bsaastad
New member
One thing to be careful of when reloading the O/S is there may be dell drivers that aren't on your Windows CD. I recently got a Dimension but let them ship it without the XP Pro upgrade because I already had a copy from the computer I was replacing. What complicated things a bit was that my copy of XP didn't have suitable sound, video or network drivers for the new box. Seems like you couldn't load them from the Dell CD w/o re-installing the Dell o/s. Anyway, it's easy enough to go get the right drivers from the Dell website, but -- not when one is your network driver
. I had to install a wireless driver from another system so I could get internet access in order to download/install the Dell driver for the onboard NIC as well as the sound/video drivers. FWIW, I've had pretty good luck with Dell's customer support, but I do buy the extended support package. They actually sent someone to our house to replace the LCD on our Inspiron when it failed.
The funny part of that story is that it was my gf's laptop and her wallpaper is a picture she took of me. She wasn't there, so the tech assumed it was my machine. It wasn't until he had it running for a few minutes that I went around and realized he was staring at an extreme closeup of my face, at which point I mentioned to him whose machine it really was. His response was, "Oh, ok. I was thinking, man, this guy really likes himself ..."


The funny part of that story is that it was my gf's laptop and her wallpaper is a picture she took of me. She wasn't there, so the tech assumed it was my machine. It wasn't until he had it running for a few minutes that I went around and realized he was staring at an extreme closeup of my face, at which point I mentioned to him whose machine it really was. His response was, "Oh, ok. I was thinking, man, this guy really likes himself ..."

