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Archive for January, 2008

Acer Dual-booting Problems!!!

January 11th, 2008 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | View Comments | Filed in Offline, Tech

Ok, ok, I was really stupid! Don’t go posting comments saying how stupid I was!

So here’s the story. I get my Acer Extensa 5420 at Costco, and come home and open it up, and I get all excited, and I’m happy! So then about a week later, I accidentally delete the partition that Vista’s in when dual-booting XP in order to use legacy apps (STUPID ME!). So I try and get a recovery CD from Acer because my built-in eRecovery option wouldn’t work. Here’s a letter I wrote to Acer explaining what happened from then on:

To Whom It May Concern:

About a week after I got my Extensa computer, I wanted to use the built-in eRecovery feature that my laptop was supposed to come with. So when it was starting up, I pressed alt+f10, as I was directed to by the laptop’s manual, but this didn’t work. So, I called acer’s “Customer Interaction Centre”, and I had them send me some recovery CDs. This was when the problems began. Here’s a list of the issues I had with these first cds:

- The CD’s operating system (my computer came with Vista Home Premium – the cd’s recovery os was Vista Home Basic)
- The CD’s language (my computer came with english as it’s main language, but the recovery cd installed spanish, and I couldn’t understand what the computer was saying)
- Wouldn’t recognise a whole bunch of my hardware – including my graphics card, my dvd drive, my card reader, and my wireless internet connection.
- The invoice said my cds were french, but on the cds themselves they said they were spanish. so the invoice was incorrect.

I called in to the customer interaction centre, and gave my order number, and the person there said that the person who had sent me the first set of the disks had, #1 – sent me ones that weren’t designed for my computer, and #2 – they were the wrong language (i already knew this), and finally #3 – they were the wrong operating system (i ALSO already knew this. He said he’d resend the disks.

Now, I have a week of wasted time and money because i have NO access to my computer whatsoever, while I wait for the cds to arrive. The person I was talking to on the phone said they would arrive in two business days!

Finally, after a week’s wait, my cds have arrived to me, and I start using them, only to find out that they are FRENCH! Maybe the person thought that I wanted french cds, because on the first invoice I recieved it said Vista home basic french, whereas the cds were in actuality spanish.

I would like it if someone could kindly send me some recovery cds, with windows vista home premium designed for my acer extensa 5420, IN ENGLISH, please!

Thanks in advance for your help and assistance,

Connor McBrine-Ellis

No one bothered replying for a day, so I get impatient and call Acer’s Customer Interaction Centre, and I get a really helpful person who told me that he’d send me the right CDs, en anglais, s’il vous plait!

I’ll update you on whether these CDs were actually english when they arrive. They’ll arrive in about 3-7 business days because they use FedEx express shipping.

Connor :p

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Bell Problems Fixed! (But left an impression on me)

January 6th, 2008 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | View Comments | Filed in Uncategorized

Finally! We had been complaining for a long time, but finally we got some action. If you read my previous post on Bell Support Chat, then you would know what I’m talking about, but just in case you didn’t, here’s the story. A long time ago, we got high-speed internet from bell. It was really the best thing anyone could get at the time, and we managed to get 1 megabit plan. We had this for about 5 years, with little to no complaints or calls to their `310-SURF (310-7873)` tech support hotline until I decided we should try upgrading our plan, since we were still paying around the same price we had been paying since we first got the service, and for that price, now we could get the 5 megabit plan.

So we decided to upgrade, and that was when the troubles began.
Since it was on some kind of special, we ordered a bell sympatico `home networking modem`, which is essentially a 2wire 2701. When I fired it up, lo and behold, the networking didn`t work. So then we had to pull out our old Linksys WRT54G and hook it up through one of the Ethernet cables on the back of the modem and then use that device to take care of our networking, even though we had gotten the home networking modem specifically for that purpose, in that way freeing up the WRT54G for use elsewhere.even though I kept on calling and calling bell sympatico, but they kept on saying to like… configure my printer provider, when the real problem was with the network. So, the network wouldn´t work, so I couldn´t print. So, I had to end up turning off the wireless radio on the 2wire, and then connecting an ethernet cable from one of the ports on the modem-router to my Linksys, and so by doing that, I would be only be using the modem feature of that device. I wasn´t really happy, because Bell promised that we could network with modem, whereas I found that to be untrue. So now, I would use my linksys for all my networking. Everything was working fine now, unless you brought up the subject of speed. The internet was painfully slow, not only for browsing, but also for downloads. We were getting around 10% of our promised speed.

So, once again, I called up Bell Sympatico, and the person had me do a whole bunch of troubleshooting crap, just trying to save Bell a few dollars.

He had me do this (and at the same time wasted my time):

  1. Unplug all the phones in the house except for the router/networking modem
  2. Turn the router on and off (huh???)
  3. Turn my computer on and off (HUH????!!?)
  4. Had me do various things with my phone – none of them made sense

Eventually I just got fed up and told the guy to send me a bell guy to our house. The person was supposed to come that Thursday, but they didn’t give us the convenience of letting us know when exactly he would come in the morning, so we took the day off to wait for him. They did say he’d come in the morning, though, but this didn’t prove to be true.

We had to wait till the afternoon, and therefore we wasted a morning when we could’ve been elsewhere.

Then, the person came, and this was when our problems started getting fixed. He apologized for being late, and then he came downstairs to where the modem/router was. Then he tested our speed, and told us that yes, our speed wasn’t fast enough, -this was what surprised me- he made a quick phone call to somewhere and said his name and then he paused… and then he said some ID. Then he said, “OK, so I’m here at _-(our address)-_ and they have a speed issue. Could you increase the bandwidth supplied to their house? *Pauses* Yes. Put it to around 70%. Thanks. Bye!”

And then he said, “So you’re all set up! You should notice the change immediately.” I asked, “What exactly did you change?” He said that he just called them up and had them change the bandwidth of our line to 70% of the company’s ‘promised speed’. “Why can’t we get the full 100% of our promised speed?” I asked. He explained that if he were to increase our bandwidth to 100%, then our line would be unstable. I didn’t quite understand his reasoning, but the person seemed to know what he was doing, so I trusted him.

When he was gone, I went onto my computer and did a speed test to see if our speed had increased, and voila, we were at 70% of the advertised speed. But we might still switch to a Rogers bundle :p.

The Moral Of This Story: When you have trouble with Bell, get them to send a technician to your house!

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The Craig Is Back

January 5th, 2008 by Connor McBrine-Ellis | View Comments | Filed in Uncategorized

Hello everybody!
Sorry I havent posted in a while (this is Craig) there has been problems connecting to the site.
So anyways you will be hearing from me a lot now.
So I have been using So a lot.
So have fun.
So.

-Craig
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