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      09-30-2007, 04:20 AM   #1
peterg1965
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Thumbs down {OT} New PC nightmare

My new PC arrived yesterday (MESH) and has been a nightmare. Spent the best part of 12 hours trying to set it up

First of all the 22"TFT kept switching off when the PC booted up (just after Vista was loading) it didn't do this for the first time it was started. The machine would not shut down properly as well and always wanted to start in Safe Mode every time. I spent two hours on the phone trying to sort that out. Graphics drivers were disabled, reloaded, deleted, reloaded, new ones emailed to my laptop......eventually I tried (in desperation) changing the DVI cable for a normal video cable (TFT to PC) and it seems to be OK now. Any ideas why this is? (what hapened to Quality Control?)

Next problem, I simply cannot connect to the internet. I have Orange Broadband and an Orange Livebox. I must have spent 6 hours solid trying to get the thing online. Spoken to technical helpline (India of course) and have failed to achieve it. Tried to do it wirelessly with a USB dongle, had a glimmer of success, but that was transient and now it wont play again. I was not happy, and was very grumpy (to say the least). I managed to f*** all the setting for the wireless router and even struggled to get my laptop back up online.

The Orange website is F****** useless and does not categorically state whether the Livebox is Vista compatible. Desperate measures now called for and I am heading for PC World (I know dont say it) to buy a Vista compatible wirless modem/router. If that doesnt work, what the hell should I do next???

Does anyone have an thoughts as to what is happening? My brother reckons that there is a problem with Vista in that it does not automatically recognise some routers on a network?
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      09-30-2007, 04:37 AM   #2
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OMG , ive just bought a MESH computer and it was faulty on delivery! Spent £1700 and the thing kept crashing , blue screen etc....
Wait till you deal with their customer service , its a @ucking joke.

I booked a day of work and the engineer didn't show up , even though i rang them three times during the day to confirm that he was deffo coming! I wanted a refund but they woundn't return my money and as i didn't get a report before i sent it back from another company that it was faulty i was stuck for over a month dealing with them. I even started to write complaints on PC magazine's of how bad Mesh were.
In the end they returned it and im using it right now and it seems to run fine but I WOUNDN't TOUCH THEM AGAIN!
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      09-30-2007, 04:46 AM   #3
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sounds like there a heap??!! good luck with sortin em guys

lucky you aint installed procede, they might have thrown out the warranty
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      09-30-2007, 04:53 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by peterg1965 View Post
My new PC arrived yesterday (MESH) and has been a nightmare. Spent the best part of 12 hours trying to set it up

First of all the 22"TFT kept switching off when the PC booted up (just after Vista was loading) it didn't do this for the first time it was started. The machine would not shut down properly as well and always wanted to start in Safe Mode every time. I spent two hours on the phone trying to sort that out. Graphics drivers were disabled, reloaded, deleted, reloaded, new ones emailed to my laptop......eventually I tried (in desperation) changing the DVI cable for a normal video cable (TFT to PC) and it seems to be OK now. Any ideas why this is? (what hapened to Quality Control?)

Next problem, I simply cannot connect to the internet. I have Orange Broadband and an Orange Livebox. I must have spent 6 hours solid trying to get the thing online. Spoken to technical helpline (India of course) and have failed to achieve it. Tried to do it wirelessly with a USB dongle, had a glimmer of success, but that was transient and now it wont play again. I was not happy, and was very grumpy (to say the least). I managed to f*** all the setting for the wireless router and even struggled to get my laptop back up online.

The Orange website is F****** useless and does not categorically state whether the Livebox is Vista compatible. Desperate measures now called for and I am heading for PC World (I know dont say it) to buy a Vista compatible wirless modem/router. If that doesnt work, what the hell should I do next???

Does anyone have an thoughts as to what is happening? My brother reckons that there is a problem with Vista in that it does not automatically recognise some routers on a network?
Vista does go through a long process of screen freezes and reboots when it's first run. I set up a pc for a friend last week and it took at least half an hour to boot up for the first time.

With the monitor I'd guess at a driver issue. If it works with the VGA connection I'd make sure you have the latest drivers installed for both the screen and the graphics cards, then try DVI again.

There is something here about the livebox and vista compatability:

http://labs.pcw.co.uk/2007/02/vista_a_no_go_w.html

If you want to use wireless it looks like you need to select WEP only in the security settings.

Personally, I'd try to crack the LAN connection first and leave the wireless till I knew that it worked. I'd also hold off buying a new router - that's going to send you crackers.

