abillybob Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 Hey Guys One of the Admin staff needed a new machine she's the equivalent of a Buisness Manager and her old Dell was close to 7 years old. The best and cheapest machine I could find was an i5 ZooStorm with Gigabit Ethernet, 8GB RAM and an 128GB SSD. The components inside look decent, ASUS motherboard, Samsung RAM and Kingston SSD. Bit of a mix match but they're all good brands as far as I'm aware so it didn't bother me. Though after spending a day getting all the services setup and configuring the computer I took her old one away and gave her the new ZooStorm beast, I do have to say it booted and logged in under 5 seconds incredibly fast! Now I'm having issues where the computer will just randomly drop connection (ethernet of course) for no reason and will loose the Mapped Drives etc... I can't see a reason so I updated the Ethernet Driver and made sure that the turn off to save power feature was unchecked in Device Manager but she's still having problems? No other computer in the school has this issueI find it all really weird and can't get my head around it, I hope to god it's not a faulty machine, what do you guys all think? Cheers!!
nickbro Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 Check the ASUS website to see if there's a bios update
ICTDirect_Dave Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 ^ This I must say we've not had any experience of zoostorm hardware, but I have tried to speak to them about doing business together from time to time and their communication was shocking! I hope the customer support is better
jonnykewell1 Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 what ethernet controller is on the motherboard? We have an issue with some stone machines doing the same in one of our rooms and I think it's the onboard controller . Try a NIC just to rule anything else out?
achedgy Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 Zoostorm customer service is the absolute pits. Have had two dealings with them, once for a dead hard drive, the other for an order of 25 PC's. They were utterly uninterested in the warranty claim (did eventually get replaced after spending waaaay too much time on it) then cancelled the order and bought Lenovo USFF PC's instead (much better PC's for not much more money) Would avoid them like the plague. They get business because they're cheap, sometimes you have to buy to a price point, but such a thing as too cheap.
madurham Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 We had a faulty HDD in one machine and they sent an engineer to replace it. We had to show him how to remove the HDD.
Bananas Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 Try hard setting the speed and duplex on the machine, if that doesn't work if it's on a managed switch set it on the switch too and see what happens
abillybob Posted June 6, 2014 Author Posted June 6, 2014 Cheers guys. It was the inbuilt Realtek NIC, I replaced it with a spare PCI one and it works perfectly fine, ZooStorm are so rude contacted them about the issue and they just said they're not supposed to be used on a network WHAT! Anyway won't ever buy another from them.
jonnykewell1 Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 thought it might be, glad you got sorted, send it back.
free780 Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 Thanks for that. I've got 100 zoostorms with that board in. If you google around their are numerous posts about the boards network connectivity dropping. I've had a issue where Windows 7 intermittently freezes on boot. Its very hard to replicate. There is a new BIOS version 0804 which rectifies the issue. I don't want to add nics to 100 pc's really. Zoostorm support didn't seem to help much. I went to ASUS but they don't seem to understand the need for things such as detailed release notes for BIOS updates. Asus have a bit of bad reputation in our office particularly with motherboards. I just wish zoostorm or asus could state their is a issue and that a fix is being worked on. they just said they're not supposed to be used on a network WHAT! Network connectivity is standard even if being used at home. Feel free to PM me or post here if you get any other issues.
abillybob Posted June 6, 2014 Author Posted June 6, 2014 Thanks for that. I've got 100 zoostorms with that board in. If you google around their are numerous posts about the boards network connectivity dropping. I've had a issue where Windows 7 intermittently freezes on boot. Its very hard to replicate. There is a new BIOS version 0804 which rectifies the issue. I don't want to add nics to 100 pc's really. Zoostorm support didn't seem to help much. I went to ASUS but they don't seem to understand the need for things such as detailed release notes for BIOS updates. Asus have a bit of bad reputation in our office particularly with motherboards. I just wish zoostorm or asus could state their is a issue and that a fix is being worked on. Network connectivity is standard even if being used at home. Feel free to PM me or post here if you get any other issues. Glad to know I'm not the only one, the woman I spoke to at ZooStorm I don't think really had a clue what I was going on about as soon as I said Mapped Drives, she then spoke to someone else and said they should not be part of a domain network, I just face palmed as she didn't understand anything and hung up.
