Re: [OT] USB drive problem

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Either that, or a bad mainboard.

(Let's hope it's a driver issue!)

If it's a bad mainboard, quick and (relatively) cheap solution is to use a PCI USB card. Remember: swapping out the mainboard will void your XP license.

Michael

(big sigh) No I haven't. The drivers have probably been upgraded for me via the Windows automatic computer screw-up service, but I haven't touched the BIOS -- I'll have to check with Dell about the BIOS upgrade.

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With the obvious question whether such voiding would hold any water in a court of law. Swapping a mainboard could be construed as repair and voiding a usage right because of a repair, well, I wouldn't know a judge that would let that fly.

Tim: If you go to Device Manager, click on that unknown device and then on the driver tab, does anything come up? If not then your PC might be missing that Microsoft driver.

I guess I'm just not that militant. Speaking from experience: bought a cheap HP Pavilion system... eh, what... 4-5 years ago? Mainboard was a piece of crap (no AGP slot even). Put in a more powerful,

I didn't want to deal with it: I just re-installed Windows 2000 (which I have a full, legal CD) and gave the XP system to my brother- in-law. He's happy.

I guess I could have called Micro$oft and yelled at them, but like I said, I just didn't want to deal with it.

Michael

If you had called them up at their 800 number, I suspect they would have given you a new activation code without any hassles. You could just tell them you upgraded "the video, network, and hard drive" in your PC, which is true. I've never had to call them, but I'm told they're really quite the "softies" -- until you call for, e.g., the 10th activation in one month, they just give you a new activation number and you're set.

Thanks, I will keep that in mind.

Michael

Ah yes, I remember now - not only was it a license issue, but I actually didn't get that far: the mismatched mainboard drivers caused it to crash on bootup (I'd forgotten to uninstall the original MB drivers prior to installing the new board), plus, I didn't have a full set of XP CDs, just the typical System Restore CDs.

Sloppy of me, I admit, but the XP solution was more trouble than it was worth. Win2k CD was good enough for me.

Thanks though

Michael

Quite frankly the only difference I noted between XP and 2K was that XP performed slower. Which did not surprise me at all. A few years ago I was able to cajole the sales staff to load 2K on a system that normally only came XP. Cost me an extra $100 but was well worth it. In the last couple of years that didn't work anymore.

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Wow, really? Probably the only benefits I've noticed that XP has over

Oh, and that really pretty green grass / blue sky background.

Michael

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My 2K laptop hibernates a whole lot faster than the XP machines. I guess because it doesn't need tons of megabytes of RAM for mundane jobs. Dual-core, oh well, when do OS programmers understand that processor speed is a secondary concern for almost every user? The time a PC spends grinding around on the HD with the hourglass displayed is what's most annoying. Mainly because you can't do much else in that time since multi-tasking is IMHO just marketing fluff.

Then screen saver (that never really saves a screen anyhow I guess) is the first thing to get ditched when a PC arrives on this here desk :-)

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Dimension 8300, eh? Try this link:

Have fun,

Michael

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I just did it, and Microsoft gave me the code to activate XP from the CD that came with the system 3 - 4 years ago. Activation was done by voice response unit, which asks you if the reason you need a new code is motherboard replacement. So it seems doubtful that changing the board would void the warranty, but YMMV.

Ed

Don't know if you can set Windows up to take optional components like USB driver updates. Only "critical" (or what MS is calling "critical" this month).

So you might want to check on the optional components first at Dell then at MS.

Robert H.

I'll check tomorrow -- upgrading the BIOS didn't help.