ARGH! I HATE DELL. Need a new PC

[A790]

Hey guys;

My power supply went the way of the "KABOOM" two weeks ago and so I had to order another dell proprietary 350 watt power supply.

It arrives, I install it, and now I'm getting a blue stop error m(0x00000024). Tech support tells me I gotta replace my hard drives.

Fucking wonderful.

So in the spirit of "fuck it" I want to replace the whole damn thing.

Whats the best spec I can get for sway $1,300? I don't need a monitor, mouse, keyboard, or speakers.

EDIT: I want to be able to play games on it with decent framerates.

[nos_efx]

Buy one from memory express

Link (http://www.memoryexpress.com/index.php?PageTag=&page=file&memx_menu=FramePreconfigDetail.php&id=9)

Decent video card and you get dual core 3800+ processors.

[Xaroxantu Zero]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v106/zerom3/beyond156126.gif

You'd get more than decent framerates on this rig.

[rc2002]

$1300 is more than enough to build a nice computer. Piece it together yourself at memex, and you'll have a higher quality unit than any Dell for the same price.

[A790]

Will that one Xaroxantu Zero outperform my slightly broken Dell?

P4 3.0GHZ
1 GB DDR
300GB Raid
GeForce 6800

I'm guessing so...

Perfection. :)

Thanks guys :)

[jav_]

Originally posted by A790
Will that one Xaroxantu Zero outperform my slightly broken Dell?

P4 3.0GHZ
1 GB DDR
300MB Raid
GeForce 6800

I'm guessing so...

Perfection. :)

Thanks guys :)

yeah its much much better than ur dell specs

[Lex350]

Originally posted by nos_efx
Buy one from memory express

Link (http://www.memoryexpress.com/index.php?PageTag=&page=file&memx_menu=FramePreconfigDetail.php&id=9)

Decent video card and you get dual core 3800+ processors.

:werd: :werd:


I buy all my computers from them. They also stand behind what they sell.

[sputnik]

Originally posted by Xaroxantu Zero
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v106/zerom3/beyond156126.gif

You'd get more than decent framerates on this rig.

I would just get an Antec Sonata case (which comes with a PS) and double the RAM and/or increase the disk space.

Spending 20% of his budget on a case and powersupply is pointless.

[Xaroxantu Zero]

If you want to ensure good cooling and a reliable power supply, I would recommend those. I had bought a cheap case for my gaming rig that came with a power supply, and I ended up having to buy a separate power supply because the bundled one was crappy.

Of course, it's up to A790 to decide whether he wants to spend more on a good case and power supply or not. I just give recommendations.

[rc2002]

Originally posted by sputnik


I would just get an Antec Sonata case (which comes with a PS) and double the RAM and/or increase the disk space.

Spending 20% of his budget on a case and powersupply is pointless.

I have an Antec Sonata and it's not as quiet as they advertise. It's louder than any other case I've ever used.

[eblend]

The blue screen you are getting may be just a software problem. Your power supply died when the computer was running, and killed all power to the computer, as your computer may have been in the middle of something and basically fucked it up. So the harddrive is probably fine, just windows may need a reinstall or repair.

[codetrap]

.

[yellowsnow]

or when the power supply blew, it shorted out his entire hard drive as well. any static electric discharge can mess up your HD... along with any other electronic component.

i'm a big fan of customizing your own computer. memex is the best place in town for that

[codetrap]

.

[A790]

Originally posted by codetrap
So.. when they / you replaced your Power supply, and had to undo all the cables. Did you/they make sure that you plugged the cables into the SAME ports as they were before? That your HD was/is still on IDE 0? That can cause this too and it's a really simple fix.

Alright, so this is essentially what happened.

Power supply was making some weirdass clicking noises. But, it was still on. I went to work.

I come home and I got the blue screen with the (0x00000024) message. Turn off computer. It will not turn back on.

