[pandadoodle]

My wifes computer died on her this morning. She needs a PC for work use only sadly Now I'm no PC expert but I been looking at buying her this today :

http://www.ebuyer.co...sktop-7873-1036

My question is

As it does not come with an OS would windows 7 run on it? And if so what version do I get? Or is there a place I can get vista from? Or could I just download vista and use the product key on the side of her old machine!??

I guess these are all NOOB questions but I am a mac user

The problem with the current one is that it will not get past the bios, fails to detect any harddisk and then comes up with a disk read error despite it working fine for her yesterday.

[Spitfire]

Minimum specs for Windows 7:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
  
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
  
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
  
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

So that should run it fine.

As for which version, unless she's going to be mucking about with secure networks, complicated back-ups or using it in a different language then the Home version should be fine.

If you want my advice, spend 5 mins checking the harddisk cables before buying a new PC. It'll be an expensive mistake if it's just a matter of one of them coming loose.

[pandadoodle]

Checked over the cables all seem to be fine, was the first thing I looked at to see if they been knocked about or anything. But the machine was in perfect order last night this morning boot up at 7am nothing

Only thing to be great full is that, last night it done its backup so thankfully worst case no work will be lost.

Got any other ideas to try with it?

If I bought that machine would I need 32bit or 64bi version of windows?

[Spitfire]

The only other thing you could do is try another harddrive in it. But all that would do is confirm that the old one was faulty.

Good news about the back-up though. I've lost a fair bit of work though not backing up when I should have!

Looks like the processor does support 64bit
http://ark.intel.com...GHz-800-MHz-FSB)

So it's your choice whether to go for a 32 or 64bit OS.

[pandadoodle]

Thanks, it had two disks in there but woun't pick up either of them. It can see them in the bios just woun't detect and boot.

Cheers for the OS advice ill give it a few hours before I decided and buy one incase I can fix it +1ed

[CityCM]

I actually looked at that PC myself as I got an email from ebuyer with it on yesterday. It seems a pretty decent spec for the price. You could always make an offer on the PC I'm selling

[MikeChipshop]

I've got round the no boot disk read error a few times using the hardrive in the freezer trick. Might be worth a shot.

EDIT: Just noticed you have a full back-up so all the above will do is confirm whether the disk or system is faulty. Maybe worth a try anyway as a new HDD is cheaper and easier than faffing around with a new system.

This post has been edited by MikeChipshop: 27 September 2011 - 08:56 AM

[pandadoodle]

MikeChipshop, on 27 September 2011 - 08:54 AM, said:

I've got round the no boot disk read error a few times using the hardrive in the freezer trick. Might be worth a shot.

eh?

CityCM £190 inc delivery

To be honest If i could get a version of powerpoint & publisher to run on a mac without bootcamp id let her have an imac from the office.

This post has been edited by pandadoodle: 27 September 2011 - 09:01 AM

[MikeChipshop]

pandadoodle, on 27 September 2011 - 08:56 AM, said:

eh?

Obviously it depends on the HDD's problem but if you take the HD out of the PC, stick it in a freezer/ziplock bag and stick it in the freezer overnight, you have a chance of getting the hard drive running. If it does then you know you've just got to nip down the shops and pick up a replacement drive and you might even be able to shadow the old one straight on to the new one.

[CityCM]

pandadoodle, on 27 September 2011 - 08:56 AM, said:

CityCM £190 inc delivery

I wish I could mate. I'd let you have it for £300 plus delivery if that's any good to you? It's made out of much better and much more reliable parts than the ebuyer PC though (and can be used as a hackintosh if you ever fancy a tinker)

[Spitfire]

pandadoodle, on 27 September 2011 - 08:56 AM, said:

To be honest If i could get a version of powerpoint & publisher to run on a mac without bootcamp id let her have an imac from the office.

In that case, have a look at some MS Office alternatives. Google Docs or OpenOffice would be a good start. They're free, support MS file types and should run on Mac or PC.

[pandadoodle]

I got MS Mac Office business license now but its publisher and she wount use quark or similar bloody schools....

