- Joined
- Feb 18, 2004
- Messages
- 394
I'm here to tell a story. A story of torment, hatred, and eternal suffering. The story of buying an OEM computer.
Last christmas, I wanted a new computer. More accurately, I needed one, as my then-current computer was around 5 years old with 2 year old upgrades. (The upgrades being year-old technology when i got them.) All the local places i used to buy computer parts / packages had closed. So i decided to get an OEM machine. Shoping around, I settled on an 800$ HP machine.
I got the machine, set it up, stuck in an additional HDD i had with only minor phisical instalation issues. I load it up, remembering hearing horror storys of the crap they include pre-installed... Nothing prepares you for what you face, the first time you face a "fresh" windows install with 3 years worth of trial software and all that crap loaded in to it. So I check to see how hard it would be to reinstall windows. Nothing prepares you for the rage you get when you learn they no longer give you windows CDs, or really, any way to actually install windows.
Instead of allowing you to reinstall windows, they provide a "Recovery Partition" on your HDD, a good 9 GB in size. This allows you to format and reimage your whole disk, brining all the crapware the computer came with. And if that was not bad enogh, they do not even provide any form of bootable CD / DVD. Instead, you must order them explicitly from HP, or burn your own from the data on the recovery partition. I cannot stress this enogh:
14 mother-fucking CDs to burn a set of recovery disks. There is so much trialware and crap loaded in to the OS, that it takes 14 mother fucking CDs to hold it all. Of course, you can also use 3 DVD-+Rs instead of 14 CDs, but the true kicker to this is yet to come.
So, stepping back, a brand new HP computer, filled to the breaking point with crapware. Over the first few months, i worked at uninstalling and cleaning up as much of it as i could, while also trying to use and configure my computer. Eventually i got most of it cleaned up, with scars nestled all over from the massive surgery i had done in removing so much cancer from my OS. All was OK for a while.
I started loading up games on to my computer after getting rid of the majority of the crapware. Nice, fun games. Turns out HP thoght it would be a lark to ship the computer with old drivers that had a rather common (every few hours or so) bluescreen issue when running DirectX heavy applications. So i go and grab the latest drivers, install, and reboot. Bluescreen! Big, fat, ugly bluescreen! Boot in to "Last known good configuration", try again a good 5 times to the same result: A bluescreen during booting!
So i contact HP tech support via email, detailing my problem with a rather detailed explination. An oversimplified version of my email and their response follows:
"You gave me drivers that bluescreen! and updating them to newer drivers cause a bluescreen on boot! fix it please!"
"Here is a link to a tutorial on how to update your graphics card drivers:"
Thats right. HP esentally told me to kill myself. (Or at least, as close as you can get in the world of computing. "Go bluescreen yourself, emo!") I try their live support. After multiple redirects to other people and absolutely nothing accomplished, i give up.
I live with it. "I'll just save often"... all was fine. ... for a while.
Windows is windows, and a user like me is admittedly hard on the pile of shit. Many installs and uninstalls, many changes and tweaks to the system, much heavy use. Over time, windows just has a tendency to die. Slowly. Eventually, my task manager was broken, nVidia drivers where still causing random bluescreens, and any further attempts to get help from HP support where met with similar results. So i start backing up and planning to just bite the bullet and reimage from the recovery disks i burned.
About a week ago now, i installed Fable: The lost chapters. Bluescreens every hour, sometimes more. I saved after every screen load, and just played... i was happy playing, liked the game, and wanted to play it, bluescreens or not. And then, after a bluescreen which cost me a good 10 minutes of game progression, windows didn't boot. It hung on the boot loading screen, and would not progress. I waited an hour for a 2 minute process.
That was not the begining of the end. That was the end. Debug mode told me my registry hives where corrupt. Attempting safemode was useless, of course, but a desperation move. I wasn't ready! i hadn't finished backing up! Not now!! I wanna play fable!... ... quoth the computer: "Kernel will not load".
A ubunut live CD running at 800*600 was all i had to work off of for days. Backing up, searching in a last ditch attempt for a way to get a clean windows install... And i found it. I found a set of Windows XP MCE 2005 OEM disk ISOs!!! Burned to disk, finished all the backing up i could think to do, and booted to disk 1... of 3.
Thats right. Lets compare:
Windows XP MCE 2005 OEM version disks: 900 MB
HP Recovery Partition / Disks: 9 GB
That was how much shit HP jammed in to the OS. They crammed over 8 GB of shit (Pre-install size!) in to MCE 2005. 11 extra CDs. And please do remember, thats 8 GB of mostly simplistic and small programs. Less than 1 GB of drivers. (much less.) I can not stress that enogh: Over 8 GB of SHIT.
I get windows installed with a few hikcups, find the drivers in my mess of backups, and get most things working very nicely. Then the ethernet controller dies out, after working just fine, and will not establish a connection for love nor money. A reinstall of windows did not fix it. a good 4-6 hours later, and i found the "problem" (or more like, a solution.). limiting the throghput speed to 10 Mb/s fixed it. Not too big a deal. Except for the fact that it worked just fine before on higher speeds.
And here i am. Now lets all hope im not headed towards another failure. Because windows died... Not two weeks after the warrenty expired! (i shit you not.)
Side note: I'm fully willing to admit i priated the disks for an OS I legally own. (Or rather, had to pirate to avoid 8 Gigs of crap) Considering it passes windows authentication and works fine with Windows Genuine Advantage using naught but the factory-stuck-on windows key on the side of my computer, I've stolen nothing.
The moral of the story:
NEVER BUY AN OEM PC. ESPECIALLY AN HP.
