Kamangir (Archer)

Did you know that Kamangir turns four tomorrow? See the classic "Hello World" dated October 17, 2008!

A Story about Allah and Dell Computers

Kamangir | July 22, 2007 | Category Personal

Azadeh went shopping and sent me home to wash the dishes. When I arrived home, all sweaty, the only thing I did was to sit in front of the air conditioner and to do a “quick” check for comments and emails. That only finished right before Azadeh buzzed. Aside from the fact that it is general knowledge that you turn your machine on to check your emails and end up reading blogs and checking links here and there, I was very outraged when I saw the footage of an execution, just deleted from Youtube because of its graphic nature. So, I posted the video in both English and Persian . The Persian title I chose was “The Allah who is not great“. That was a big mistake, as I found out later.

After I posted the video, and watched it online to make sure everything was fine, my screen went all blue and the Blue Screen of Death came on, with a funny message “dumping memory”. Who pays attention to this, I said to myself and forced the machine off. That was when Windows did not boot anymore, despite all my efforts. So, I ended up reinstalling windows, and getting the horrible message “Hard disk damaged”. So, I also formatted my hard disk. Fortunately, I don’t keep any information on my notebook. So, I did not loose much, rather than music and movies I had downloaded off the Internet.

The story became silly when I started looking for drivers, which to my surprise were not installed by Windows itself. I had a CD-ROM which I was not sure if it was for my notebook, a Dell Inspiron 640m. The CD-ROM calls the model the drivers of which it carries to be “ME051″. Obviously, I did not trust my guts and I thought maybe that’s for Azadeh’s notebook. So, I looked up the service tag in Dell.ca, where I was referred to a page which held drivers of a system called ” Inspiron E1405/640M”. I took some of the drivers and managed to install the basic functionalities. Then, just asking “what if that CD was actually mine”, I started installing what was provided there, and good job! Everythign is now functional.

The moral of the story is, do not mess with people who shout “Allah is Great” and do not even try to think why Dell uses three different numbers for one product.

Reader's Comments

University Update - YouTube - A Story about Allah and Dell | July 22nd, 2007 at 1:51 pm
[...] Link to Article youtube A Story about Allah and Dell » Posted at Kamangir (Archer) - ??????? [...]
S. Weasel | July 22nd, 2007 at 2:31 pm
At least you weren’t hit by lightening.

IBM Thinkpads are very bad about that; they constantly make tiny changes in the specs and give the result a whole new model number. Great machines, but dozens of different tiny variations make it hard to work out upgrades.

Kamangir: I would be happier if I was hit by lightening! :D
paleo | July 22nd, 2007 at 6:03 pm
I know what you’re talking about. I have a stack of hard drives a foot tall with “Track 0″ problems. Sometimes I can fix ‘em, sometimes not. I have to re-install the Operating system about once a month. But I won’t give up, and neither should you.

Kamangir: Misery loves company. :)
tedders | July 22nd, 2007 at 7:47 pm
In 23 years of owning multiple Apple MacIntosh systems, laptops included. I’ve never once had a problem like this. Never had a bad hard drive, never had any hardware problems, driver problems. The one Thinkpad I’ve owned was so incredibly prone to hardware and software failures I finally gave it away for free. I hated that Thinkpad! I’m sure Ill get all the MacIntosh naysayers spreading their anti Apple propaganda but the truth is Mac’s have higher component specifications to pass before being used in their machines and as a result cost more. You get what you pay for.

Kamangir: I am actually thinking about getting a Mac.
nachtwache | July 22nd, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Gotta agree about Macs; my hubby would never go back to PCs. His favourite saying: You get what you pay for.
Your lucky it’s just your computer they’re trying to kill, next they’ll be gunning for you, knowing how they operate with anyone saying anything they don’t like.
I don’t post much about politics, mainly just personal stuff, but I follow things and sometimes add things to my shared items. Most people I know have their head in the sand, don’t want to know or are bleeding liberals that make excuses for terrorists. I’ve added your blog to my Google Reader.
Great blog! Keep safe!

Kamangir: Thanks and nice to meet you.
Roman Kalik | July 23rd, 2007 at 1:06 am
Kaman, while still had my IBM Thinkpad (which was stolen from me but two weeks ago), I found that the main advantages of IBM (or Lenovo these days, as the firm that bought the thinkpad rights from IBM is called) were twofold.

One is that they have an OS (Windows XP, in my case) on a hidden partition on the hard-drive, that can be easily reinstalled via the BIOS. This already has the basic drivers for the comp. The second advantage is their nifty auto-update program, which I found very useful.

Now I own an MSI notebook. I can change more hardware, but their software took some time to find, as were the drivers. Their auto-update utility works, mind you, it just took me ages to bloody well find it. As it doesn’t come on the bloody drivers CD.
ella | July 23rd, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Although I did not have, as yet, any troubles with notebook, couple of months ago my old motherboard got fried. Unfortunately I have foolishly decided not to buy a new PC but build it myself from a scratch.
I do have an advice for all of you………..don’t, just don’t do it. My computer works fine now, but boy oh boy, did I have to sweat for it!!!