useless info" about the subjects they love.

It's been my experience that while geeks are considered intelligent enough on their own, in comparison to nerds, they tend to outrank geeks in the braininess scale depending on the subject.


and of course, the obligatory link:
http://www.wikihow.com/Tell-the-Difference-between-Nerds-and-Geeks

this is a good rule thumb, here is a site I usually visit:
http://www.dll-files.com/

what they heck, I'll chime in..

Love D&D, love RPG's in general in all types of mediums such tabletop, computer, and console. Lot's of fun, provides a creative outlet, and plenty of social interaction.

I'm not going to deny that a certain stereotype of the gamer-geek does exist (because they do) but the stereotype is not the yardstick by which the entire community should be measured.

We aren't Satan worshipers. :rolleyes:

A LOT of us have g/f's and/or are happily married with spouses that enjoy the hobby. I was married to a gamer-girl for many years, but even though our marriage did not work we still play together because we are still friends and we love the hobby.

picky, picky, yeah it will see 3-3.5gb not the ENTIRE 4gb that is true. I was just generalizing.

I never asked for a flame war. I simply was offering my views on the article you posted and my comments were not directed at any particular person on this forum (the "$" comment is just my sarcastic poke of fun at the people who use it regularly, no offense intended.)

So let me make this clear, I never said that MS products were perfect, and I never said MS was the most awesome-est company ever. There applications/OS are certainly not bug-free and have their problems, much like any other computing platform.

That being said, and while Vista has it's problems, here's some other info:

Yes, people hate/dislike change and we are generally creatures of habit, I'm not going to back down from that statement so give up trying to change my mind about it.

Since the topic is Vista, let's get to it:

"Can you honestly sit there and tell me that it is not fuked up? You need at least three gigs of RAM in order for it to run properly."

New features + new security options + added support for hardware + new services + new policy settings + tons of other little stuff = more resource hungry operating system. Granted Vista has some obvious performance bugs (such as copying files from removable disks and network storage locations), and the demands of the Aero Glass interface, but disabling some extraneous services and not using Aero Glass are two BIG and simple changes you can make to a Vista system to improve it's performance. That and RAM is cheap, to drop 2,4,6 or 8 gigs of RAM into a box isn't going to break the bank or isn't unrealistic to to have on your workstation. Plus, if you run the 64-bit version of Vista (like the 64-bit version of XP) on 64-bit hardware (which is virtually every desktop/laptop of the last couple of years) if you were to have 4+ gigs it will utilize that memory because a 32-bit OS running on 32-bit hardware can only map the first 4GB of RAM due to an architectural limitation. 64-bit hardware/software doesn't have that barrier.

"It takes up so much room. And for what?"

Primarily legacy hardware/software support. This is both the bane and the boon to any OS platform. That support for your new digital camera or scanner, or that scrap-booking program you bought when Windows 98 was new needs to have drivers and/or legacy code for it to work. This takes up a ton of room, and drivers and legacy code are amongst the worst offenders for system stability regardless of OS platform. Vista seeks to minimize the problems caused by poorly written drivers and software, and does a halfway decent job, but it isn't perfect by any means.


"I am sorry they should not sell a product that they have to "patch up."

Well, unfortunately, this is part and parcel of the IT industry and something that we should either be used to by now, or at the very least get used to because the practice of patching software to add new features, plug security holes, or improve performance isn't going to go away.

"The bottom line is this- if M$ were in any other industry, they'd be up poop-creek without a paddle as they'd be served with injunction after injunction by such entities as the Better Business Bureau for fraud and bait-and-switch tactics, among other things."

Well, they have been brought up with a anti-trust case a few years back, plus they were/are facing stiff criticism by the EU on bundled software (WMP specifically) which they have since capitulated by offering versions of XP that have the offending software removed. In terms of fraud and bait-and-switch, they have made statements that certain fundamental changes to the OS would have hoped to have been accomplished, which proved frustrating to many people who were hoping that these improvements would have been implemented upon release, but if you have some links to resources about what fraud etc I would love to review them. Seriously.

Thanks all!

Cool, I mentioned this in another post. There should be a sticky that users can go to that has a compilation of useful free tools to help them combat infections of malware.

My views?

Typical anti-M$, pro-Linux/Apple/Google fanboi rhetoric you can pretty much dig up on 1.4 billion blogs and websites and is 9 times out of a 10 a complete waste of time to read.

Do not take this as a pro-MS statement simply because I slough off what has been written above. I use MS products extensively (it's my job), but I'm not saying they are a perfect company, nor do they have a perfect product. The article really is stupid literature, and is just one of the 1000's of pieces I happen across on a daily basis.

Here's how it breaks down:

All aspects of the industry, and the users within that industry, prop up or tear down their platform of choice (MS/Apple/*NIX). This just comes with the territory, and the millions of useless flame wars doesn't change the fact that you use what works for you, and that's the best you can do. What the fanboi's prey upon is the common consumers lack of awareness and technical knowledge. Hence why you have people that staunchly believe that Mac OS "never crashes", Linux is *always* "more secure", and Windows servers "need to be rebooted every hour".