The computer is personal again!
.... If this is a personal computer, i want the non-personal kind back.
Last christmas, I wanted a new computer. More accurately, I needed one, as my then-current computer was around 5 years old with 2 year old upgrades. (The upgrades being year-old technology when i got them.) All the local places i used to buy computer parts / packages had closed. So i decided to get an OEM machine. Shoping around, I settled on an 800$ HP machine.
I got the machine, set it up, stuck in an additional HDD i had with only minor phisical instalation issues. I load it up, remembering hearing horror storys of the crap they include pre-installed... Nothing prepares you for what you face, the first time you face a "fresh" windows install with 3 years worth of trial software and all that crap loaded in to it. So I check to see how hard it would be to reinstall windows. Nothing prepares you for the rage you get when you learn they no longer give you windows CDs, or really, any way to actually install windows.
Instead of allowing you to reinstall windows, they provide a "Recovery Partition" on your HDD, a good 9 GB in size. This allows you to format and reimage your whole disk, brining all the crapware the computer came with. And if that was not bad enogh, they do not even provide any form of bootable CD / DVD. Instead, you must order them explicitly from HP, or burn your own from the data on the recovery partition. I cannot stress this enogh:
14 mother-fucking CDs to burn a set of recovery disks. There is so much trialware and crap loaded in to the OS, that it takes 14 mother fucking CDs to hold it all. Of course, you can also use 3 DVD-+Rs instead of 14 CDs, but the true kicker to this is yet to come.
So, stepping back, a brand new HP computer, filled to the breaking point with crapware. Over the first few months, i worked at uninstalling and cleaning up as much of it as i could, while also trying to use and configure my computer. Eventually i got most of it cleaned up, with scars nestled all over from the massive surgery i had done in removing so much cancer from my OS. All was OK for a while.
I started loading up games on to my computer after getting rid of the majority of the crapware. Nice, fun games. Turns out HP thoght it would be a lark to ship the computer with old drivers that had a rather common (every few hours or so) bluescreen issue when running DirectX heavy applications. So i go and grab the latest drivers, install, and reboot. Bluescreen! Big, fat, ugly bluescreen! Boot in to "Last known good configuration", try again a good 5 times to the same result: A bluescreen during booting!
So i contact HP tech support via email, detailing my problem with a rather detailed explination. An oversimplified version of my email and their response follows:
"You gave me drivers that bluescreen! and updating them to newer drivers cause a bluescreen on boot! fix it please!"
"Here is a link to a tutorial on how to update your graphics card drivers:"
Thats right. HP esentally told me to kill myself. (Or at least, as close as you can get in the world of computing. "Go bluescreen yourself, emo!") I try their live support. After multiple redirects to other people and absolutely nothing accomplished, i give up.
I live with it. "I'll just save often"... all was fine. ... for a while.
Windows is windows, and a user like me is admittedly hard on the pile of shit. Many installs and uninstalls, many changes and tweaks to the system, much heavy use. Over time, windows just has a tendency to die. Slowly. Eventually, my task manager was broken, nVidia drivers where still causing random bluescreens, and any further attempts to get help from HP support where met with similar results. So i start backing up and planning to just bite the bullet and reimage from the recovery disks i burned.
About a week ago now, i installed Fable: The lost chapters. Bluescreens every hour, sometimes more. I saved after every screen load, and just played... i was happy playing, liked the game, and wanted to play it, bluescreens or not. And then, after a bluescreen which cost me a good 10 minutes of game progression, windows didn't boot. It hung on the boot loading screen, and would not progress. I waited an hour for a 2 minute process.
That was not the begining of the end. That was the end. Debug mode told me my registry hives where corrupt. Attempting safemode was useless, of course, but a desperation move. I wasn't ready! i hadn't finished backing up! Not now!! I wanna play fable!... ... quoth the computer: "Kernel will not load".
A ubunut live CD running at 800*600 was all i had to work off of for days. Backing up, searching in a last ditch attempt for a way to get a clean windows install... And i found it. I found a set of Windows XP MCE 2005 OEM disk ISOs!!! Burned to disk, finished all the backing up i could think to do, and booted to disk 1... of 3.
Thats right. Lets compare:
Windows XP MCE 2005 OEM version disks: 900 MB
HP Recovery Partition / Disks: 9 GB
That was how much shit HP jammed in to the OS. They crammed over 8 GB of shit (Pre-install size!) in to MCE 2005. 11 extra CDs. And please do remember, thats 8 GB of mostly simplistic and small programs. Less than 1 GB of drivers. (much less.) I can not stress that enogh: Over 8 GB of SHIT.
I get windows installed with a few hikcups, find the drivers in my mess of backups, and get most things working very nicely. Then the ethernet controller dies out, after working just fine, and will not establish a connection for love nor money. A reinstall of windows did not fix it. a good 4-6 hours later, and i found the "problem" (or more like, a solution.). limiting the throghput speed to 10 Mb/s fixed it. Not too big a deal. Except for the fact that it worked just fine before on higher speeds.
And here i am. Now lets all hope im not headed towards another failure. Because windows died... Not two weeks after the warrenty expired! (i shit you not.)
Side note: I'm fully willing to admit i priated the disks for an OS I legally own. (Or rather, had to pirate to avoid 8 Gigs of crap) Considering it passes windows authentication and works fine with Windows Genuine Advantage using naught but the factory-stuck-on windows key on the side of my computer, I've stolen nothing.
The moral of the story:
NEVER BUY AN OEM PC. ESPECIALLY AN HP.
The computer is personal again!
.... If this is a personal computer, i want the non-personal kind back.
