Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dell

Dell Mini 10v Just Showed Up--How to Protect it?

mixer — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:42:28 -0800

I just got a new Dell Mini 10v. I need some advice on programs--for security and to fight viruses! First thing, this is for my gf, who doesn't know anything about computers. I want to download all the good stuff for her. What security/firewall programs are good? I prefer the free stuff, mind you!

(I am a Mac OS guy. If I were to keep the compu, it would definitely be a hackintosh, but, alas, it's for her! So fill me in on how to protect this cool little thing.)
Thanks!

What Bay Area stores carry the Dell Adamo?

Susan PG — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:32:58 -0800

Where can I see a Dell Adamo (not the new XPS, but the one that was released last year) in person, in the San Francisco Bay Area? Frys doesn't seem to carry it, and I don't know who else would. I'm considering buying one, and want to handle it and check out the keyboard, weight, etc., in person, before making a decision. Thanks for any help you can provide :-)

Using factory restore disc after factory set RAID 5 configuration change

lyam — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:51:54 -0800

Will changing/removing a factory (DELL) set RAID 5 configuration from a home desktop PC interfere with rebuilding the OS (XP Pro) from the factory restore discs? I have a home XP Pro system utilizing a RAID 5 array that was setup by the factory. If I want to rebuild the system, but reconfigure the hard drives as two independent drives, will I still be able to use the factory restore disk to restore the OS? I'm afraid that I only have access to XP from the restore disc (shakes fist at Dell). Thanks!

Sounds like your starter is dead.

Saxon Kane — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:57:03 -0800

Why won't my computer boot up Windows on the first try? Details: Dell Studio Laptop, running Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit). About a month ago, it started doing this weird thing where it won't boot up when I first turn it on. The Dell Studio page will load, then it'll go to a blank screen with a cursor blinking in the upper left corner. It will continue to blink for a couple of minutes, before finally going to an all-black screen and just stalling. I have to turn off the computer, then turn it back on. The second time Windows will always boot up properly. I have run System Restore and Start-up Repair multiple times to no effect. I don't recall installing anything or making any changes to the computer before this started happening, but I could very well be wrong about that. I thought I'd ask the hivemind before I doomed myself to Customer Support purgatory. Any ideas how to fix the problem, or should I just upgrade to Windows 7?

Puzzle Me This

aspo — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:00:27 -0800

I love logic/word puzzles. Where can I find more/better puzzles? I've getting into word puzzles like the stuff you find in Games Magazine, or those PennyPress books. Are there other good periodicals or sources of puzzles I should know about? Preferably offline puzzles, as doing puzzles on the computer just isn't the same. I used to only do crosswords or the purer logic puzzles like the ones nikoli publishes. While there's tons of Sudoku and Kakuro books out there, one big book of the same kind of puzzle gets old. (Crosswords are a different story, but there's no shortage of those.) And after picking up a few of those PennyPress/Dell collections to keep me busy on a plane, I've realized that there's a ton of crossword/acrostic/anagram type word puzzles I've never really given a fair chance.

Are there better sources of puzzles? Those PennyDellPress periodicals are ok, but not fantastic. (And what's the difference between the two magazines anyway? They are published by the same company, are they supposed to be significantly different?) Games magazine is ok, but there's really only a few good puzzles per magazine. Oh, and while I prefer variety is there a good source of American Cryptic Crosswords out there? (I say American because cryptics are already a bit too hard for me, but when all the clues rely on UK puns/references I'd have more fun just making up words that fit the spaces.)

Why does my laptop think I'm pushing ctrl?

Pope Guilty — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:50:34 -0800

My Inspiron 1545 thinks I'm pressing ctrl and I don't know why. I picked up a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop awhile back, and the only problem I've had with it is that it frequently activates the ctrl key regardless of whether or not I'm actually pressing it- or even have my hands on the keyboard! Sometimes this is just annoying, like randomly crouching in an FPS or tab-targeting grabbing friends instead of enemies in WoW, but if I type a "w" while it thinks I'm pressing ctrl, I lose the Firefox tab I was working in! If I hit tab in Firefox, I frequently go to the next tab instead of the next field. Perhaps most bafflingly, it is only ctrl that this happens with; it never randomly types another character, nor does it ever wrongly activate shift or alt or any other key.

