Posts by Noah Sanchez39

Did you set the BIOS to boot from the CD/DVD drive first?

So, I'm from the Seattle area (well, not the heart of the city, just the outskirts), turning 43 soon, living by the coast, and currently employed...

I'm always down for a movie—if not at the theater, then streaming at home. I enjoy a bit of shopping when the paycheck actually hits 😁, reading a good book, and things of that nature.

I honestly don't think there is 😢

System Restore isn't some magical "factory reset" button; it just rolls back your system files to a previous state—like right before a Windows update or a driver tweak went sideways.

A clean Windows reinstall, however, means wiping everything on that drive and starting completely from scratch.

Mega gives you 50 GB of free storage. If you’re going that route, move everything to Mega first, then sync it to your laptop, and only once you've verified it all is safe should you wipe the files from your desktop. Or, just buy a USB flash drive and be done with it.

You can run both Malwarebytes and Norton at the same time without any issues. They don't clash or tank your performance; they play nice together. 😁 (I’m actually running McAfee instead of Norton myself)
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Besides using an Ethernet connection, you should probably consider an external hard drive—do you even have a backup for those "roughly 50 gigs of critical data" lying around somewhere? Or maybe look into cloud storage (pro tip: Mega)

The simplest way might just be to link the desktop and laptop using an Ethernet crossover cable and enable file sharing on the drive you're pulling data from.

What OS are we dealing with on the desktop? Windows XP, Windows 7? I'm assuming the new laptop will be running Windows 8.

Is your Windows Update actually turned on? Is it set to automatic?

Before you'll even see the Windows 8.1 upgrade pop up in the Windows Store, you need to make sure you've installed those two specific updates mentioned on the site.

Once those are in, the Windows Store should show this image. Click it to kick off the Windows 8.1 download (it's about 3 GB—it'll hit 50%, then move into optimization before the restart).

After the 8.1 version installs successfully, you'll need to run the Windows 8.1 update installation. Again, just follow the site's instructions regarding those two required updates.

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Your other option is a clean reinstall. This guide walks through the entire installation process with screenshots.

You could give it another shot later on, or maybe try running the Microsoft Accounts troubleshooter.

For what it's worth, you don't actually need a Microsoft account to run Windows normally; a local user account does the job just fine.

There might be a hidden recovery partition on your drive used for reinstalling the OS. What specific error message are you getting when you try to set up a Microsoft account?
Ultimately, you could always just go with a PC refresh.

@ James Turner

Did you even bother checking the official laptop manufacturer's site? Or maybe look at Intel's (automatically or via manual search) or AMD pages? I’ve noticed the Intel/AMD drivers are actually newer than what's sitting on Dell's site.

He’d be better off looking for some help over on the developer forums.

Maybe these instructions will be of some help to you.

@ Michelle Wells40: Look, just make sure you grab a longer warranty. Ideally, aim for 3 years (36 months).

@ Brenda Jackson52: For instance, Seagate It comes with a three-year warranty. Toshiba Just two years. That's it.

P.S. I finally bit the bullet and replaced my two external drives. One was from 2006 and the other from 2008. It was about time. I'm thinking about picking up a new, smaller drive with more capacity—something in the 2 TB range. All data transferred successfully. Finally got rid of that mess of extra cables and bulky power supplies. It takes up almost no space on my desk, and honestly, it's dead quiet. 🙂
Physical damage and data loss? It’s always a possibility. I haven't been unlucky enough to deal with that yet, fortunately. 😁

@ amberviper6: Drivers?

Andrew Peterson2 said:Anyone got a recommendation for a simple firewall? I just want something easy to use so I can block certain apps from hitting the web.

Comodo firewall
or maybe
Privatefirewall

The item starts at $178.
Once I log in and select my US address, the price suddenly "jumps" to $186.50.
On top of that, you get Postage & Packing: $8.10,
bringing the final total to $194.60.

No extra fees beyond that.

It's a one-time payment, and Amazon doesn't allow you to use PayPal.

That "around $475" already includes our sales tax; there aren't any customs fees to worry about. 🙂

This Wacom Intuos Pen & Touch Medium

At Finder, it's going for $533 plus tax, which brings it to $666
. Over at Telebit, the price is $562
.
It’s listed on Amazon.com (USA), but they won't ship it to the States. 😢
You can find it on Amazon.com, and they do ship to the US; it's about 153.27 GBP, or roughly $475. 😉