Last Week

Last week was crazy for being a short week. We received our new lab computers, a combination of desktops and laptops.  I had help getting the hardware connected and then I also had some help installing the software.  On Tuesday, everything was going about as smoothly as could be expected until I hit a snag with the laptops. (Hmm, maybe that snag started Monday, now that I think of it).

We ordered Acer laptops. The RFQ specified that the laptops had to have Win7 Pro. The laptops came with Home Premium and an upgrade to Pro. Not a major issue. Except, it was. The upgrade was for educational volume licensing. Home premium is retail. I called Microsoft and the rep walked me through what to do (install VLPro using the VL License Keys).  Okay, extra work, but nothing major. Wrong. The laptop drivers do not support VL Pro7. Or maybe just not Pro. Whatever.

I spent some considerable time trying to find a fix. I got the wireless cards working, but still no video. I went ahead and installed software using the generic VGA drivers. No use wasting too much time. I continued to look for a solution. Nothing.

In any case, I left late Tuesday night with things fine on the desktop side and not-so-fine on the laptop side.

Off Wednesday for the 4th.

Thursday, I returned and fired up the desktops. I also called the sales rep and Acer about the laptops. Since I removed the preinstalled software, I voided warranty support for the software. Yay me. I told the Acer rep i would need approval for the fee he wanted to charge to get things working.  Instead, I searched using different terms and came up with people having similar problems on different machines.  The fix was to get the VEND_ID from Device Manager and find a comparable card in the vendor's INF file, make a few changes, and try again.

That worked. The systems think they have an "older" version of the video card, but who cares. What matters is that the driver installed (after telling Windows it was okay that it didn't match 'exactly.') and I could move forward. Sort of.

One of the desktops (Lenovo) had booted into "Recovery Mode." I thought this was weird, but rebooted and watched as it did the same thing.  I figured I would boot to safe mode, use "last known good config and get things sailing. I was wrong.  On the third attempt, the system would not boot up after I had shut it down.  I looked at the network card on back, and got a light. I opened the case, unplugged the power, plugged it back in and the CPU fan spun a time or town then stopped.  That's normal behavior for a computer that isn't trying to boot.  This let me know that things were getting power. Well, at least SOME things.  The computer would not come on.  I contacted the vendor.  Within two days, I had a cross-shipped replacement. Now, THAT is service.