It was recently announced that HP retook the lead in overall computer sales worldwide from Dell. Much of this success is likely from its lower cost computer sales through the Compaq name brand. The latest budget oriented desktop from HP is the Compaq Presario SR2050NX. Find out in my review how their latest budget desktop fares in this highly competitive market.
Bought a Compaq Presario SR2050NX last weekend to upgrade from a 7 year old generic PC with P3-800 and a Sound Blaster Value card. I cannot believe how limited the sound card control from Realtek is on this fancy new Compaq computer. I am used to being able to control environment effects level; on the Compaq, the effects seem set wide open with no way to control the amount of effect, and as a result is useless way over-kill effects. There should be a slider under the effects buttons to control the amount of the effect selected.
Plus, “Record what you hear” and the ability add reverb, echo, etc. effects to recordings is non-existant. This is the No.1 thing I do not like at all about this computer. I have studied the onine help and downloaded the manual from Realtek and there just isn’t any way to do these simple functions and tasks. But! the useless Karaoke pitch control is prominently displayed right there up front on the control panel, something I will never use.
The problem you are having is something common to most all desktop PCs now. Rather than having dedicated audio hardware such as a Sound Balster Value, they use the software integrated sound cards. Generally the dedicated Sound Blaster cards are found on high end or gaming specific PCs.
You have two solutions to this problems as I see it. You can either purchase a new Sound Blaster card to install in the PC to get the audio abilities you previously had, or you can removed the Sound Blaster Value out of your old PC and install it into the Compaq SR2050NX.
Need help.
I bought the Presario 2050NX and have a strange audion issue. When playing a music cd or mp3 file the track suddenly slows down for a few seconds and then resumes normally. I haven’t a clue. I have looked at drivers, power supply and am stumped. can anyone help me out?
Bought this at best buy the salesman told me it was great but i am having a terrible time playing heroes 5 my old computer does a way better job it has a radeon 9600se should i try to put that in my new computer?
The Presario SR2050NX uses an integrated graphics processor by default. This is not going to be sufficient for even the most casual 3D games. The computer does have a PCI-Express graphics slot that will allow you to get a new graphics card to use. Your older 9600SE most likely uses the older AGP interface and can’t be used with this PC.
Bought a Compaq Presario SR2050NX last year in december and within 9 months of having the desktop i was having problems. I don’t use the computer very often but i left it on for an hour and went shopping then came back to nothing on the screen … i tried to reboot and still got nothing ! i called the help line and they said they would have to research the warrenty . Well i still have the reciept dated dec 6,2007. I called back with my compliant # and was told that the warrenty team said that the cpu was out of warrenty ( one year ) . Well i thought that one year warrenty was 365 days from the original date of purchase! I was then talked into purchasing another warrenty for $145 and they would not say if my computer was fixable and that the warrenty would even cover the problem. Until this day i still do not know what is wrong and have received no help from the 1-800 number and am still paying for the computer until dec 2008 . I am dissapointed with the system and service i received and will let everyone i know not to buy from this company !!
Does this model come with a recovery disk.
Darlene, a little late, but no this computer does NOT come with any recovery disc. You get to make that yourself from the recovery data in the “D” partition on the HDD.
My 2050 that I commented on back in Nov 06 (see first comment) has been very reliable until the past two weeks. Now, when I start it up cold in the morning, it may reboot by itself during startup, or it may lock up and has to be reset, it might do this right at the beginning before even the first “Compaq” screen when you can go into BIOS setup appears, or it might happen after Windows starts loading, just sits there doing zilch, no activity. Reboot-restart and all OK all day. One thing that is common is this happens during the first morning startup after being powered off all night. Seems that once it warms up a bit it works fine. I suspect a power supply problem which is what I was searching for when I ran across this review. Anyway now I get to find out about repairing a Compaq SR2050NX. I am told it likely does not have a common universal power supply, that it will be unique to Compaq. Hopefully that is not true but I will find out when I have time to take it apart and look inside.
Tamara, try unplugging all of your USB peripherals and then turn on your pc. If this machine has Vista that could be part of your problem. If it boots up then go to Windows update and install SP1 it should cure that issue if it is the issue you’re having.
Ed, do your clock settings change or remain the same? if the time on your pc is wrong, you may just need to Change your BIOS battery. does it tell you your hardware settings have changed on boot or anything?
My SR2050NX was bought on 11/15/06 I have had to call tech support 50+ times on it. The last draw was when I installed vista home (w/spc2) over XP Home about a month ago it kept bothering me for new drivers on my integrated video (ATI 200), going around in circles with that HP tweaked the registry so the redundant message would leave me alone. Now when I want to play a DVD (which worked fine in XP) I can’t get sound. HP wants me to pay $60 or $100 to resolve this issue. Microsoft wants me to go to one of their “authorized” sites and they want me to pay $40 for a year subscription. I have an extended warranty that expires 11/25/09. HP needed to verify that before they wanted me to go to customer fee based support. I will be buying a Dell next.
i have this same computer it was bought in 2005 it is now almost 2012 an still solid. i play halflife cod2 an other intensive flash games all the time. my biggest issues have been windows upgrades. in its original form it works great but make changes an create issues.
here is a list of what i can remember have gone thru.
xp updates crashed computer many times.
repair fees $200+
hard drive failure. purchased new hard drive. $120
oem disk set not working. had cleaned. $ 2
bought new set from microsoft support. $ 16
new set arrived insuffient postage due $ 2
new set just blank cd’s …azzholes at ms…
bought retail vista home premium $219
would not accept genuine advantage.
bought new key $119
vista activated updated
new failures back to repair shop $ 55
replaced power supply $ 96
replaced monitor $139
replaced keyboard $ 32
replaced mouse $ 12
since vista did updates i cannot figure out why
am having so many failures.
usb ports randomly quit working.
atikmdag driver failure.
network inspection failure.
these were all caused by microsoft auto update an has cost me a small fortune an still increasing.
problems caused by failure of hp/compaq product…
1.. the hard drive which actually wasnt a failure it works now, after reformating.
moral is if its broke uninstall windows crap an its fixed…
I purchased a new ASUS DVD/CD Recordable drive but my computer does not recognize the drive. I found the power supply plug but I do not have a data supply plug. The previous drive used one long plug. What can I do.