So far, I've talked to Dell about it; they sent me a replacement keyboard, but this did not resolve the problem. Googling indicates that many people are having this problem, but nobody seems to have any solutions (besides one suggestion, bizarrely, to reduce trackpad sensitivity, which did nothing).

Anyone out there know what's going on or have any ideas?

No sounds from laptop after 7 upgrade

wile e — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:51:24 -0800

Laptop upgraded from vista to 7, now having sound issues. Dell Vostro upgraded from Vista to 7. No sound from speakers, even after installing the dell supplied sigmatel driver. When I uninstall the Dell driver, Windows installs some driver itself and it gives me sound from my headphone jack, but not my speakers.

Dell Vostro 1400
Windows vista 32bit upgraded to Windows 7 32bit
4gigs ram
160hd
2.0 dual core

I am stumped. I hate wasting an askme on this, but I want to throw this thing out the window.

Did dude steal a Dell?

ChurchHatesTucker — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:16:05 -0800

Is this computer hot? A friend of mine found a good deal (person to person) for a Dell Windows Vista laptop. He's wondering if the deal is good because the computer is hot. Is there any easy way to get a fair idea? (He's a newbie, I'm a Mac.)

Fixing a netbook's corrupt registry sans optical drive?

Teira — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:50:25 -0800

How exactly does one go about fixing a corrupt XP registry or reinstalling XP on a device with no optical drive? Okay, so out of the blue with no problems earlier, I start up my netbook (dell mini 10v) and find myself confronted with the lovely missing/corrupted system file error. Now I realize this is going to require some effort with a boot CD, but serendipitously, this laptop has no drive. Now I figure I have three options here for self repair, and I would love to be corrected on these

1) Hopefully there's some way to use my desktop to load the netbook as a target drive, much like holding T at startup on a mac, and fixing things up that way... I have no idea how to do this and googling/mefi...ing aren't proving terribly useful

2) I can figure out how to boot from a thumb drive. I have a fairly speedy 16 gig one, a boot .iso, and my BIOS set to take it first, but I'm a little unsure if I need to do anything special. Do I unpack the ISO into the thumb's root directory? Do I attempt to install windows, onto it and try to use that boot to run a system restore? Again, provided instructions aren't very clear

3) I could force the target drive issue with brute force: ripping open the netbook and shoving the drive in my desktop for intense treatment. I don't want to do this. Please don't make me do this.

Am I being a drama queen here? Are there much easier ways to go about this?

This is a lot of question.

Also since Dell's kind enough to have stopped sending OEM discs with computers, my install discs and .iso are vanilla microsoft installs. I'm going to have horrible, awful driver issues aren't I?

Voided Warranty?

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:30:07 -0800

Is a Dell technician going to discover I've opened the computer before? The video card on my Dell XPS M1330 has crapped out. It's under warranty, so a quick chat with Dell support has them sending a technician out to replace the motherboard in the next few days. I just remembered, however, that I've opened the laptop a few times to clean dust out of the fans and adjust a cable that was being pinched. Will the tech be able to tell, and more importantly, will they refuse to service the laptop or charge me under the grounds that I've voided my warranty?

The problem I'm having with the M1330's video card appears to be widespread (see: "colored vertical lines" problem), so it's unlikely that i caused or affected it in any way by opening it up.

What's up with my music files on my PC?

ishotjr — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:12:02 -0800

What is up with my music files' titles turning into nonsensical four-letter titles? Ok, this is a little long, but it's a weird problem that is hard to describe.

I use iTunes on a (Dell) Windows Vista PC laptop. I noticed this issue probably over a year ago, but was too lazy to do anything about it until now.