Everyone hates change. So the introduction of a new feature, new piece of software, or entire operating system is met with the typical *****ing, moaning, and bewailing of "why?" and "this worked fine before, why did they screw it up?" and so forth. News flash; the IT industry doesn't stand still. It changes, new software is introduced, people complain, but then they get used to it as it's patched and fixed until the next software cycle. That's the raw of it.

Every fanboi trumpets the downfall of "x" company. *yawns*. This has been going on for decades, and there is no indication that it will ever stop, for any reason.

I will be blunt about this though, A LOT of Anti-M$ (see how clever I am by substituting a "$" instead of an S?) propaganda is envy based. For good or bad, Windows *is* the dominate desktop OS, and has a decent share of the server market. This just didn't happen by accident, MS made some very good business decisions in the course of it's lifetime, and those decisions have made it the company it is today. I'll bet my paycheck that if the situation was reversed, and a competitive product was the dominate force in IT, that product would be the target of all ridicule and venom the fanboi's could throw at it. That's just human nature, to ***** about things we have no control over.

There should really be a search function built in to these forums, so users can look up topics related to computers affected with malware/viruses.

This would save time as 95% of the responses to people that have "x" malware/virus affecting their computer is:

Download and install "x" malware remover/AV program
Run these programs
If you have something really difficult you may need more advanced pieces of software, or take your computer in to a professional.

For that matter, a compiled list of good malware removers should be made a sticky on this forum and that sticky referred to by folks with malware issues.

two good sources to check if something is a hoax or not:

http://www.snopes.com

http://www.breakthechain.org/

have fun!

Kind of odd behavior for the Windows Firewall, but I'm happy to hear that you got the issue resolved.

well, that is one way to take care of it. Glad to hear they went away for you.

I've never run into this before, but you could possibly bring in your cell to the cell provider you got it from and ask them. :)

Just to clarify w2as...

If you are sitting idle at your desktop, no web browsers or any other apps running, do the pop-ups occur?

Or do the pop-ups only appear when you are surfing?

The reason I ask is, if you are sitting idle at the desktop and you are getting pop-ups, you have some form of malware still resident on your system.

If the pop-ups are occurring only when surfing, then it sounds like something still needs to be tweaked with your browser pop-up settings and/or security settings.

If you've run AVG, Spybot, Ad-Aware, and other clean-up tools to no avail you might want to consider getting your system looked at by a professional, or a someone you trust locally that is good with computers to root out the cause of the issue.

There is some really nasty malware out there, and sometimes a lot of the popular freeware tools we use to clean up our systems cannot root it out.

Best of luck!

Hey Daniel, I hope we can help with the issues you are having, but I have some questions for you so I can better understand what's going on:

"...will not allow me to sign in (however I have complete access to everything else as far as MSN goes...)."

When you say this, are you referring to MSN Explorer? (http://explorer.msn.com/install.htm), the MSN website? Or Hotmail? Or something else? It's like when you mentioned:

"I tried to go with an older version like I did with yahoo, but MSN requires that you be completely upgraded to the most current now."

As you probably know your Hotmail address and password are your Windows Live ID. This can be used to sign-on to Windows Messenger and Windows Live Messenger (which are two different versions of the same Instant Messaging application). Windows Messenger, as Gangreen mentioned, is already bundled with Windows XP (which I assume is the OS you are running) and can be found under Start>All Programs>Accessories>Windows Messenger. This Messenger can be run at any time, and doesn't require itself (that I'm aware of) to be updated to whichever MSN you are referring too (is MSN your Internet Service Provider by chance?)

As a test, open Messenger and sign in with your Live ID. Record exactly what error message is displayed and we can try some troubleshooting such as this: http://help.msn.com/(ZmlsdGVyPURIX0ZSRUUmcHJvamVjdD1tZXNzZW5nZXJ3MTAmbWFya2V0PWVuLVVTJmN1PSZ0bXQ9JmZvcm1hdD0=)/Help.aspx?market=en-US&project=Messengerw10&querytype=topic&query=Messenger_TROU_Error_81000301.htm

If you cannot sign-in with Messenger, or Messenger fails to start or run due to some form of corruption, try downloading and installing Windows Live Messenger: http://get.live.com/messenger/overview

Like before, install WLM, and sign-on (if you can) with your Live ID. If you get some error attempting to sign-on with Live Messenger, or a similar error when you tried to sign-on with with the older bundled version of Messenger, you might have some other issue with your computer that is preventing these IM apps from logging in.

If we can nail down what sort of specific error you are getting when attempting to use or sign-on with the either version of Messenger we may be able to offer some more help.

Good luck!

LOL, well, it's like 60% of the content on the web. :)