Removing case to get to mother board

swflorida

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Jul 23, 2011
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I can't believe this - what normally takes 2 seconds is taking forever to figure out. LOTS of people are having the same problem - I have a gateway mfatsnin nmz 500se. Please, somebody must know how to remove the case. Also, today was the very first time I was propmpted to enter a user name and password at the win xp welcome page. Actually, there was a name in the user name field - it was the name of our real estate brokerage firm. So, somebody must have created that account. Is there anything I can boot/run off a floppy or CD? Please help. Thanks.
 

swflorida

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Hmmm.... who would that be... I guess me. In a past life, I was Manager of Technologies for an $11B international corporation - 15,000 users. Came up the hard way - my first computer was pre-DOS. Prior to getting into senior management, I was one of the 'techies' that knew everything about everything - LAN/WAN/NT/Protocol 'sniffers' that allowed me to shape and monitor bandwidth useage for every individual T1 connection for 275 locations/26 states. The cool thing about working for a company with such deep pockets - all technologies were cutting edge.

For family reasons, I had to pack up and move to SW Florida - I think the number one PC/Networking service company down here is 'Habib's House of Hardware' (joke). Got into real estate when the market was great - I am the 'techie' guy for our main office - old computers, old technologies, no standards, no uers 'control'/rules. Basically clean up after people (you know the type - after finally discovering how a pc mouse really works, they think they know everything about computers). I spend 10 hrs a day in front of numerous computers at my house and and working fast and furiously to catch up on the latest changes in technologies going back 4 years or so. Then, I am out of 'ma and pa kettle' land. You know what the best view of Florida is? What you see in your rear view mirror as you cross the Georgia state line.
 

swflorida

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Florida sure can be bad lol, I got a lot of family from there.. the family I try not to keep in touch with xD

Only nice thing about florida is white beaches and hot women on them :3

I'll have a side dish of florida white sands to go, hold the hurricanes plz.

Florida (Naples/Bonita/Estero) is a great place to visit. To 'live' down here is another story. So many people from 'big' cities come down here and leave after 6 months. There are no jobs. No corporate/enterprise entities here. I basically 'had' to move here for extreme/dreadful immediate family issuesl. Very few computer jobs.
Daytraded penny stocks for a year or so. Opened up an ameritrade account with $30K or so. Eventually I was offered a 'computer' job - the company was located on Sanibel Island. They wanted to pay me less than what I made on my very first computer job - hired as a software trainer at General Dynamics. 2 months prior, after never even turning a computer on before, I spent every day teaching myself everything there was to know on one of the original Microsoft Office Suite packages. I went down to radio shack and bought the cheapest PC (Trashiba, Toshiba whatever) I could find. This is when computers did not have hard drives. Microsoft Word had about 32 floppies. You were constantly being prompted to put in disk # whatever, based on what task (printing/saving/etc.) you wanted to do. My point is, I made more money with NO experience, NO formal training, etc. This was DECADEs ago. To add insult to injury, this Sanibel computer company did not pay for any health benefits. Can you imagine people with my background/stature after over achieving goals, dreams, not a care in the world - money meant nothing - made so much I never really thought about it - average monthly american xpress bill was $1,500. Never more than a side thought. After moving down here, living in one of the high end developments in Estero, got divorced which led to foreclosure which obviously led to bankruptcy which led to deep dark states of mind. The rental market has virtually dried up here - so, so many people like me have, through no fault of their own, got foreclosed on. Now people like me are working at Target, making submarine sandwiches for $8/hr. maximum 32 hrs a week with no benefits. Believe me, I know. I was offered this exact same job. I would have lived in my car before I took that job. Sorry for babbling - taking a break from computer work at the office. Been here since 2:00 yesterday afternoon. Went home this morning to feed cats/change clothes. Probably be here for at least another 12 hrs. This is the price I am willing/eager to pay to 'get out of Dodge'.
 

swflorida

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Jul 23, 2011
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Prebuilt pcs from gateway and dell can be some of the worst systems to try to work on.

I have seen some people get told they had to pay $25 just for them to take a look at inside their dell or hp because they had to take some fan casing or something off just to be able to see the hsf ontop of the cpu lol which is considered dismantling the pc lolol....

They try to make those systems as hard as possible to work on yourself so you have to take to them to pay $50 for a diagnosis lolol..

Save yourself some heartbreak and come with us into the future in the town called tomshardware system forums sub section pc builders group of privileged children :3

I have already posted this on another forum but thought you might have some suggestions:

I have a Sony DVD/CD rewritable drive - model # DRX-830U. Bought if a few years ago and used it once. Rummaging through the garage last week, I found it by accident. Basically it is 'brand new'. I have spent quite a bit of time trying to locate (googling) the installation software/users guide/latest driver updates/etc. Sony no longer supports the device and, after multiple attempts to get them to help, they basically told me I was SOL. Can anyone suggest an on-line source that might have what I am looking for? Thanks.