Order new power supply. Get it, put it in. The IDE cables were not touched.

Still shows me the lovely blue screen.

Now, I CAN NOT:
- access windows at all.
- get into safe mode.
- do fucking anything.

If there's a fix for it I'd love it before forking out some money for a new computer!

Thanks all in advance :)

EDIT:

It does lock up trying to access NTFS.sys. What do I freaking do?

[yellowsnow]

can you get into your bios at least?

you can try formating your HD in some bios systems. did you make a boot disc? have you tried putting your windows installation disc into your drive and in your bios make the CD rom boot first?

[A790]

Originally posted by yellowsnow
can you get into your bios at least?

you can try formating your HD in some bios systems. did you make a boot disc? have you tried putting your windows installation disc into your drive and in your bios make the CD rom boot first?

I can get into the bios.

I don't have a boot disk.

[GTS Jeff]

Whoa Whoa Whoa...with that sort of coin, I'd do this:

A. Hit up MemEx
B. Look at Shuttle SN27P2
C. Throw in dual core AMD processor and dualslot cooled video card

[googe]

Dont listen to Jeff, thats a waste of cash :rofl:

Core 2 Duo or nothing!

The other machine posted was pretty good, though Id get less expensive RAM and a less expensive case.

[GTS Jeff]

Originally posted by googe
Dont listen to Jeff, thats a waste of cash :rofl:

Core 2 Duo or nothing!

The other machine posted was pretty good, though Id get less expensive RAM and a less expensive case. Well this dude is buying Dells, so he's obviously not O/Cing or anything...so why not pay a little extra for SFF and whisper quiet operation? As if he'll be able to tell the difference between AMD and Intel dual cores anyway..

[yellowsnow]

go into your bios and do a soft format? i think that's what it's called.

[ricosuave]

why not try a repair windows reinstall before you get too carried away...

[EnRich]

PM I'll build you a sickening rig, for around $1300.

[mvprimate]

I had a friend who had the same problem with his dell, went home for christmas(left computer on) and when he came back the power suply blew.

I am pretty sure he got the blue screen too. He first replaced his motherboard and processer thinking they were the problem.

Turns out that some of his memory was corrupted so he bought all the new stuff for nothing. Personally i probably wouldn't buy a dell myself.

[A790]

Originally posted by mvprimate
I had a friend who had the same problem with his dell, went home for christmas(left computer on) and when he came back the power suply blew.

I am pretty sure he got the blue screen too. He first replaced his motherboard and processer thinking they were the problem.

Turns out that some of his memory was corrupted so he bought all the new stuff for nothing. Personally i probably wouldn't buy a dell myself.

Their tech support is being most UNhelpful. I'll never recommend them to anyone every again.

[soupey]

go into ur bios, jus sounds like the config for ur hd was reset...its not detecting ur hd properly, (that or ur hd is dead)...jus go into hard drive settings, autodetect the hard drive again, or set it toautodetect it when it starts up...

[A790]

Originally posted by soupey
go into ur bios, jus sounds like the config for ur hd was reset...its not detecting ur hd properly, (that or ur hd is dead)...jus go into hard drive settings, autodetect the hard drive again, or set it toautodetect it when it starts up...

Tried that already. It detects both hard drives and the raid controller just fine.

[Zero102]

Fuck dell support, don't bother calling them, all they want to do is sell you parts.
I work in windows tech support, for your problem let's try a few things before you get too excited.

Okay, a stop error stating an error in ntfs.sys is no big deal. You will need a windows XP CD to repair this file.
You will need to go into the recovery console from the CD, and either replace the file with a new one from the CD (expand ntfs.sy_ etc) or copy the backup (if applicable) from c:\windows\repair

If you need more help with this I can walk you through it.

I sit on the phone and walk people through very similar problems all day. Chill out. Dell tech support was the worst part of this problem. Try to forget about them.
If you need a new HD, you can fix this for less than $100. That is about a worst-case situation.