Thousands of my music files are in files within "C:\My Music" that are named with F and then a number, F00 thru F49. All of my music was originally in "C:\Users\ishotjr\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music," and some of it still is. Within the F-named folders, the files are named/songs titled in three different ways.
1) Most are with four letters in caps, example: AJOM. They are seemingly random and not acronyms of the real titles. Within this, most, in the artist/album, etc. fields in Windows Explorer, have the correct info. A few have nothing at all in those.
In either case, if I choose to play it in iTunes (by clicking the option within Windows Explorer, where I'm viewing the files), it brings me to the song that is properly titled within iTunes (i.e., AJOM takes me to "Levitate Me" by The Pixies in iTunes).
2) A few of the songs are named with their correct name, but with the track number proceeding it (i.e. 01 Debaser)
3) Even fewer are named completely normally, with just the actual song title.

Another weird twist is that in iTunes itself, there are a handful of files that are actually named with the four letter names. Most of these are all from a Velvet Underground greatest hits compilation, but there are a few that aren't.

There seems to be no pattern as to how I procured the music and what's in these weird files. I did bring most of the music onto my computer from my iPod when I got the computer, but some of it I have purchased since owning this computer. The software I used to bring the songs from the iPod to the computer was some free program that I don't recall the name of and deleted to save hard drive space when I was done using it.

The real kicker is that most of these weirdly-named tracks are NOT duplicates, so I can't just delete them. Most of the time, it's one or two songs from a given album that are named weird and in the F-named folder instead of in the folder with the rest of its album-mates.

It seems that I might be stuck consolidating the 49 "F" folders into one (not so hard, just tedious), then trying to rename the thousands of song backs to their proper names by clicking them through to iTunes and manually entering the name of each song into the file name in Windows, then moving all of the songs to the correct place. It's not necessary to do this to be able to listen to the songs, but it's annoying having my files all over the place, especially when I want to delete entire albums off of my hard drive to make space.

My actual question is two-part:
1) Has anyone ever had this weirdo thing happen to their music files before?
2) Does anyone know a better way to fix it than to do everything manually (which will take for-ev-er)?

Which monitor is for me?

timshel — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:51:38 -0800

Best affordable external monitor for HD video editing? I would like an external monitor to extend my desktop real estate and, on occasion, serve as a television/output monitor for HD video editing playback, color correction etc. It will presently be used with a Macbook Pro (DVI) and eventually become the second monitor to a iMac (DisplayPort.) I'd like to spend £500 or less. Is this doable?

A friend recommended this, though it's a bit beyond my price range:
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Monitors/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=223-9379

Thank you!

My monitor won't turn on

bingwah — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 10:10:14 -0800

Is my Dell monitor dead? CPU boots up but the monitor is black and on/off switch is not lighting up. My computer and monitor are about 3 years old. I have no idea what the model # of the monitor is. All I know is it's a Dell 15' flatscreen that I bought with the computer. Everything worked fine last night. I shut down and turned the monitor off. This morning when I turned the computer on the monitor remained black. Usually once I boot up the on/off switch on the monitor turns orange and then I'll turn it on and it will turn green. Today there is no light at all on the on/off switch. The computer seems to be booting up fine.

So is my monitor dead or is there a deeper issue with my video card? I don't have a 2nd monitor to test this with although I'm about to go buy one and test it.

Which netbook should I get?

Quidam — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:31:14 -0800

Another netbook question: my 4 year old VAIO laptop is just about on its last leg, and I'm looking to replace it with a netbook as my primary computer. More specifics inside. I've read through all the questions tagged with "netbook", and I guess I'm just looking for some advice specific to my wants - especially because the market for netbooks seems to change so fast.

For example, in this question the consensus seems to be that the 1000HE eeePC is the way to go. Is that still true?

