Advice needed for (New) Dead Pc......

[sirius]

My works computer died on monday, and in my amazement they got me a new one, repaired mine and replaced somebody elses in the office.

All was going great, it arrived at about 3.00 yesterday afternoon, a Dell 8400 base unit, p4 HT, 1gb ram and x300 graphics.

I installed two CAD programs, set my desktop up, set the classic start menu etc in the Windows XP Pro to get it more comfy. I installed a BIG A0 format HP designjet 500 printer to the USB port, did a test print, all fine. Went home.

Came in this morning to install my HP1220c colour A3 printer.......reads the sticker top of the printer, and it warns you that you need to install the CD first, before connecting any cables (serial or usb). So, I put the disc in, installed the printer, attached another USB cabl to the A3 printer.

The CD thing hangs, but it tells me its installed the printer. Ctrl&delete out of the hanged program. "system must now be restarted for changes to take effect" or similar.........reboots the computer, and it doesnt start again!!!!!.

First it was looping the boot sequence over and over, then, it just went to a flashing cursor.

My boss called the computer guy in who supplied the PC, and tried some recover tools in XP CD bootup. Tried a fixmbr, chkdsk/recover, etc.....and nothing would work. He says Ive destroyed the vital part of the hard disk, and has now taken it away to redo it all from scratch....


Is this feasable? Installing a HP printer totally wrecks the machine? Its brand new, and I feel guilty lol.

Can you put two printers on the same machine using USB? Is thats whats fried it????


Cheers if anyone puts my mind at rest.....


Sirius.

 

[wildpitch]

any software install can kill a windows install mate, drivers and stuff are notorious for it, would siriusly doubt it's anything fatal though.

 

[sirius]

Cheers bud.......

It looked pretty drastic, and I dont think peeps are best pleased LOL.


Does anyone know if you can run two printers on the same machine? I did it before, the big one via USB and the A3 on the serial port, but I have three dongles poking out in a chain off the serial port, so I was hoping that I could just use the USB port like the other printer attached.......

We did move the A3 to another spare machine, but for some bizzare reason, when you actually clicked "Print" it totally shut down the application without warning or errors lol. Just flashes off onto the desktop, dead lol. Hence moving it back this morning.


Ta

Sirius

 

[wildpitch]

you can run something stupid like 128 devices off a usb port so you should be ok

 

[sirius]

Right, back up and running.......just one more question lol


I have the A3 printer on my machine and the big A0 plotter, so far so good.

In the CAD program we use, mine works fine, it accepts the default margins at 6.35mm top, left, right, bottom. Its all okay. However, my boss's same CAD program when he prints to my printer gets errors about the margins and puts a value of 235.57 or whatever in the slots and wont accept anything less than 11.85mm. Its REALLY annoying, as it keeps flagging up errors in the program.

The thing was, it WAS fine earlier. When they brought the PC back, I got the guy to check we could all print this time lol. It worked fine, but now theres this margin error - but only one one computer, and the same set up earlier this afternoon worked fine.

We have all had it at some point here, but unfortunately its now on my boss's computer. I used to put up with the hassle and pop up boxes and errors, but I cant see him doing that for long. I got him Windows XP Pro like me, cos lets face it, windows 98 first edition is pretty wank now and it wouldnt let you install anything new we needed!. So from never using anything but 98, so far he isnt too keen I dont think, all he has seen so far is hassle. lol.

Any idea's?

Sirius.

 

[wildpitch]

nope, no idea dude