barlow1802
Troy Has Legs
I typed alot.. idk if anyone will even read this but to sum it up, microcenter/microsoft didnt help too much..had to get it all documented and off my chest..
Bought my Dad a motherboard, pentium 4 processor, dvd burner, 160 gig Hd, and a decent ATI Diamond video card for christmas. He put it all together and i assumed it worked fine. Turned out he couldnt get video and didnt have the time to dick with it and offered it back.
I took it back gladly and figured it was his digital monitors and I drug out an old monitor from my closet and hooked it up. No video. Tried switching video cards, the older ones dont fit in this motherboard. I figured he knew more about the componets and assembling a computer than I did and he couldnt figure it out, I'll have microcenter take a look.
I go over there on my lunch break and ask them to see whats the matter with it. They tell me it'll be $85 and I told them i'd be in later that night or the next morning to pay for it. The cashier told me they could hold onto my computer but couldnt touch or even look at it until i payed for it and, in effect authorized work to be done.
3:30 my voice mail goes off, its microcenter. A tech guy tells me on this mother board it requires 2 power cords to be plugged into it, 1 powers the processor, hd, and other componets and the second one powers pci slots(video card) and whatever. He said he plugged it in, and it booted fine, needs an OS installed, come pick it up.
Im feeling good, thinking it was an easy fix. Go to pick it up, they ask for $85. I ask for what? They tell me the work the tech did. He goes to get his manager who walks up and the first words out of his mouth are "i understand you dont want to pay for the work we did on your computer today." Now im a little pissed off, but I tell him that I didnt authorize any work and he says you signed this recipt and I said your cashier straight up lied to me then. He said they'd reverse the work on the computer and give it back and im thinking ok, i'll fix it now that i at least no whats wrong.
I get back, they hid the power cable in the middle of a shit load of other power cables and rubberbanded it up there. Then i noticed they power drilled my hard drive out and the power plug was out of it. I plugged it back in and tried to boot, a 100 times. I wondered why they pulled the hd out just to unplug it, i pulled it out to look at this thing..they took the jumper off of my hd. Now im decently pissed off, and plug it in. This whole troubleshooting process took about an hour because anything could be wrong, this computer had never been booted.
I get it up and running, and want to install some things that require me to activate windows. Well, I have a legit copy of xp home but the serial is gone. I called microsoft to get some help after the phone activation didnt work. I held and then held and then held until my call got where it needed to be.
This lady couldnt speak english. I upgraded it to SP2 before i called and my activation window was hidden now and it wasnt where she told me it would be. She asked for me to run a command prompt.. it ended up something like C:\oombubls\fbdh hdls.exe. I rebooted and the activation popped up. So we tried doing the phone activation manually..I read what she wanted a 100 times and she kept fucking it up. This whole time I'm getting more and more frustrated.
She then tells me that I needed to buy a new cd key. I told her no, I've only used this copy once is there abyway i can get a new key? She told me that the cd was fine, i needed a new cd key. I told her i understand that, but im not going to pay 99 dollars to get a piece of paper, i'm gonna look for the old key first because she wanted to transfer me to buy a cd key. She then yelled that the software was fine, and at this point I yelled back and dropped a few f bombs, hung up and looked up at all my friends starring at me.
I then decided in my infinte wisdom maybe theres a way to crack windows activation, even though i was 99.9 percent sure where i look there isnt one, even if one exsited at all. I go to a site to get it, and instantly my computer is fucked with all kinds of spyware/virus/etc. My firewall is knocked down and im fucked. I reformatted several times only to get the same blue screen error once windows installed. I switched to an 80 gig hd from my PS2 and formatted it.
Finally Im on this thing at 2 on a sunday morning, still unactivated.
Bought my Dad a motherboard, pentium 4 processor, dvd burner, 160 gig Hd, and a decent ATI Diamond video card for christmas. He put it all together and i assumed it worked fine. Turned out he couldnt get video and didnt have the time to dick with it and offered it back.
I took it back gladly and figured it was his digital monitors and I drug out an old monitor from my closet and hooked it up. No video. Tried switching video cards, the older ones dont fit in this motherboard. I figured he knew more about the componets and assembling a computer than I did and he couldnt figure it out, I'll have microcenter take a look.
I go over there on my lunch break and ask them to see whats the matter with it. They tell me it'll be $85 and I told them i'd be in later that night or the next morning to pay for it. The cashier told me they could hold onto my computer but couldnt touch or even look at it until i payed for it and, in effect authorized work to be done.
3:30 my voice mail goes off, its microcenter. A tech guy tells me on this mother board it requires 2 power cords to be plugged into it, 1 powers the processor, hd, and other componets and the second one powers pci slots(video card) and whatever. He said he plugged it in, and it booted fine, needs an OS installed, come pick it up.
Im feeling good, thinking it was an easy fix. Go to pick it up, they ask for $85. I ask for what? They tell me the work the tech did. He goes to get his manager who walks up and the first words out of his mouth are "i understand you dont want to pay for the work we did on your computer today." Now im a little pissed off, but I tell him that I didnt authorize any work and he says you signed this recipt and I said your cashier straight up lied to me then. He said they'd reverse the work on the computer and give it back and im thinking ok, i'll fix it now that i at least no whats wrong.
I get back, they hid the power cable in the middle of a shit load of other power cables and rubberbanded it up there. Then i noticed they power drilled my hard drive out and the power plug was out of it. I plugged it back in and tried to boot, a 100 times. I wondered why they pulled the hd out just to unplug it, i pulled it out to look at this thing..they took the jumper off of my hd. Now im decently pissed off, and plug it in. This whole troubleshooting process took about an hour because anything could be wrong, this computer had never been booted.
I get it up and running, and want to install some things that require me to activate windows. Well, I have a legit copy of xp home but the serial is gone. I called microsoft to get some help after the phone activation didnt work. I held and then held and then held until my call got where it needed to be.
This lady couldnt speak english. I upgraded it to SP2 before i called and my activation window was hidden now and it wasnt where she told me it would be. She asked for me to run a command prompt.. it ended up something like C:\oombubls\fbdh hdls.exe. I rebooted and the activation popped up. So we tried doing the phone activation manually..I read what she wanted a 100 times and she kept fucking it up. This whole time I'm getting more and more frustrated.
She then tells me that I needed to buy a new cd key. I told her no, I've only used this copy once is there abyway i can get a new key? She told me that the cd was fine, i needed a new cd key. I told her i understand that, but im not going to pay 99 dollars to get a piece of paper, i'm gonna look for the old key first because she wanted to transfer me to buy a cd key. She then yelled that the software was fine, and at this point I yelled back and dropped a few f bombs, hung up and looked up at all my friends starring at me.
I then decided in my infinte wisdom maybe theres a way to crack windows activation, even though i was 99.9 percent sure where i look there isnt one, even if one exsited at all. I go to a site to get it, and instantly my computer is fucked with all kinds of spyware/virus/etc. My firewall is knocked down and im fucked. I reformatted several times only to get the same blue screen error once windows installed. I switched to an 80 gig hd from my PS2 and formatted it.
Finally Im on this thing at 2 on a sunday morning, still unactivated.
