Dell T7910 OOBE — day 1

My Dell 256 GB double-hexcore T7600 main workstation getting a bit long in the tooth, I ordered a new T7910 about a month ago. 256Gb RAM, AMD W8100, 1 TB SSD, and 3 small spinning disks on a PERQ controller that I plan to swap out for the Helium 8TB HGST drives. Win 10, which can address all 256GB — Win 7 can’t.

Usual Dell packaging, which means the packaging was not fancy, but good and solid. Perfect, as far as I’m concerned.

Fired it up, and it didn’t recognize my IBM Lexington PS/2 clicky keyboard. Probably a BIOS setting. I’ll take a look when I get a chance. I limped through the setup with the on-screen keyboard, then I swapped in a USB keyboard.

I’m happy to say that it’s now easier to avoid the entanglement of Microsoft’s trying to be like Apple. It was easy — but certainly not the default — to opt out of Microsoft ID logon, and all that goes with it.

I was using the computer with an NEC 2560×1600 monitor, and the display adapter wasn’t using all that. I set the resolution to as high as it would let me: 1920×1080. Then I went in to the AMD Catalyst software and tried to figure out what was wrong. I noticed that the refresh rate was set to 75 Hz, and I thought I remembered that the NEC 3090WQXi wouldn’t support full resolution at over 60 Hz, so I checked the box labeled something like “Lower refresh rate with high-resolution monitors”. The system promptly crashed, showing me Windows 10’s version of the blue screen of death. It’s still blue, but nowhere near as cryptic as it used to be.

I installed all the Windows updates and rebooted.

Then the system crashed just sitting there.

I downloaded the Dell diagnostics ans ran the quick version, which was advertised as taking 10 minutes. Half an hour later, it had passed everything but the memory diagnostics, which were still running. My guess is the part of the program that estimated the time didn’t look at how much RAM was installed. After 45 minutes, I cancelled the memory test.

I figure I have a cable problem, and the AMD display adapter doesn’t think it has a digital connection, so it isn’t offering me the high resolutions. I backed the resolution down to the highest recommended resolution, which was 1680×1050.

I figured I’d join the computer, which I’m calling LadyCora, to the domain. I changed the name. The OS asked for a reboot. I joined the computer to the domain (that’s in a new place for Win 10: Settings>System>About). Another reboot. Another look at the gratuitous “We’re glad you’re here!” message from Microsoft. Maybe the first time you see it, it’s OK. But it sure does grate on you after a few times, especially as it and the other similar messages take a while to fade away.

I tried to install the Dropbox app. The system crashed again, with the same error as before “WHEA uncorrectable error.” The Microsoft site says that means a hardware error has occurred.

I tried again with Dropbox, and it installed. Then I went to the Dell support page and opened an email trouble ticket.

It’s the end of the work day here. I’ll continue in the morning. Not an auspicious beginning.