Help for technical issues on your PC

[Ellirium113]

Here is the manuals...

http://www.dell.com/support/Manuals/us/en/19/Product/optiplex-gx280

and the driver download section...

http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&cat=sup&k=Optiplex+GX280&rpp=12&p=1&subcat=dyd&rf=all&nk=f&sort=K&nf=19426%7e7%7e143662&navla=19426%7e7%7e143662&ira=False&~srd=False&ipsys=False&advsrch=False&~ck=anav

[Ellirium113]

Incidentally after I had the problem with the logitech mouse I am still running an older one but with just the driver installed and have not had any issues since.

There is a plethora of issues with this logitech software that has cropped up over the last year...just google "logitech setpoint software screwing up my pc" and watch the hits.

[1Worldwatcher]

Ok Ellirium and the rest of you helping here, will definitely be saving that Manual, never had one with this PC, was lost in the shuffle, and always wanted one..

Will go and try these ideas, then will hopefully be back online post haste, Thanks againg for all your peoples help. It is a very frustrating situation, as I am sure you know.

1WW

[Pimander]

If you went blue screen during hardware set up then there is every chance a driver file was corrupted when writing.  Uninstalling and reinstalling the driver should fix that though..   Have you managed to get any USB device to work properly yet?


ETA: I'd love to get my hands on your PC armed with a diagnostic bootable disk.

[Ellirium113]

Ok Ellirium and the rest of you helping here, will definitely be saving that Manual, never had one with this PC, was lost in the shuffle, and always wanted one..

Will go and try these ideas, then will hopefully be back online post haste, Thanks againg for all your peoples help. It is a very frustrating situation, as I am sure you know.

1WW

Ensure you can install as many of the OEM Dell drivers as you need BEFORE updating to SP2 or 3 to ensure that these are known to windows before it tries and configures itself around a generic failsafe mode because it can't ID your hardware. 

[ArMaP]

I think we may be giving too much information at the same time to 1Worldwatcher, so I will stop for now.

[Back]

I dont mean to but in. I was wondering is the Linux Mint a whole suite? I have an old Dell setting here with a new HD in it and I dont have the install disk. It will run Fedoea.

Bless
Shawn

[Pimander]

Linux Mint is the Linux Operating system with a desktop that looks like Windows (MATE, which is an updated gnome).  I think it has office programs and web browser (Firefox) etc out of the box too.

Fedora is OK too.  If you are into programming and such like Fedora is probably more  fun (tries out new technologies sooner) but if if you just want to use your PC Mint "just works".... Mint has stuff like media codecs already installed so you can go straight onto the web and watch video and play music etc.....

Best of all, hardly any worries about Malware.  Nearly all software is free and open source too.  And you won't be paying Microsoft to create a slower less stable operating system as it is free unlike Windows.

[zorgon]

Thanks Ellirium, will try that command in "Safe Mode" and see if it works (Is this through the 'RUN' option Ellirium or command prompt?), one thing is for sure, money is not available for me as of right now, Damn insurance companies!! 

[ C:/FORMAT C: ] is a DOS command  You need to be in the black screen DOS prompt. But formatting C will not restore it to factory 'default' it will erase the drive. I suppose a blank HD is technically 'factory default' but I don't thing that is what you want to do as you will lose everything on the drive including the OS

Do you have a copy of Windows? If so formatting the drive and staring from scratch would fix it, but again you will lose all other files on the disk

Sounds like your friend installed a different version of windows over top an older one. He could have installed it as a second OS then you would have had an option to select which version to boot.

[zorgon]

Linux Mint is the Linux Operating system with a desktop that looks like Windows (MATE, which is an updated gnome).  I think it has office programs and web browser (Firefox) etc out of the box too.

Can it handle Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Photoshop?

[Pimander]

Can it handle Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Photoshop?

It has LibreOffice., GIMP and a reader which all do the same thing and handle the same file types

[zorgon]

I think we may be giving too much information at the same time to 1Worldwatcher, so I will stop for now.

yeah no sh!t

No one told him that formatting c drive will wipe out all info. I suppose everyone assumed he knew that but since he asked where to type that command in RUN or command prompt) and said he was trying to reset factory defaults using format, my guess would be he DOESN'T know it would wipe the drive

[zorgon]

It has LibreOffice., GIMP and a reader which all do the same thing and handle the same file types

Fine and dandy for home use.. but won't work for school or work situations as online courses require those programs. The business world and the art colleges use the MS and Adobe software as industry standard...

[ArMaP]

It has LibreOffice., GIMP and a reader which all do the same thing and handle the same file types

Translation: Office files - it depends, Photoshop files - not really, Acrobat files - yes.

[Ellirium113]

yeah no sh!t

No one told him that formatting c drive will wipe out all info. I suppose everyone assumed he knew that but since he asked where to type that command in RUN or command prompt) and said he was trying to reset factory defaults using format, my guess would be he DOESN'T know it would wipe the drive

I assumed he already knew what that meant and he DID have a windows CD so I was thinking he was wanting to reformat and try again.  If it was not allowing him into the boot menu for the CD it might be that the drive priority in the BIOS is set to boot HD first and so long as windows boots it will not boot from cd. This has to be changed in the BIOS to have the cd drive set as the 1st boot device.