[A790]

Originally posted by Zero102
Fuck dell support, don't bother calling them, all they want to do is sell you parts.
I work in windows tech support, for your problem let's try a few things before you get too excited.

Okay, a stop error stating an error in ntfs.sys is no big deal. You will need a windows XP CD to repair this file.
You will need to go into the recovery console from the CD, and either replace the file with a new one from the CD (expand ntfs.sy_ etc) or copy the backup (if applicable) from c:\windows\repair

If you need more help with this I can walk you through it.

I sit on the phone and walk people through very similar problems all day. Chill out. Dell tech support was the worst part of this problem. Try to forget about them.
If you need a new HD, you can fix this for less than $100. That is about a worst-case situation.

LOL I lost my windows CD when I moved I think. How do I get a replacement? Or... do I have to buy a new one?

[Zero102]

If you want to buy one, there is a media replacement department at microsoft. I think it is $9US per CD to have one replaced. Call them, tell them what version of windows you had and then explain that you accidentally shut it in the CD drive door and it broke or something. If you tell them you lost it they tend to ask a lot more questions and be jerks about it.

My advice would be to download the image from mininova.org, or torrentspy.com (Of course this only works if you have a second computer, but since you're posting on beyond I assume you do).
Honestly Microsoft doesn't care where the CD comes from, they are only interested in the product keys, so I get to reccomend that at work too.
Or, if you know somebody who has the same CD you had (i.e. Home or Pro, SP2 integrated or not) you could just borrow it for a bit.

You have a couple choices on how to proceed.

Here is a guide that helps explain what happened a little bit. The public knowledge base articles are dumbed down pretty bad. This article is for Windows 2000 for a 0x24 stop error, but since the problem is with a filesystem handling component (ntfs.sys) the article applies to windows XP, but the keys to get into the recovery console may be different (as will the menus).

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/228888/en-us

Basically, see if you can get a windows XP CD. Then boot from the CD, press R on the first screen with options (R for recovery console, ENTER to install windows now or F3 to quit), wait 6 seconds (i.e. for the 5 second timer to expire), press '1' then enter, and if you have an administrator password set you will have to enter that next
From there, type:
chkdsk /p /r
This command could take from 30 minutes to 4 hours to execute, depending on how many errors are found and how big the drive is.

Once it finishes try booting the computer, if it will not boot, then you need to do either a paralell or repair install. Paralell will install a second copy of your OS, this is only really good for saving important data before doing a format and clean install. Normally I will suggest this problem when there are extremely bad spyware infestations.
Repair install will replace all of the windows files. I have to warn you, if you proceed with this step, there is about a 4-5% chance that you will lose all data in 'my documents' folders on the computer. Microsoft will not tell us why this happens or how to predict it, but simply to warn everybody and quote the statistic........ Sorry I can't shed more insight on that point.

If you need any more guidance I can help you through.

Now, if after doing a full chkdsk and (if necessary) a repair install things still don't work, then you might need to replace some hardware, but more than likely at that point you will have a very good idea of what must be replaced (i.e. there will be better error messages).

[Zero102]

Ah shit, I just clued in.
You said it was a Dell, so you would have had an OEM windows XP CD. Microsoft won't replace those, you have to call Dell for a replacement.
Probably better off to download the image of the CD you had.

If you lived in Vernon I could give you an XP Pro CD (if that's what you needed). The site I am on is up-sizing in a big way, and there are roughly 200 XP Pro w/ SP2 CD's kicking around that they are throwing out. I have a whole drawer full of them in my cubicle. I give them out like candy, lol.
We have 2 computers at our desk, one that we get to mangle as bad as we want, and one for work. I gave the XP CD's to everybody for their break/fix computer (as they call it) so they can walk through an install/repair/whatever with a customer better.
I mean, we have simulators for those things, but they don't reflect the time steps take, or error messages or anything.