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Compaq Presario EZ2605 

    Compaq Presarios are home oriented computers

Specs for the Compaq Presario EZ2605:   Intel Celeron 633MHz, 64MB of RAM, 20 GB hard disk, CD-RW drive, 56K modem, Windows 98 Second Edition (version 4.10.2222A). There is no dedicated video ram, instead video memory uses normal RAM. In effect, this means the machine comes with 63 meg of usable RAM. The cpu is reported as being "x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 3".  

Out of Box Experiences 

June 20,  2001. The computer was purchased refurbished from Egghead.com. According to Egghead it came with a one year warranty as shown below. However, the Compaq documentation that came with the computer says that the warranty is only 90 days. 

The first time the computer was booted, the first thing it did was invoke a wizard looking for a Texas Instruments OHCI IEEE 1394 Host Controller driver. Not very user friendly on a computer designed for home use.  

The first boot also wants you to register the computer with Compaq. I opted to do this later and clicked on the Register Later button. Nothing happened. Click click click. Finally it dawned on me that the registration application would not continue until I told it my area code and the country that I lived in. Never mind that I wanted to register later, it insisted on this information now. 

In the middle of June 2001, the computer thought the current date was March 25, 2000. I've never seen a new computer with such a wrong date.

When I went to adjust the size of the recycle bin it said the C disk and the D disk were 1.99 GB. Wrong. The C disk is FAT32 and 15.8GB. The D disk is also FAT32 and 2.72GB. Beats me if the recycle bin will reserve 10% of the real size or the size it thinks the disk partitions are. 

The virus definitions were last updated December 15, 1999. Roughly 1.5 years ago. 

The Windows 98 System Monitor was not installed. 

The third time the machine was booted, it experienced its first failure. Program CPQMLCK performed an illegal operation during the boot-up process. It suffered a general protection fault. Then Windows Explorer hung. Then Windows 98 hung to the point that Ctl-Alt-Delete did nothing. The on/off switch also did nothing. I had to unplug the machine to bring it back to life. 

The CD-RW drive is mounted sideways. That is, you insert CDs vertically rather than horizontally. Who at Compaq thought this was a good idea? 

Twenty five programs run when the computer boots up. After booting, System Monitor (I installed it myself) shows that there are 2.3MB of free RAM, while nothing is running. In effect, this computer has 2MB of ram to run application programs. The amount of allocated memory (from System Monitor) is 93MB JUST after booting up. 

It is very hard to snap the back panel back into place, though it is easy to remove it. 

The computer did not come with speakers and the description clearly stated this. However, it did come with speaker covers (grills). Strange. 

FYI: The keyboard and the mouse both hook up to the computer via USB ports rather than standard ports. 

June 21, 2001.  Another boot time error. Considering that 25 programs run at boot time, this is to be expected. The error was: 
  System error. The file you are trying to open is already in use by another program
The program that suffered the error and the file name are not displayed. I re-booted for good luck and there were no errors at the next start-up. 

I ran scandisk on the D disk with no problem, however a thorough scandisk could not complete on the C disk. It complained that it had restarted itself 10 times because some program(s) kept writing to the C disk. Yet another problem caused by having 25 programs run at boot time. 

June 22, 2001.  The machine came with McAfee anti-virus.  I updated the virus definitions and then ran a full scan of all files on the C and D disks. After scanning 20,800 files it died. Program scan32 performed an illegal operation, a page fault. It was the only program running at the time.  

McAfee anti-virus is much slower at a full virus scan than Norton Anti-Virus. It also does not update virus definitions as easily, not that its hard, but Norton is easier. 

June 26, 2001. Just after booting up, I hit Ctl-Alt-Delete to see how many programs were active. The machine hung. The keyboard did nothing. The on/off switch also did nothing, so I had to unplug the computer to turn it off.  A few minutes later when I plugged it back in, the machine booted up automatically without my turning it on. 

I tried to configure McAfee anti-virus not to run at boot time. It seems this is not possible, even after playing the Windows 98 system configuration utility to prevent a couple of its programs from running at boot time and taking out a reference to it from the autoexec.bat file. McAfee is version 4.0.3 but the scan engine is version 4.0.50.  

The first time I ran the Microsoft Works calendar it crashed with an illegal operation in program WKSCAL.