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Omni
Joined: 17 Jul 2007
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 Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 5:28 pm Post subject: Technical laptop question. |
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I'm looking at buying a laptop in Korea as I'm planning on being here for a year and then moving on to Canada. Rather than buy a desktop over here and then another one in Canada I figure it's going to be easier to just get a laptop over here and take it with me. I'm fairly proficient with computers and normally build my own desktops as it normally works out far cheaper. On the flip side I've never owned a laptop before.. I've never really had to consider foreign makes of pc either, so I may be asking a silly question but, will the bios/cmos be in English? I'm looking at ordering a Dell 1520 from Dell Korea. I figure if the bios/cmos is in English and I can get an English version of xp then I can just format the harddrive, reload the op and drivers, and there will be no difference than if I'd brought the laptop in a English speaking country.
Does anyone know if this will/won't work? |
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pdxsteve
Joined: 29 Sep 2004
Location: Bundang
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 7:54 pm Post subject: Re: Technical laptop question. |
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| Omni wrote: |
I'm looking at buying a laptop in Korea as I'm planning on being here for a year and then moving on to Canada. Rather than buy a desktop over here and then another one in Canada I figure it's going to be easier to just get a laptop over here and take it with me. I'm fairly proficient with computers and normally build my own desktops as it normally works out far cheaper. On the flip side I've never owned a laptop before.. I've never really had to consider foreign makes of pc either, so I may be asking a silly question but, will the bios/cmos be in English? I'm looking at ordering a Dell 1520 from Dell Korea. I figure if the bios/cmos is in English and I can get an English version of xp then I can just format the harddrive, reload the op and drivers, and there will be no difference than if I'd brought the laptop in a English speaking country.
Does anyone know if this will/won't work? |
I bought my laptop from Dell Korea and the BIOS/CMOS is in English. When you order it, you can specify if you want an English or Korean keyboard and English or Korean Windows. Ordering was a breeze and it was delivered in about a week, directly from Singapore where it was actually built. |
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Demophobe
Joined: 17 May 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 7:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Consider drivers. Although drivers these days for many laptop components and their drivers may be universal, there are proprietary drivers/configurations to consider. Many laptops come with 'custom' XP/Vista CDs (or used to?) that install a pre-set system configuration that may be difficult to work around with a standard Windows CD. |
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corroonb
Joined: 04 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:08 pm Post subject: |
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| AFAIK Vista cannot be formatted. I tried this and it refused to format the drive even in a command line. Buy XP with the machine as you can remove that easily. |
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Demophobe
Joined: 17 May 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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| corroonb wrote: |
| AFAIK Vista cannot be formatted. I tried this and it refused to format the drive even in a command line. Buy XP with the machine as you can remove that easily. |
What are you talking about?! Don't tell me you are trying to format C: within Windows, 'cause that's just...funny. |
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corroonb
Joined: 04 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:23 pm Post subject: |
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| No it won't let me format Vista even when I boot from the XP or Vista disk. It just loads Vista up and won't boot into the disk. |
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Demophobe
Joined: 17 May 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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| corroonb wrote: |
| No it won't let me format Vista even when I boot from the XP or Vista. It just loads Vista up and won't boot into the disk. |
Look, you can format a Vista installation. If you don't know how, that is one issue, but saying it can't be done is crazy talk.
Last edited by Demophobe on Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:26 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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corroonb
Joined: 04 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:26 pm Post subject: |
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No I made sure CD-ROM was the first boot device and I replaced floppy disk which was first.
How does one do it then?
I know you can revert back to XP but this is a fresh install.
Solution found.
http://www.removevista.com/remove_windows_vista_xp_c.html
You can't uninstall Vista without another operating system so you need an MSDOS bootdisk or an XP partition. I didn't know this and tried to boot from the XP disc while Vista was loading.
I might just try XP again.
Last edited by corroonb on Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:35 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Demophobe
Joined: 17 May 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Well, that is one solution. Glad you got it sorted. |
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Omni
Joined: 17 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:16 pm Post subject: Re: Technical laptop question. |
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Thanks everyone for you posts, it's most helpful to know.
| pdxsteve wrote: |
| I bought my laptop from Dell Korea and the BIOS/CMOS is in English. When you order it, you can specify if you want an English or Korean keyboard and English or Korean Windows. Ordering was a breeze and it was delivered in about a week, directly from Singapore where it was actually built. |
Unfortunately for me I'm new here and my Hangul isn't too good. 
I'm getting there but even if I can make the phonetics I don't know the words. I looked over the order page again and can only see the option for various forms of vista. In brackets at the end it does say what appears to be Hangul on 1 and yongmun on the other. Does yongmun mean English? |
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