Fifth Avenue Forum

My dad has a 6 year old Alienware 15 R2, and loves it. The problem is that it's on its second battery, which no longer charges. Rather than replacing another battery, I picked him out a brand new Acer laptop. Ryzen 5 4500U, 8GB RAM, super fast. Really nice laptop, and one I'd consider buying for myself. So I configure it for him, migrate his data, etc. Spent an entire day working on it.

He spent two days using it, and hates the keyboard. I just boxed it back up and will be dropping it off at UPS for the Amazon return. Because he "doesn't want to have to get used to a new keyboard". **** old people, man.

Replaced the battery and DC port on the Alienware today... and it still won’t charge. Had to buy a genuine Alienware AC adapter on eBay as a last ditch resort.



All of that had to come out to replace the port. And it still doesn’t work. **** your, Alienware and Dell. No **** way will I ever recommend them again based on this experience alone.

You're a brave man to dissemble a modern laptop.

I've been taking apart electronics and putting them back together since I was a kid, so I'm pretty comfortable with stuff like this. Always enjoyed seeing how things were built and worked.

Do you have one of those doo-dads that magnetizes/demagnetizes screwdrivers? An IT guy at work showed me it the one day. Neato burrito.

Do you have one of those doo-dads that magnetizes/demagnetizes screwdrivers? An IT guy at work showed me it the one day. Neato burrito.

Yep, and it has come in handy. I wish all screwdrivers had magnetized heads, personally. It's so damn helpful.

Heck yeah it is.

Troubleshooting how to troubleshoot.

I'm trying to take something on that is over my head technically, but all the real programmers are busy and I'm trying to chip away at a problem so that they can just solve it, instead of trying to diagnose it.

In short, we have an employee file management platform that we built. In it, folks upload PDFs for storage (their application, a copy of their DL, medical cards, etc.). One PDF is cobbled together as an XML document (XML comes from a vendor of ours) and we map the fields and make it a PDF in the same employee file.

We have a functionality to download some or all of the documents in an employee file.

If you download any number of them greater than 1 and it includes this XML -> PDF doc, when the download completes, the spot where that document should be is blank.

If you download that XML -> PDF doc individually, and re-upload it. And repeat the process, still blank.

If you download that XML -> PDF doc individually, hit "save as" in an Adobe program, and re-uploaded it and repeat the process, still blank.

Only if you re-print it to Microsoft to PDF, or PrimoPDF, or PDF Pro 10 using the print function and then re-upload it, only then does it appear when you download multiple docs at once.

Obviously, there's some issue with how we create that PDF in the first place. Any idea as to how I can narrow it down further than that...?

I don't really think there's a way to figure that out from our end of things, without seeing exactly what's going on on your end.

Is there an easy way to view like the header of the PDFs that get generated and see if there's a difference there...? Is there a program that does that...? Can I pull the old Windows 95 trick and open it in notepad haha

My dad has a 6 year old Alienware 15 R2, and loves it. The problem is that it's on its second battery, which no longer charges. Rather than replacing another battery, I picked him out a brand new Acer laptop. Ryzen 5 4500U, 8GB RAM, super fast. Really nice laptop, and one I'd consider buying for myself. So I configure it for him, migrate his data, etc. Spent an entire day working on it.

He spent two days using it, and hates the keyboard. I just boxed it back up and will be dropping it off at UPS for the Amazon return. Because he "doesn't want to have to get used to a new keyboard". **** old people, man.

Replaced the battery and DC port on the Alienware today... and it still won’t charge. Had to buy a genuine Alienware AC adapter on eBay as a last ditch resort.



All of that had to come out to replace the port. And it still doesn’t work. **** your, Alienware and Dell. No **** way will I ever recommend them again based on this experience alone.

It's a lot easier to take apart and attempt a fix when all else is lost, but man... it does seem like when you try to replace anything in a laptop, it's so finicky... I went through the same thing with an older Eluktronics laptop. Tried an ebay motherboard I thought was the same exact model but the display port was another HDMI port on the ebay motherboard, so it didn't perfectly fit in the case without me sawing some plastic off. After all of that, it booted up the first time and then nothing after that. Just scraped for parts after buying the motherboard on ebay, some cheap ram, and a replacement power adapter. Cmon Man... can't things just work? why does it seem things have to be so specific?

Is there an easy way to view like the header of the PDFs that get generated and see if there's a difference there...? Is there a program that does that...? Can I pull the old Windows 95 trick and open it in notepad haha

Nah, that won't work with PDFs, but nice thought.

Source of the post It's a lot easier to take apart and attempt a fix when all else is lost, but man... it does seem like when you try to replace anything in a laptop, it's so finicky... I went through the same thing with an older Eluktronics laptop. Tried an ebay motherboard I thought was the same exact model but the display port was another HDMI port on the ebay motherboard, so it didn't perfectly fit in the case without me sawing some plastic off. After all of that, it booted up the first time and then nothing after that. Just scraped for parts after buying the motherboard on ebay, some cheap ram, and a replacement power adapter. Cmon Man... can't things just work? why does it seem things have to be so specific?

Yeah, unless you're willing to get dirty with a soldering iron (I don't have time for that **** anymore), you're basically SOL. The biggest rub for me with the Alienware is that there is no reason to do what they did except to force people to spend twice as much money on a power brick because it's for "Alienware" devices. **** that ****.

IT ticket came in today stating that their monitor was too bright...

Tell them to take it to a car window tint shop.

IT ticket came in today stating that their monitor was too bright...

There should be a round button on the underside of the monitor that's usually lit with an LED. Tap that once and it should resolve the issue.

Tell them to take it to a car window tint shop.

Don't be silly.



Much cheaper and you can do it at home.

I had no idea that was even a thing.

Took til late today, but we got our winner...

"I made zip files into wordpads" is the title. There is no description.

Took til late today, but we got our winner...

"I made zip files into wordpads" is the title. There is no description.

Just reply with congratulations

Found these bad boys while clearing out some file cabinets in my office.

Hey NTP66, you got anything good for capturing streaming Vimeo videos from a desktop web browser? I'm taking some training and would like to make it more portable so I don't have to sit in front of my internet-connected device for the duration.

Hey NTP66, you got anything good for capturing streaming Vimeo videos from a desktop web browser? I'm taking some training and would like to make it more portable so I don't have to sit in front of my internet-connected device for the duration.

Not offhand, no, sorry. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a browser extension that did just that, though. You’re on Win10, right? How about the Xbox Game Bar app? Pretty sure that allows for some level of screen recording. Might be worth checking the MS App Store, too.

I'm now in a spot where I can hook directly into my router with an ethernet cord and I get really terrific speed from it, but sometimes my playback on CPU-intensive video players is just a touch, ehhh, bumpy...

I'm wondering if a RAM upgrade would be just the little push I need...?

3.40 GHZ i7 processor
8 GB RAM
1 TB hard drive
Internet speed is 200+ mbps