Re: The "I bought a computer from PC World, Currys or Dixons" Thread
 

When I tried to install the INF files from that link, I got the message "The current operating system supports the Intel chipset devices on your system. No INF update is needed".

I tried uninstalling all the IDE drivers & rebooting, but it came back just the same.

But then I found the "Intel Application Accelerator" here:- http://support.intel.com/support/chi.../CS-020801.htm

Downloading this did the trick. It now transfers at UDMA 4. :) Phew!

Re: The "I bought a computer from PC World, Currys or Dixons" Thread
 

I bought my Advent 1Ghz AMD Athlon from PC World 3 - 3.5 years ago and it has not let me down yet. Since then, I've bunged in a load more RAM, a PCI USB2 card, a network card and a DVD burner. It only has a 20gig HD and the rest of the spec is pretty basic but I can't complain about it's performance. I have a couple of friends who own more modern Advent machines and they seem to be pleased as punch with what they've got.

Re: The "I bought a computer from PC World, Currys or Dixons" Thread
 

Re: The "I bought a computer from PC World, Currys or Dixons" Thread
 

Philips chassis is the main problem, thermal dissipation is difficult due to its design which causes unrectifiable (unless moving the case) overheating problems...

Advents are good even the older builds, the newer ones like the T9306 are Serious PCs (IIRC Wayne has one) and they're normally reliable too - if you have an Advent MAKE YOUR RECOVERY MEDIA NOW as we can't get them.

Strzelecki: We were playing with the command prompt interface on the Packard Bell F11 recoveries earlier, that we actually managed to "discover" - Ctrl+C accesses it from where the usual tools, chkdsk, xcopy, reloadhs etc all work, not sure about Notepad, diskpart etc but it's almost worth knowing... same as Alt+D in the Advent ones. It's something PB didn't even tell us about either...

Yeah - if anyone wants any advice on a DSG PC please post!

Re: The "I bought a computer from PC World, Currys or Dixons" Thread
 

I've had an Advent machine from Currys & it was a bog standard build, easily upgraded, and it even came with a full set of cds - a while ago, now, though ;)

Re: The "I bought a computer from PC World, Currys or Dixons" Thread
 

Which model was it? A lot of the Advent PCs even the really old ME PCs (surprisingly, a lot of which are still under Coverplan) come with Ghost/Image based recovery CDs, only really the following come with (rebadged) OS CDs:
- Fujitsu Siemens PCs (DT/LT)
- Compaq laptops
plus a couple I've probably forgotten.
(Other recoveries are much easier to run over the phone)

A lot of the PCs are shipping with hard disk recoveries, this is not a problem unless the HD changes outside of warranty or unless you're a "tweaker". The most popular ones are the PC Angel (used in Advent, other DSG machines, also HP (all) and Compaq (DT/LT) PCs - PB use a variation on this, other than that, it's very rare to buy a PC with a genuine (or rebadged) OS CD now.

Re: The "I bought a computer from PC World, Currys or Dixons" Thread
 

Higher end HP laptops still come with the OS cd and drivers and utility disks, toshiba laptops still have ghost images. nffc: knew about the PB hidden stuff, quite useful.
On a side note, why the hell are PC World now selling Suse 9.1 Pro for £9.97, an old version, in a store that people don't go to for linux stuff that you can download legally for free.

Re: The "I bought a computer from PC World, Currys or Dixons" Thread
 

What have you managed to get to work? We're still trying to work it out...

Re: The "I bought a computer from PC World, Currys or Dixons" Thread
 

too long ago, sorry :)

Re: The "I bought a computer from PC World, Currys or Dixons" Thread
 

Not much as far as I can remeber, one of the other techs has been working with those machines for 10 years so I'll ask him. The Advent recovery situation is a pain, it seems we are one of the few stored that have some kits and we keep having to copy them for other stores.

Re: The "I bought a computer from PC World, Currys or Dixons" Thread
 

Tell me about it, it must be generating an awful lot of 28 day rules.