What I'd like:

-- Small is good -- 10" screen or less, I think
-- Want to run Windows and Microsoft Office
-- Not a gamer and don't need to be able to watch movies
-- Longer battery life desirable
-- All I really want besides Office is iTunes - but is my iTunes library going to be too much for a netbook to handle? (sorry, unfamiliar enough with computers for memory numbers not to mean a whole lot to me)

What I think I'm leaning towards is the Dell Mini 10, with Windows, and with the 6 cell battery. Is there any reason I should stay away, or opt for an eeePC or other brand? Any tips on where to order it from, other than dell.com?

Local Profile Not Found...Wha???

too bad you're not me — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:56:42 -0800

I recently logged onto my computer (Windows XP), and it said "profile not found". Help, please! Today I started my laptop, and at the welcome screen it said that my local profile was not found, so I was logged onto a temporary profile. All my personalized settings were gone (i.e. desktop picture, menu settings, default internet browser, etc).

I tried to google the problem, but haven't been able to find anything super helpful, and the only AskMe question seemed to be about a work computer that was connected to a server. Mine is a home laptop not connected to a server.

I'm fairly certain all my files on the hard drive are still there, but is this indicative of a problem with the hard drive?

Has anyone had this happen? Why did it happen? Basically any info would be great! Computer savvy people...come to my rescue! :)

How do I deal with Dell Inc. customer service hell?

Twinedog — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:41:02 -0800

How can I get any service from Dell Inc. Help they seem to have lost my order and won't give me any answers etc. I know Dell's customer service is so bad its legendary but is there any way to bypass the phone menu which doesn't seem to understand me?

They seem to have lost my order. it says it was shipped on 6/26/09 3-5 day Fed Ex but it has not arrived. I keep getting the run around and am spending hours on the phone just trying to find out what happened and if not have them replace the order. This is ridiculous.

I keep getting hung up on by surly indian customer service reps who seem to lie to me ( claim they have no employee id no etc.) and then tell me conflicting things.

Any advice would be appreciated.

As if you had to guess I will never ever buy a Dell again.

Please help me find a laptop

billysumday — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:10:54 -0800

I'd like to purchase a cheap (~$400-$500) laptop with certain requirements. The more I look, the more confused I get. Please help me. I just want a cheap but relatively fast laptop to do some occasional out-of-the-house work in a coffee shop or library. I'll most likely only be using internet (wifi), Word, Excel, and iTunes. That's it. I do want a webcam so that I can Skype. I'll be doing a lot of typing so I don't want a netbook - the keyboard needs to big enough to comfortably type on, and the screen should be anywhere from 12"-15". I want it to be relatively fast and have a reasonable amount of space, but I don't need to do anything fancy like game playing or video editing. At the same time, I also don't want it to operate slowly and I don't want to have to plug in an external drive. Battery life would preferably be decent.

I've checked out the Dell Outlet, but they don't really seem to have the great deals that people say they do - e.g., in an old AskMe post someone said they recently purchased a 15" Inspiron with 3GB RAM and 250GB hard drive with webcam and other accessories for a little over $400. But now, you can't get anything under $500 that has more than 1GB RAM and 80GB hard drive. Am I missing something?

Also, I've gone to Best Buy and checked out their computers and some of them are nice. I come home and check out the computers online and they seem to be more expensive than in Best Buy. Again, I feel like I'm doing something wrong.

Please help this laptop noob. I've always just bought Macs but this time I just want to go the el cheapo route while still getting a good deal. So, anybody have good recommendations? Any models or brands to stay away from? And where should I look to get the best deal? Thanks to all.

Help with Dell media centre

maxmix — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:37:39 -0800

Dell media Cente light illuminated all the time I have a 6 month old Dell Studio 17 and the Media Centre button's light stays illuminated at all times, Meaning that I cannot access any of the Media Centre buttons because of this. I phoned Dell and they told me to remove the battery, hold power off and re start-This helped at first, but when I turn my laptop off and back on the Media centre light re illuminates and I'm back to square one. Also once my Laptop is switched If I touch the Media centre button it switces my machine back on!

