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Dell Hardware and OS Compatibility

by Rushenanigear
(San Ramon, CA)

My Dell shipped with Vista, which, as you may know, requires quite a bit of RAM to run. Unfortunately, the computer itself had only about a gigabyte's worth of RAM.

Everything was fine at first, but for some reason, the computer started degrading. It'd freeze at increasingly shorter intervals and occasionally would not start up at all, which became a major inconvenience.

I tried scanning for viruses and clearing out temporary files at regular intervals, as well as shutting down any unrecognized and unnecessary processes in order to free up more space. I also swapped out some of the default programs with smaller, more lightweight ones for the same reason. They helped a bit, but the same issues still plagued my computer.

The company was actually very helpful and patient in trying to resolve this issue, walking me through clean re-installs of the operating system no fewer than three times within the span of a week.

Unfortunately, as the problem was an issue between the operating system and the hardware itself, they were not able to solve the problem and I eventually had to get a new computer.

Dell was quite understanding, though, and gave me a full refund on my old computer, which they took back with no hassle at all.