synaesthesia Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 Just bought quite a few via CP Ltd (luckily, means we haven't got to deal with zoostorm!). They're badged as Education machines though, so they absolutely should recognise the network side of things!
abillybob Posted June 6, 2014 Author Posted June 6, 2014 Just bought quite a few via CP Ltd (luckily, means we haven't got to deal with zoostorm!). They're badged as Education machines though, so they absolutely should recognise the network side of things! All i'll say is good luck. Ugh really disappointed in their systems, hopefully you'll get a different model of Motherboard in your machines! *Fingers crossed*
free780 Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 I would be nice if someone from zoostorm could address these issues here.
synaesthesia Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 I'm not massively worried; the chassis is the same one that VeryPC use, we have those too and they're solid, the internals are something we'd buy anyway (that brand motherboard, ssd, ram). A driver/bios issue isn't something we'd worry about and I can shout louder than most when things go breasts up!
HTCPCP Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 The ones we get have i3 processors, a 320gb hard drive (usually WD Blue), a gigabyte or Asus motherboard, a cheap DVD drive (they are still going to get broken by a kid at some point, no matter how well built!), a stick of branded value range RAM and a cheap PSU. All the machines that have developed faults tend to be either a stick of ram failing or the PSU failing. If I was buying parts, the only thing I would have increased was the PSU and get a branded not a cheap value one. If you buy cheap, then you can't really moan if the service isn't as good as you expect.
synaesthesia Posted June 6, 2014 Posted June 6, 2014 I will do a side by side comparison of the Very and the Zoo's 2
CraigM Posted June 9, 2014 Posted June 9, 2014 Not directly related to this, but I've come to the conclusion over the years that if you want stable network connections, use Intel on-board or get a slot in Intel card if possible. Realtek cards have not been kind to me over the years, nor have Qualcomm Atheros chips. I wish all manufacturers making Intel based motherboards simply used Intel cards. So many quirks could be avoided! 1
gshaw Posted June 9, 2014 Posted June 9, 2014 Not directly related to this, but I've come to the conclusion over the years that if you want stable network connections, use Intel on-board or get a slot in Intel card if possible. Realtek cards have not been kind to me over the years, nor have Qualcomm Atheros chips. I wish all manufacturers making Intel based motherboards simply used Intel cards. So many quirks could be avoided! Indeed, I sent a batch of Lenovos back because they shipped with a Realtek NIC instead of the usual Intel one. It's been the biggest worry I have about moving to MSI boards in the new Stone machines now Intel have stopped making motherboards. Realtek are OK for sound cards but their network drivers have been consistently poor. Wouldn't touch anything ASUS with a very long barge pole either...
SYNACK Posted June 9, 2014 Posted June 9, 2014 (edited) Intels Nic hardware may be better but their drivers are terrible, half the time the cards aren't even recognize by their own drivers as they get the hardware ids mixed up. Their default setting of not waiting for the link to come up before reporting it is junky too. Tbh i prefer hp broadcom stuff but Intel is a second. I WISH I had been able to send back a batch of Lenovos with junk nic's in them. That is one reason why I steer clear of them as they are built with whatever components are left on the bench that day so their driver lists for a single model are pages long and full of stuff your one may not even have. /rant Edited June 9, 2014 by SYNACK
seanmh Posted June 9, 2014 Posted June 9, 2014 Had similar issue with Asus Board with Nvidia NIC - possible solution here:[/url]. Worked on my home PC anyway. - - - Updated - - - Had similar issue with Asus Board with Nvidia NIC - possible solution here:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979464. Worked on my home PC anyway.
ICTDirect_Dave Posted June 9, 2014 Posted June 9, 2014 If you want a simple solution, come get some nic cards from me. I've got loads, and they're cheap... Or, since all my HP, Dell & Lenovo refurbs come with either an intel or broadcom nic, you could just buy those and enjoy the fantastic price, service and warranty that we provide 1
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