Re: stay away from Dell Computers
 

Sounds like more of an OS problem than a hardware issue.
d.h.

Re: stay away from Dell Computers
 

We're all in luck! John R is now a computer consultant available on a "fee" basis. Send himm all your problems...

There ya go, John.

Re: stay away from Dell Computers
 

Have allways bought from Gateway.I'm on my fourth one. Customer service is excellent.
d.h. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Re: stay away from Dell Computers
 

I have both Dells and Gateways and luckily have had no problems with either. Most of the problems people have with computers are with software not hardware.

Just my $.02.

Re: stay away from Dell Computers
 

Yes - I will work for fee (that's the 4 letter word after losing an r [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] )...

You guys touched on it - the software causes more issues than anything. We went thru extensive config changes before we'd roll out 25, 50 or more desktops to the masses to make sure the config was as good as we could reasonably get it.

Re: stay away from Dell Computers
 

Ya JohnR, you are right on that one. Then, give the people those machines for two months, go back to each and every one of them and check to see what they have running in the background. Especially the ones that have INTERNET access!! Ohhh boy! Most of the time, they have more crap running in the background that they unknowingly picked up off the net and now have it residing in their machines and then they wonder why their machines don't run right!!! Oh, but it wasn't them that did it, it was the little green man that comes in at night and does it!! That's it, Gremlins, they did it.............

John

Re: stay away from Dell Computers
 

Hey JohnS - is there a good software program that can identify and blow away the "background" crap on a computer? Would Norton Utilities be something something worth looking into? I have 5-6 Dell's running in my office and would like to optimize them. They all have internet access. I know my computer has slowed down considerably over the years....I do the basic clean up of temporary internet files etc. but nothing beyond that. I think my startup is also clogged, takes me 6 minutes to boot up.

thanks in advance for the free advice.

Re: stay away from Dell Computers
 

Eric,

I don't know if this will help but goto lavasoftusa and download ad-aware 5.83. It is free and will get all of the useless programs that have been put on your computer through the net. It helped me stop pop up ads in their tracks.

Re: stay away from Dell Computers
 

Get the Adaware! Great product!

Stay away from Norton Utilities, Clean Sweep, and all of those "fixers". They WILL solve numerous problems but they also create problems, often fatal

Re: stay away from Dell Computers
 

Eric,
Sorry for not responding back quickly but I don't check all the posts every day.

Symantec, maker of Norton products, though they make wondeful stuff, it can cause problems at times as JohnR stated, though, I do use it at work on some things and it does do it's job. Personally, if you are good with Microsoft products and know your way around them, you can go in and wipe out most of your problems manually, keeping in mind that Microsoft hides stuff in as many as three places at times. They are good at that! So, depending on which operating system you are running, it can be in different places. I like the Adaware stuff that JohnR mentioned too, works pretty good and stops most of the BS on the garbage that the internet seems to send our way. Cleaning out the temp file is nothing compared to what could really be in your machine. If you are not really comfortable doing that stuff on the machine, well, you can purchase the Symantec product and more than likely it will function just fine for you though, it will not delete the garbage that the internet has instiled into your machine and you will need to stop those from starting up, which is why your machine is taking forever and a day to start up. I suggest you also get some firewall software, again, Symantec makes some decent stuff for that too, called "Internet Security". They offer it in a combo with their anti-virus software as well. You can customize exactly what you will receive and what you do not want to receive, such as cookies etc. It will eliminate all those nasty pop-ups if you choose as well. Let me know..

John S