Over the years, there has been an increase in the number of user forum-based websites. This increase has reached levels where this genre is now referred to as a cottage industry. This paper presents the relevance and nature of these websites from the perspective of a personal experience.
I was continuously experiencing difficulty with hard disk detection by several software setups. These also included the Windows XP setup. Upon placing the installation into the CD tray, the setup would self-execute and when the setup would perform the automated system evaluation to determine whether or not the system specifications were up to mark with the software requirements, it would conclude the processing by displaying a message stating that no hard disk could be detected.
I attributed the problem to corruption in the setup software in the beginning, but I soon noticed that the problem was recurring more frequently. The problem became evident when upon trying to install software from a tried and tested CD, I was greeted by the same message once more. It was at this point that I realized that the problem was not with the setup programs, but possibly lay in my system.
To obtain help, I decided to use some of the many internet-based websites that offer free advice along with tips on tricks on how to achieve optimal performance. These websites are more than often utilize user forums to generate their database of free advice which remains open to all the members of the website who wish to take advantage of the information or add to the information by joining the forum.
Needless to say, these websites were not my first option. My first inclination was to make use of the windows website to try and figure out if there was a troubleshooter that Microsoft had to offer that could help me figure out the source of the problem I had at hand.
Trouble shooters are special programs that operate by asking the user a number of questions in a sequence (Synergenics, LLC, 2008). These questions are designed to root out the problem that the user might be facing and the program usually functions by instructing the user on how to fix the problem once the problem has been identified by asking the user the sequential questions. In certain cases, some trouble shooters are designed to carry out a an analysis of the system in order to ascertain the nature of the problem and to instruct the user on how exactly the problem has to be solved without taking the user through a lengthy series of questions.
I decided to use no more than three websites in my search to determine the solution to my problem. I was referred to the these three websites by my peers who told me they had experienced problems with their computers in the past and were of the opinion that these websites could provide me with the solution my problem. The three websites that were brought into use and have been covered in this paper as well include:
- PC Pitstop
- Computing.Net
- TomsHardware.
All of these three websites seem to be designed on the same user group forum philosophy that has been mentioned above. Hence, it can be assumed that the advice that these websites gave was the information that the reader would eventually derive after going through the discussions on the query that the user was faced with. In this particular case, I was greeted by a barrage of information on all three websites. All three websites held user forums in which users had posted their advice and their comments regarding various problems and it took a bit of searching to find the user forum for the problem that I was faced with.
In the case of PC Pitstop, the advice I got was that I should consider completely formatting my hard disk of the previous operating system before initiating the installation and if the problem still persisted, the user forum led me to the conclusion that I should attempt to make my BIOS recognize the Universal Serial Bus as a bootable device in order to get on with the installation (Invision Power Board, 2009). So the advice given by PC Pitstop was based on a slight tinkering with the BIOS, and a complete reformatting of the current operating system from the hard drives.
When going through Computing.Net, I was amazed to see that the problem I was facing had not only been experienced by other users the very same way such as I had seen in the PC Pitstop user forum, but was also shared by many other users who had experienced it at different points during the Windows XP setup as well. Computing.Net also offered hard drive recovery tools that were placed within the forum of my interest (Computing.Net LLC, 2005). Computing.Net was of the opinion that I required a few drivers to be installed before I began the actual windows installation. This of course required that I make additional purchases of driver CDs.
My third stop was Tom’s Hardware, where I discovered that the issue of hard disk detection was even more widely encountered than I had presumed after witnessing the user forum at Computing.Net (Bestofmedia Network, 2005). The advice I found on Tom’s Hardware however was one that I chose to go through after I had successfully installed Windows XP since I found next to no advice on the problem of no detection of hard drives before the installation.
I consider it necessary to mention at this point that I found no significant help on the Windows XP website at all. The Windows XP was continuously subjecting me to a marketing campaign as I found myself drawn to the immense number of options that Windows XP had to offer and the equivalent number of tutorials that the website was overflowing with.
In times like these, I discovered that the significance of this cottage industry is one that allows users to gain the knowledge that they need quickly and in a cost-efficient manner. The websites also allowed users to take advantage of various shareware and freeware software by either directly downloading it or By doing so, these cottage industry websites allowed users to obtain cost effective technical support on Windows XP and other software while clearing the path for all the parties involved.
Works Cited
Bestofmedia Network. (2005). hard disk not detectable. Web.
Computing.Net LLC. (2005). Hard Disk Not detected in xp instal. Web.
Invision Power Board. (2009). Cannot detect hard drive. Web.
Synergenics, LLC. (2008). EchoLink TroubleShooter. Web.