7:00 PM October 10, 2009
I was given a Gateway LP MiniTower TBR E4200 an older computer. Only 600mhz system with 320 MB RAM. I had a bit of trouble setting it up at first, put one hard drive cable in the wrong way, the red strip down the edge is supposed to go in pin one but when the pins on the drive are not marked, its a matter of trial and error.
I had to take my hard drive out of my Compaq and my DVD burner. And after a few more minor nuisances I finally got it to work.
The downside is that this computer doesn't have a CPU fan, instead it is surrounded by a plastic sleeve (for lack of better words). It seems to be attached to the power supply and acts like a blower that cuts in every now and then. My problem is with the noise it makes.
I'm checking into the matter if this blower, can be removed and replaced with an ordinary CPU fan.
Also, it seems the computer can only handle 384 MB of RAM in total. I already have 320.
Still a little bit better than I had before.
A neighbour was constantly having problems with their computer. Trying to setup the computer again was no picnic either. I ran the install once but no luck, kept getting a BSOD at startup. Unfortunately, it would shut down and start over before I could read the Blue Screen.
Couldn't start up in Safe Mode either. So I ran the install again. It seemed to go through Ok this time but the random crashes and problems continued. So I tried the install a third time. This time it complained that it couldn't copy a file, then another, and another...
A sign of a bad DVD drive or bad Memory. I ran Memtest86 - www.memtest.org/ from a boot CD and immediately it indicated an error in the second memory chip. Removed the chip and had no problems after setting up WindowsXP.
Then another guy called me he had bought a new computer but it wouldn't start up. Nothing was coming on the screen. I had this problem once, I took out the Video card and put it back in and it solved the problem. But, in this case it was only temporary before it gave out again.
He decided to carry it back to where he bought it from and it turned out to be more serious than a bad video card - a bad motherboard, which had to be replaced. Then when he got home again and sat it up the keyboard and mouse wouldn't work. This really limited what I could do after this point.
The guy he bought the computer from put in a Wireless Ethernet Adapter Card but didn't set up the drivers for it. So when they plugged in their USB mouse and keyboard, it seemed to me they where all trying to set up at once.
So I shut down the computer, pulled out the plug, took out the wireless card, unplugged the mouse and keyboard, then plugged in the keyboard first, plugged in the computer, powered on, when the keyboard was installed and working I plugged in the mouse, confirmed mouse was working, powered down the computer, removed plug, reinserted the wireless card, plugged int he computer, powered up, canceled the found new hardware wizard and installed the drivers from the CD.
It worked.