[Novalug] new laptop questions

[Bonnie Dalzell]

well my 2003 athlon tower was having some weird problems which resulted in 
my having to take it to cyberguys to have the power supply tested because 
I felt it would probably be cheaper to get it tested than to keep buying 
replacement parts and finding out that that part was not the problem. i 
lack the equipment to test the power supply - other than the simple test - 
buy another of what is acting weird and see if weird stuff stops.

well it was the power supply so now the tower is fine again.

however the weird stuff consisted of things like the harddrives not 
being recognized unless there was only one plugged into the ide bus.

while it was in the shop I started to feel serious computer withdrawal 
symptoms and there was this very nice dell vostro laptop with a 15 inch 
1300+pixel screen refurbished for only $399 so I purchased it. of course 
it came with windoze.

i now have it set up with a dual install of ubuntu intrepid and windoze 
and grub to boot to ubuntu but I cannot get the wireless or wired ethernet 
to go online here at home from ubuntu - although I can get it online from 
windoze.

the frustrating thing is that the description of what you should be trying 
to do in the Ubuntu Intrepid help you get online built in instructions.

it finds the mac address for the ethernet connection and then turns its 
connection to the internet off.

i have not yet gotten down to a meeting but this thing is a laptop and 
I would like to meet you all face to face sometime so this may trigger 
a trip down to virginia for me.

i am in the process of trying to get a set of the drivers for the 
wireless card and the ethernet card from Dell.

It was just frustrating to turn the thing on, set up some of its anti 
malware protection and then have to go online and purchase more anti
malware protection.

the guys at the computer store reguard windoze as an "out of the 
box" operating system as opposed to the "great support headaches of linux"

grrr

to me any purchased OS that has to go out and get additional anti-malware 
software before you can safely run it is hardly "out of the box".

Incidently I initially tried it from a Ubuntu CD and it looked good and I 
thought I got online at the computer store with the CD. However I decided 
to be cautious with the laptop when I got it home. I discovered that it 
can boot from an external USB unit so I took a harddrive spare using a 
USB connection to the laptop and installed Ubuntu on the spare external. 
However I found out after I had done this that the Ubuntu installed had 
done something to the boot sector on the laptop. That is without the 
harddrive the laptop came up with a GRUB error 15 rather than going into 
windoze directly.

I tried the windows system reinstall CD that came with the laptop but 
it did not reinstore it to its previous to Ubuntu state so I just used the 
Ubuntu CD to set up a dual install of Ubuntu and windoze on the thing 
for now. If I get the internet connection stuff working I can get rid of 
windoze but on the other hand having widoze around to help my friends who 
ask simple windoze questions is not to terrible.

But I thought I would mention the alteration of the boot sector for other 
people's information



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                        Bonnie Dalzell, MA
mail:5100 Hydes Rd PO Box 60, Hydes,MD,USA 21082-0060|EMAIL:bdalzell at qis.net

freelance anatomist, vertebrate paleontologist, writer, illustrator, dog
breeder, computer nerd & iconoclast... Borzoi info at www.borzois.com.
Editor Net.Pet Online Animal Magazine  - http://www.netpetmagazine.com
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