[Renaissance-Design]

Really?

Look mate, she gets on with PCs, you get on with Macs. There's no point evangelising if she's not going to change her mind, and a cheap PC is just going to make her life miserable. It's not possible to put together a good-quality machine for £190, so why not punt a bit more on something well-constructed that's going to last longer? If machines like that are your experience with PCs, it's no wonder you jumped to Macs.

Looking at it in detail, there's no exhaust fan and no obvious air intake at the front. That means the disks are running without any direct airflow, so they won't last anywhere near as long (they tend to like being kept under 30 degrees). It wuld be possible to fit an exhaust fan, but only a whiny 80mm one, and the material of the case is so flimsy that it'd resonate with the vibration. The CPU fan is probably stock, which means that will be noisy too.

Buy CityCM's machine - the case alone is worth £60-80, and it has a good-quality power supply rather than some shi**y 5 quid box that doesn't deliver stable power and runs the risk of frying the whole machine.

For 4GB or more of RAM she'll need a 64-bit copy of Windows 7.

[pandadoodle]

I don't need to change her mind she uses a MAC at home without any problems its purly because of her profession she has to use a PC end of. Shes on it max 1 hour every other night doing her planning or printing up something for work, any browsing or shopping as the case maybe! is done on the macbook or ipad.

I been on MACS because thats what everyone was using when I was working in ad agencies!!! I've stuck ever since.

Theres no point making assumptions about me, my wife or our computer usage at home or within our profession I simply asked for advice and got it. 110+ other people have bought that machine and left decent enough reviews its for office work not gaming.

This post has been edited by pandadoodle: 27 September 2011 - 12:00 PM

[Renaissance-Design]

Fair enough, skip the bits about preference. My other points stand - it's cheap, badly-cooled and will be noisy and unpleasant to use.

As far as your questions go - the copy of Vista on the old machine will be an OEM copy, which means it's licensed for that machine and is not transferrable. Windows 7's your best bet. You said she uses it for work - if she needs to join a company domain with it, she'll need Windows 7 Pro, if she needs Bitlocker drive encryption she'll want Ultimate.

Be prepared to pay rather more than you're used to paying for OSX - software is Microsoft's business and Windows is their flagship product, so they don't give it away for 20 quid as a loss leader to sell hardware.

This post has been edited by Renaissance-Design: 27 September 2011 - 12:47 PM

[ElanMan]

I actually have one of those in my office running ubuntu 64 bit. We use it as one of our backup servers.
Renaissance is right, it's one hell of a noisy machine, the fan especially but as it sits in the corner of the office, that's no biggy for me.
A replacement fan wouldn't be too costly though.
I've had several zoostorm pcs in the past and have never had a problem tbh.
In fact, I've been looking at the no OS zoostorm laptops too

[pandadoodle]

Just booted up her machine to try something else and I finally get this

CMOS checksum error - defaults loaded
If your Operation system has install on SATA HDD already.
Please check SATAaccess mode and hard disk boot priority

??


EDIT

Went into BIOS and the IDE/SATA was disabled re-enabled it and all boots up now, strange one eh? could this be the mother board battery by any chance? As the time keeps resetting also...

This post has been edited by pandadoodle: 27 September 2011 - 06:31 PM

[Renaissance-Design]

If it won't hold BIOS settings when you turn it off at the mains, it'll be the battery. Even with a dead battery the motherboard should still draw a trickle of power when soft-off via the power button (drawn from the 5VSB output on the PSU), so it should hold settings unless switched off at the mains.

[MikeChipshop]

Renaissance-Design, on 27 September 2011 - 07:43 PM, said:

If it won't hold BIOS settings when you turn it off at the mains, it'll be the battery. Even with a dead battery the motherboard should still draw a trickle of power when soft-off via the power button (drawn from the 5VSB output on the PSU), so it should hold settings unless switched off at the mains.

This.
If you have a DSLR with an LCD display knocking around, you may be able to swap out the battery and give cold booting a go.