Any one have any suggestions of how to solve this problem, mainly because I dont wan't to spend 45 mins waiting to get through to Dell

YAWLQ: Yet Another Which Laptop Question

maelanchai — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:23:11 -0800

Dell E6400 or Lenovo T400? Or will a newer, better product be out in a month or two? This is embarrassing to admit, but after years in the techie world, I still don't know when new computer models typically launch, and my google fu has failed me on trying to find this out.

Here's the deal. My beloved little black friend, the Lenovo T42 just had its second hard drive blow on me. Bummer for me. The good news is that I have managed to recover from backup to a temporary machine. The other good news is that I get to buy a new computer. I can wait if a new model is around the corner, but don't want to run on this loaner machine for more than a month or two at most. So, if a new model is not around the corner, please help me choose between the Dell E6400 and the Lenovo T400. I get a couple hundred $ price break on the Dells through my business, but am still considering the Lenovo because I'm not sure I can give up the yummy keyboard. Here is what I consider important. Please help me decide:

1) Speed and reliability*****
2) Weight
3) Graphics
4) Keyboard and trackpoint feel. I do not use the greasepad
5) I will use a docking station with a DVI monitor
6) I like the idea of a backlit keyboard
7) Display crispness and ease on the eyes
8) Price

I am looking at a 14" screen, XP Pro, Intel P9500, DVDRW, 4GB Ram, 256MB discrete graphics, WXGA+

My 5 year old dell laptop (8600) has suddenly lost processor speed.

merocet — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:54:40 -0800

My 5 year old dell laptop (8600) has suddenly lost processor speed. Techy details after the break... Inspiron 8600 running XP Home with Intel Pentium M 1.7 Ghz processor has stopped showing it's clock speed as 1.6something and now reports either 592 Mhz or lower.

Computer really drags (two firefox windows nearly brought me to a halt just then so it doesn't seem to be a speed step thing (i.e. the computer isn't throttling back the processor and then letting it go flat out when needed). The laptop is plugged in to power and set to be "always on" in it's power scheme which I believe should force it to be running at full speed.

Today I was trying to speed up the computer for working with Cubase. I changed settings as follows;

Visual Effects - adjust for best performance
Paging file size - changed from "no paging file" to "3070 MB" which was the recommended setting on the Virtual Memory Tab.
In TweakUI I unchecked "optimize hard disk when idle".

I have changed all of these parameters back to their original settings.

The only other thing I did was to blow some air from an air cannister into the vents on the laptop to try to clear some dust to help the pc cool itself.

I have since;
- installed SpeedswitchXP to see whether I could force anything that way and,
- Had a look in the start up settings (reports as a 1.7 Ghz processor running at 600 Mhz) but doesn't let me change anything (Dell crippled BIOS)

Any ideas what might have caused this change for the worse? Needless to say Cubase is not a possibility any more and neither are Sony Vegas or Photoshop so there goes my three pronged creative effort!

That Red Hat is awfully expensive!

Oktober — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:01:19 -0800

Is paying for a RHEL subscription worth it, or should we just go with CentOS? We're looking at moving our e-mail server to more-capable hardware, and would like to avoid paying $4k+ for a new Xserve, if at all possible. We're reasonably happy with our current package, Communigate, but it's severely hardware constrained now.

The only two applications that need to run on it are Communigate (which has ports for every OS under the sun) and Retrospect (our backup client, which has a Red Hat rpm).

Ideally, I'd get a cheap Quad-Core server from Dell, slap CentOS on it, installed our two applications, and call it a day. Still, I have nagging questions. Is paying for RHEL worth it? Can you continue updating your OS after your subscription expires? Is CentOS really 100% binary compatible with Red Hat?

