dell

A reminder that Windows XP availability is nearing end of life, and will not be available after June 30 2008.

We recently had a client who applied Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 1 on their Dell Poweredge 420SC server. On reboot, they were greeted with the dreaded blue screen of death (BSOD) with the error message.

STOP 0x00000051 (REGISTRY_ERROR)

The server would then reboot and then do it all again. Safe mode and Last Known good configuration made no difference.

After searching the net, it turns out that this is a known problem on older Dell Poweredges that have had a factory install of Windows on.

Dell is recalling 4.1m laptop batteries following reports of its laptops overheating and bursting into flames.

It has issued the biggest recall in computer history following video footage of one of its laptops on fire.

There have only been six instances and no-one has yet been hurt, but Dell are erring on the side of safety and issuing the recall of the batteries - made by Sony Energy Devices.

The recall involves 18 percent of Dells 22 million notebooks sold between 1st April 2004 and 18th July 2006.

We recommend all Dell laptop customers check whether their battery is affected on this website.

We recommend Dell servers to our clients. However for some bizarre reason they set the default wallpaper to their own high colour Dell wallpaper that is highly graded.

Unfortunately this has the side effect of making it very slow to access the server via RDP when connecting, as it has to transmit this wallpaper even when the "Wallpaper" option is switched off in the RDP client.