The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

don't go with a ssd drive on a laptop. replace the norton with another anti-virus\spyware program. if want to put on win7 then make certain the bit version of win7 will work with that cpu as have found out twice now that 64bit win7 wouldn't install on a 32bit dual core.

 

Also, it's always worth seeing if there are XP drivers available, it might be a cheaper alternative, plus no need to buy extra RAM. I can never remember the minimum RAM that Win7 runs on as i put XP on far more machines than Win7 - we've had a few instances where Win7 refuses to join domains (just gives a temporary profile over and over), it's far less hassle in those instances to just use XP as the suggested fixes for corrupt profiles never work.

We're always rebuilding machines at work, we just put the most appropriate OS on, even if that means XP. There's one golden rule we stick to, that's that if a Vista machine comes in, it absolutely will not have Vista put back on it.

 

I hear you, on the permission thing and the user experience. In our case, we ask permission (only regarding anything that might cost if it's someone's personal machine; if it's a work machine the hardware gets costed to whichever budget or branch), make a recommendation and all that's left is to find out what existing data needs keeping/ and or transferring. The user experience, while noted, is moot to us though, most people who need their computers rebuilding or fixing have no idea how to use the things, hence why our recommendation actually translates into what they end up with, and hardware changes are only made if actually necessary. Plus we're I.T. so what we say goes, we're the people who have to support them. Don't get me wrong, i understand where you're coming from, but when there's an endless stream of rebuilds (usually from people who break their machines in ever increasing, bizarre ways) you learn to set it up how you think it should be done, and not how they want it. And if machines come back again (i've had re-rebuilds with 70+ nasties on) i politely request they stop going on dodgy websites or they face my good-mannered sarcasm a second time (insert relevant Monty Python quote here)

We always aim to have a minimum of 1GB in XP machines, any more is always a bonus but is rarely necessary. Win7 as i say, is't installed that often so can never remember the minimum - however any Vista machines that come in usually have 2 or 3GB of RAM, as the vendors would tend to put 3GB of RAM in just because it's Vista. I did have a 1GB Vista machine the other week, it was so painful to even work on it, made sure to work harder on getting permission to just wipe it and start again as opposed to investigate it. In fact i cloned the hard drive and managed to pull off a Vista->Win7 upgrade, it took a few hours longer than a fresh install but it was worth it to not mess about in Control panel just looking for what was installed prior to even saving data/rebuilding, and the transformation when running in Win7 was amazing, still under that same 1GB. The person whose laptop it was was more than happy to pay for another stick of RAM (and we always have spare bits of kit so sometimes give spares away) but i'm a necessities only kind of guy, even if it's cheap it doesn't have to be bought if it doesn't actually need to be bought. I thrive on people's smiles and thanks when stuff works again, i'd be a crap businessman

 

LOL i have my moments; i was just editing my reply for awesomeness value in fact, LMAO.

I haven't got Spock's ears but i can certainly make my eyebrows pull stunts when people come asking for help

 

try working on a brand new dell laptop with vista running on 512meg less what the onboard video uses & you see slow. happened a couple of years ago with a customer that when i saw what she had i told her to get more ram which she did with a 1gig which i installed when she got it. she then had 1.25gigs of ram & last year i replaced the 256meg ram with another 1gig for 2gigs minus what the video uses. the customer told me that if she still has issues that she will have me remove the vista & replace it with xp, she hasn't called since.

 

Another payday, another set of 2TB drives . Finally getting around to swapping out the WD5000AAKS boot drive so plumped for a 2TB Caviar Black (still only £106 exc VAT and i don't pay the VAT) along with a 2TB Green as it's external backup. Going to clone the WD5000AAKS using the hardware dock and once i've grown the partition to 2TB hopefully it'll boot as if the drive hadn't changed. Then (at another payday) all that remains is to replace the last internal 500GB drive and i can leave the darn PC alone for a long time