How to fix laptop keyboard keys that fell off?

macsigler — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:21:29 -0800

How to fix laptop keyboard keys that fell off? I have a Dell XPS M1710 laptop, and some of the keyboard keys have popped out of their spot. I have tried to reattach the plastic retainers on the keys to their spot on the keyboard, but inevitably they never latch on like they used to, and in fact some are now broken or lost. Is there a secret to getting them to pop on, or is there an alternative, i.e. mini-springs and superglue, etc.? I'm willing to try most reasonable ideas. Thanks in advance!

Other good gaming laptops under $1000?

wastelands — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:14:30 -0800

Under $1000 laptop: I have my eye on a particular model; am I missing any others in my research? I'm finally replacing a Dell desktop that is truly too slow, noisy, etc. I've been doing the research and I like this model: MSI GX620-001US.

Things I like about it / criteria:

It's within my $1000 budget

Decent graphics card so I can use it as a gaming system

Has a fairly trim/thin body

Plain/not overly colorful or curvy body. I love those Lenovo laptops for the same reason; they're minimalist and not flashy. (I don't think Lenovo has gaming capable lappies, though, at least not in my price range.)

Decent reputation/reviews overall. Second-best rating on NewEgg.

15.4" screen size is perfect for me. I need to fit it side-by-side on a table at home that holds a big monitor (I'll be using both displays at once with VGA out) as well as have enough useable screen space for doing stuff like Ableton Live on the go.

I've looked at Dells. They're thicker and more expensive than the MSI on a specs basis. Buuut... they do have that nice LED backlighting.

I took a serious look at Apple stuff. That aluminum unibody is hot. But paying an extra $150 for a even refurb 13" screen model, and getting used to new UI and programs (I'm used to Windows)... meh.

Are there any stores and/or particular laptop models that I'm overlooking that fit my criteria?

I've heard Sager notebooks can be good, I and found I could get a $900 model that has a bigger battery but slower processor compared to the MSI. But there aren't a ton of reviews out there on Sagers, so that plus the slower CPU makes me want to pass.

Needed: Laptop Adapter

theichibun — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:16:12 -0800

Lost my laptop's AC adapter, time to find a new one. I was an idiot and lost my AC Adapter to my Vostro 1000 at a hotel 10 hours from where I am now. I looked, didn't find it, asked at the hotel desk, they didn't have it. Oh well, so I managed the rest of the time I was there and bummed charges off of friends that had compatible adapters.

But I can't do that anymore, so it's time to get a replacement. I've seen other questions here asking in generalities and specifics for laptops that I don't have.

Specifically for my laptop, what are the advantages of getting a Dell brand over any other brand? Is there any reason to get a new one over a used one?

I'm not going to give links to specific places to buy, but Ebay has some off brands new for around $15 and used Dells for $30. Dell's site has adapters starting at $65 and I'm not sure which one of those I should be looking at, or even if there's any important stat other than how much power is needed by my laptop.

Help me pimp my laptop?

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:17:30 -0800

Dell has started to suck. I've owned several, both notebook and desktop, over the past 10 or so years. Now, after buying two power cords for my lemony Inspiron 1720 in less than 2 years, I'm going local. So what are some suggestions for beefing my machine up? Asking anon because I'd prefer to not parade my ignorance here.

The PC is less than two years old, but in addition to buying a (third) power cord, what are good ways to turbo my computer? I'm not a gamer, but I teach and travel pretty widely, and I'm thinking of upgrading from 2 gigs to 4, and 250 RAM to maybe 700? I have Vista, so I have less speed and ease of use than I did with the Windows 95. I want lots of ample storage, and blink-of-an-eye speed. I'll be in Asia, so the Internet connection I'll tap into will be blazing. I am, obviously, clueless. Do I need an external hard drive? Am I barking up the wrong tree here?
And finally, in the Baltimore area, about what can I expect to shell out monetarily for this? Is $350 to optimistic? Or overkill?

Dell Inspiron 1720 w/ Vista. I'm sure I'm leaving some vital info out, so ask away (fatbackncollards@gmail.com), and be amused at my inability to articulate a coherent reply.