First place to look is in the network connections ... make sure you have a LAN installed on the PC. If you could connect wirelessly (but briefly) and not via LAN, then this is possibly where the problem lies.
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      09-30-2007, 04:53 AM   #5
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Quote:
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sounds like there a heap??!! good luck with sortin em guys

lucky you aint installed procede, they might have thrown out the warranty
I wouldn't assume that there is anything wrong with the PC, it just sounds like they haven't bothered to set it up correctly.
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      09-30-2007, 05:00 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by needforspeed View Post
I wouldn't assume that there is anything wrong with the PC, it just sounds like they haven't bothered to set it up correctly.
oh
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      09-30-2007, 05:04 AM   #7
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Does the router have MAC address filtering enabled, where only machines with certain MAC addresses (network card address - something like: 00:1b:63:bf:cb:3f ) are allowed to 'talk' to the router?

The router will also give machines on your network a private IP address (something like 192.168.0.2 or 10.0.0.2) - this is usually done by a DHCP server, but again the DHCP server might only give out addresses to machines it knows about (ones that have a MAC address stored in the router).

As NFS said, also check wireless security - WEP, WPA or WPA2 which is essentially the 'password' to connect to the wireless network.

My Vista laptop at home on the wireless network can get itself in a knot at times with the wireless network especially after coming out of sleep mode. If in doubt, always reboot the Vista PC and router to reset all the connections.
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      09-30-2007, 05:32 AM   #8
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To save sanity and to prove hardware/drivers - always setup (initially) your wireless network with NO security at all. Once proved, turn it on.
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      09-30-2007, 05:47 AM   #9
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Think i've cracked it. Set up the network successfully on my laptop, and just transfered the ethernet cable to the pc and bingo!
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      09-30-2007, 05:57 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by peterg1965 View Post
Think i've cracked it. Set up the network successfully on my laptop, and just transfered the ethernet cable to the pc and bingo!


Have you tried rebooting / shutting down / starting everything back up to check it all works ok?

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      09-30-2007, 06:08 AM   #11
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Have you tried rebooting / shutting down / starting everything back up to check it all works ok?

That's what i am doing now, the only thing i dare not do is turn the power of to the router!
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      09-30-2007, 06:29 AM   #12
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You can normally save the router settings from the web interface. So if you do that and then it loses them when powered off, just reload them.
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      09-30-2007, 07:41 AM   #13
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so all sorted now Petay?
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      09-30-2007, 08:12 AM   #14
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You'll get no sympathy from me: you brought it onto yourself.

What were you thinking man? How can you be so selective to buy BMW and then buy crap like that for a computer?

You should have bought a Mac.

Or, if you insist scraping the bottom of the barrel, at the very least something with XP on it.
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      09-30-2007, 10:52 AM   #15
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All ok now? If you have troubles with mesh customer service you could do a lot worse than to go to pcadvisor forum and post in the consumerwatch area and Davey (one of their Customer Service guys) usually pops along promptly to help resolve. They were on Watchdog apparently in April this year and their Customer Service is supposed to have been improved in leaps and bounds since.
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      09-30-2007, 11:54 AM   #16
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It all seems to be running fine since i managed to get onto my home network. All drivers downloaded and it seems to be OK now. It is a fine looking machine; 22" TFT is very good (and large!). There are still a couple of little oddities and glitches (like the speakers only work occassionally!) but I have made big progress and my son is very happy with it (it belongs to him).

Thanks for all your helpful suggestions.
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      09-30-2007, 12:07 PM   #17
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Good luck with it Peter, ignore the Macphiles...

*pokes Max_! with his annoying stick*

lol

SJ
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      09-30-2007, 12:16 PM   #18
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Cheers James. I was completely ignoring those MAC comments

You need to update your 'garage' pics else people will think your Primera is the number one 'ride'! - nice spec by the way didnt know stained passenger seats and crap stereo were options on a nissan
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      09-30-2007, 12:29 PM   #19
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nah low profile...

you'd know about that mr Boat driver
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      09-30-2007, 12:33 PM   #20
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nah low profile...

you'd know about that mr Boat driver
you know it makes sense!
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      09-30-2007, 12:43 PM   #21
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Quote:
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you'd know about that mr Boat driver
That's 'Captain' to you SerJames
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      09-30-2007, 12:48 PM   #22
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Oi

what's wrong with Mac he.....
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