New Dell Latitude, win 7 pro, Not User Friendly.

[Justin Denial]

Background: HP desktop died 2+yrs ago, Got a Dell Inspiron, ( DELL1) win 7 pro. Last Christmas spilled coffee on favorite XP - so jumped on a potential replacement Dell Latitude, ( DELL2) win7pro:sarc:. ( XP dried out and still running).

SO - the Dell Latitude (DELL2) -, loaded and run mostly Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, not much else yet. Firefox will run "satisfactorily" - But Thunderbird loads ok I guess, but try to 'write" a new message, and it opens a new message and hangs.
-> I get, quite frequently, throughout the run time, a cursor change to a black square with a slashed circle in it ( oh, and it flickers a lot, especially when you move the 'cursor' around trying to get rid of the damn thing). I'm assuming its a "not allowed / will do nothing for you now " feature. It changes / pops up a lot, And is almost impossible to get rid of ( something trying to run in the background it doesn't like??)

-> Basic question is - How can I get the DELL2 OS to run like the DELL1?

I think /believe the DELL2 is supposed to be a corporate workstation unit - ergo NO DVD writer, One piece bottom that is really chinzy screws and clips that break ( upgraded memory - would have to rip apart to change the battery. ) would the OS also be massaged to be workstation compliant, and reduce features a 'workerbee ' shouldn't have access to?"

 

[fireberd]

The OS should be "standard" and not crippled in any way. Lattitude's are aimed at business but I know a lot of people that use them for "consumer" users. I would suspect the Latitude should be reinstalled back to factory and start over. On consumer models F8 at power on accesses the Dell recovery partition and allows restoring to original factory installation. I don't recall if the business lines have that or if they just provide discs with the PC. If you decide to restore, backup user data to some separate media as all will be lost when it does the factory restore.

To check for any hardware issues, F12, at power on, will allow accessing the Dell diagnostics loaded on the hard drive (assuming you haven't deleted the partition).

 

[Justin Denial]

don't see any point in reinstall -

Basically, this machine has SAT, loaded firefox, thunderbird, and libre office. Did a little surfing, set up home network. This black box cursor has been there from Day 1.
Is anyone familiar with this black boxy cursor with the crosses out circle ( like a no entry, no smoking no nuthin sign? It pops up a lot, like something running in the background. I've set 2 cursors for "busy' and "running in background" and this isn't either of those.

 

[fireberd]

I used to work the Dell forums (for 10 years). It wasn't unheard of for a new PC, occasionally, to come out with a bad disc image. A factory restore usually fixed it. If you called Dell for support the first thing they would probably do is have you do the restore.

However, in respect to Thunderbird, it may just be a problem with that program. I've seen scattered reports of people having problems with it. A reinstall may fix Thunderbird. If you do, uninstall then restart the PC (don't skip this step) and then do a new install.

 

[alphanumeric]

Mu guess would be a Dell utility that's not working correctly. Where did you buy the Dell from? Was it new?

 

[Justin Denial]

Alpha - Got the machine from DELL direct, annual Christmas deals - wanted Win 7 pro, has to get the latitude to get it.. The Dell utility create a backup / mirror image / recovery DISK ( no DVD drive, so that's kinda tough ) keeps popping up wanting to be run. Hmmm, could be other 'utilities' thinking they should be 'respected' and doing something. Task Manager? see what's running in background, ( then figure out what's needed and what's causing problems..- Any simple way to do that? )

Fireberd - will try the uninstall Thunderbird. Does anyone have an alternative for e-mails?

Still curious - has anybody else seen this weird icon? Maybe I can get a screen grab to show y'all what i'm seeing..

thanks for your suggestions..

 

[fireberd]

I'm using Windows Live Mail. Its similar to Thunderbird (I think Thunderbird copied from WLM). But, if you like Thunderbird, just do the uninstall/reinstall as I noted and give that a try.

You would need a USB connected DVD burner. I have a Toshiba laptop that is the same way, no drive. However, I back up my entire hard drive (all partitions) to a USB connected hard drive using Macrium Reflect so I don't need the CD/DVD drive for backing up.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

 

[Justin Denial]

Update

Well, it turns out that Panicware's Pop-UP stopper was blocking a lot of things. Today tried to edit an entry with the saved password editor - window wouldn't load!!?? Had to poke around to see what was running - Really - pop-up stopper ? killed it, and well go figure - I even was able to install Thunderbird that had been getting pop-up windows blocked and killed. just so's y'all know