I recently got a new Dell Dimension 8100 and have had no end of troubles with it, I hope someone here can give me a bit of advice.

This is my first PC, up 'til this point I've only used Macs. My friend recommended me purchasing a Dell, and I'd had good experiences with them in the past, so I went for it.

My system:
Dell Dimension 8100 P4 1.3GHz
128 RDRAM
GeForce 2 MX w/ tv out
48x CD and 16x/8x/32x burner
SoundBlaster Live!

The above is the system I purchased. Ever since the first time I booted up, I had problems. The first one I noticed was when I installed Max Payne and played it. The game's framerate would steadily slow to a halt and I would be forced to quit the game and restart it if I wanted to play anymore. From there I updated my drivers, which didn't do anything to help the problem. Also, WinAmp froze out of the blue off and on a lot, and I would get random blue screens from time to time, even when I was doing nothing.
I decided to reinstall Windows Me, I didn't think it could hurt.
I formatted my hard drive, then installed Me.

I had less blue screens and WinAmp worked fine, but my video card was still giving me troubles. Half Life would freeze out of the blue, Max Payne still sucked. My friend loaned me his Radeon 32MB PCI to see if it made a difference. I installed it, disabled my GeForce and hoped for the best. Max Payne and Half-Life still freeze out of the blue, but the freeze is strange: the visual part of the game is the only part that stops, the sound/music keeps right on going, but I can't ctrl-alt-del out of it, I have to manually shut off my computer. I occasionally get a blue screen, mainly when working in Photoshop (my friend thinks it is a RAM problem, that I need more. He's prolly right) but one last really strange problem...

When I put an audio cd into my cd drive (either one) my computer will restart right after the cd spins up. I have never heard of this happening before....

Any help would be appreciated...

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-Slave-

Well Slave,

If this is still under warranty I'd have it back on their doorstep ASAP and ask them kindly..."to fix it!"

They ought to have this baby tweaked when you take it out the door. You might want to consider bringing in the Max Payne and let them do a demo on it to see what happens.

It is always very disturbing and distressing to pay good money for a system and then have glitchs out of the gate.

May all your dealings in life be win/win!

Whyzman

A word of caution. Once you "GO IN" and mess under the hood you could very well void your warranty!

BTW, I do believe that you would need to go into the BIOS and change the AGP to PCI for the card that you were attempting to substitute.

Again, I would get it back and tell them to fix!

May all your dealings in life be win/win!

Whyzman

[This message has been edited by Whyzman (edited 09-23-2001).]

Absolutely, Whyzman is right. Take it back pronto. That puppy should work flawlessly. It's Dell's obligation at this point to set things right. Another good point by Whyzman was: stay out of the case, it will most likely void your warranty.

What you are describing is most likely bad RAM. Other causes could be a motherboard short or excessive heat, but I'm going with bad RAM on this one.

Dell tech support is supposed to be one of the best, so good luck with that, and kindly post back with your experiences with them.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66


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"Right turn Clyde!"

Boy have I got to Third that.
With what you pay for a Dell and concidering their reputation for building a quality machine, you absolutely have to hold them responsible.
I like the idea of letting them see what happens with the games you are talking about.
Keep us posted. I would like to see the outcome.

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If I tell you to think for yourself, then you're not doing it.
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This is not directed at those asking questions in order to gain knowledge. That shows you are thinking.