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Incompetent Tech Support, Incomplete Restore Disks, & Windows Messeruppers - Still, Compaq Is Not Too Shabby (Plus There Are Some Nice Tips Inside Too)Dec 16 '00 Write an essay on this topic.Compaq PC's are probably the closest you get to a monopoly in the consumer PC business (besides Microsoft) - seemingly every single store that sells computers has plenty more pretty Presarios than the rest of the competition, such as Hewlett-Packard, Micron, Sony, and, well, that's about it (besides Gateway Country). So chances are you probably purchased a Compaq computer from your local Best Buy or CompUSA or whatever. Unfortunately as I've learned, Compaq the computer company isn't perfect - they have some big yet not so big flaws that can annoy a computer user to no end. Playing with a Compaq at home a lot, I've learned a few tricks that have helped me deal with the hassles of one of these machines, and at least have made them somewhat more tolerable to use and abuse. Before that though, let's discuss the technical support (or lack thereof). No wait, I need to tell this story first it ties in. The Image Restore - All computers come with an "Image Restore" disk. How it works is the computer vendor uses a program such as PowerQuest Drive Image - which makes an actual image of all the data stored on your hard drive the day it gets boxed up and sent to the retailers. Using these disks will format the hard disk and restore the drive to the exact condition it was when you set it up. Using the disk effectively gets rid of everything you've done to that point. Anyway, I've used this disk successfully on a couple other machines, different manufacturers. So, the time came when I decided to use this disk on my Compaq and bring back Windows 98 and play around. That is when disaster struck. Compaq did it bad this time - the so-called complete restore disk oddly didn't even come close to "restoring" my computer. I had CD Burning software on my computer when I first got it - it wasn't there when the restore disk finished. Even more fun - an actual COMPAQ program that I could use to do a selective restore or the full restore, or restore from the back up D: drive. Gone. Nowhere in sight - missing the icon on the desktop and the one on the System Tray. Odd I thought. Well okay it was more like "What the f*ck happened here!" but this is a family website. Then the real kicker - no sound. Nothing - I couldn't find the sound card driver anywhere. If that didn't piss me off I don't know what could. Thankfully I found a workaround - I quickly did an upgrade to Windows Millennium and that CD provided me with the sound card driver, so I was saved there. Still, in order to use my CD-RW I had to grab a copy of Easy CD Creator for an alternative (which in hindsight was a good idea). And I could nowhere find my other programs - they weren't on the Restore CD's at all. Now, on to the idiotic tech support. Sure, I could have and probably should have called them - but I find email much more convenient - why putz around on the telephone for 3 hours listening to The Best Of Debbie Gibson when I can quickly send email and casually wait (hope?) for a reply from an actual human being (contrary to belief humans, not monkeys, run Compaq tech support). In this email I explained the problem to them - how the Image Restore restored most but not all of my PC, and despite mass searching on the hard disk and CD - I couldn't find any of the programs. Simple and easy to follow right? Right. It's a good thing I sent it email because I would have never been able to contain my smartass ways - I'm positive I would have asked them if they have a brain or did they have a head of lettuce up there. Because my email stated that I need to look in the Restore Disk CD's for the programs that are missing. And considering that I clearly stated that they weren't on the Restore CD - I found this reply to be hilarious. It was so hilarious, that because I had my original message on the bottom, I shared it with coworkers, which effectively got shared with the entire office. We actually contemplated creating a "situation" to see if we could mess with their heads. Now of course that could be one instance, but not a good first impression. For me Compaq tech support seems pretty supportless. But their computers aren't bad - they are a big supporter of AMD and the Athlon, which is for the money the best chip out there (the P4 isn't up there yet), and love to load up on hard drive space and features - without overloading your PC with garbage software. And because they use AMD a lot, they can afford to keep their prices down to make their hardware more affordable. You can do a lot worse than Compaq. For Those Who Own A Compaq - I've got some nice tips for you that can increase your performance and prevent some disasters as well. And some stuff that you shouldn't be doing either. -Eliminate each and every startup service with CPQ in it. Go into MSCONFIG (or better yet, Startup Cop) and find and disable everything with CPQ in it. For instance, first thing you absolutely positively need to disable is CPQDFWAG, or Compaq Diagnostics. There is a fatal flaw with that service - it nicely eliminates your ability to run Scandisk or a Defrag program. What it does is continually writes to the disk, and therefore those programs have to start over again and again. And it's not really useful anyway - it just takes up resources. Same goes for stuff like CPQInet - another resource hog. Disabling these services will increase performance somewhat, but especially disabling CPQDFWAG will allow you to run Scandisk/Norton Disk Doctor, and Defrag/Norton Speed Disk. -Clean Installs are a no-no unless you have a full install CD. Because the disks Compaq provides is a Image disk, it is missing the setup files for upgrading cleanly, or just formatting the hard disk and installing the OS to the drive fresh with no programs. I learned the hard way that doing an upgrade from Win 98SE to Windows Me is not possible clean on the upgrade versions, at least on Compaqs. I had to do a wacky work around, installing Windows 98 upgrade CD (which was used on an old computer), which in turn required me to show the PC my Windows 95 full disk. So in essence I had to install Windows 98 then upgrade to Me no matter what. Just a warning! -The D: Drive CAN be deleted or formatted or whatever. All Compaq PC's come with a D: Drive called SYS_SAVER. That D: drive is nothing more than a backup of your system - if you are running Windows Me that isn't even necessary with System Restore - and with programs like Norton Ghost you don't even need that kind of stuff anymore. And because it's safe to delete, go ahead and do it. Nothing bad will happen, no one will come and get you, no Compaq representatives will come by and attack you with a rubber chicken. It's perfectly fine. HEY! Why are you deleting the D drive? Haha I'm kidding. Go ahead. Just delete all the files and your performance will improve quite a bit. Actually I recommend you use a program like Partition Commander (cheaper and better than Partition Magic) and merge the drives into one, or use the spare D: Drive for stuff like MP3's or nudie pictures of Cindy Margolis - or, if you are smart use it for the Swap File drive. Just get rid of Compaq's garbage. -Get a Softpaq. It's a free CD from Compaq and has tons of important updates for your PC. The one sent to me had updated drivers for my modem, and a BIOS update as well. Getting one of these is absolutely free - just give them the serial # from the PC and your address and you'll get a nice compact disc of stuff. It even has the entire Presario DVD player program. But.. -Don't install stuff you don't have! I had been planning on buying a DVD player for my PC, but I decided not to when I bought my new stand-alone DVD player. In lieu of that I installed the DVD software. Bad idea. Doing that sent my computer into mass destruction, causing the scenario that I played out to you above. I tried installing it on another machine that had a DVD-ROM (Micron) and it worked like a charm. Apparently no DVD - messed up computer. In other words, don't play around with software that you don't even need to use from the Softpaq. Not a wise idea. Overall - Compaq computers can be annoying and a hassle, but still they aren't bad machines if you like toying with it and doing some unorthodox tweaking. By all means they aren't perfect, but they are still good computers to have. Just realize that chances are the Image disk isn't complete, and tech support is a bunch of lamebrains, and you'll be alright. Of course, you could just email me. :)  |
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