AST Refurbished Computers and Internet Explorer Crashing

Just a quick heads-up for anyone who purchases AST refurbished computers (ours came from Staples.com). The last few we received were “Revived by AST” and each came with unexpected issues.

The first unit had memory problems. Which is still sitting here waiting (nearly two weeks) for a call-tag to be issued so we can send it back.

On 2 out of 3 so far, Internet Explorer (IE) crashed every time you tried to load most pages. This prompted a memory diagnostics check on the first one which luckily pointed to a more serious issue.

On the second one, we decided to scan memory for faults before getting to far into the initial setup (eg: installing programs). No errors, so we figured this one was probably fine. That is until we tried opening the IE browser. Same issue as the first machine.

Without a glaring memory problem this time, we had to dig further to figure out why IE keeps crashing. So I downloaded Chrome installer to flash drive and installed so I could started searching from the machine in question.

Here is how to find and fix the problem if you are encountering the same issue…

  • Control Panel > Network & Internet > Internet Options
  • Advanced Tab > Accelerated Graphics
  • Check: Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering*
  • Click OK
  • Restart computer
  • Problem solved

Hope it helps 🙂

Not that it mattered too much at this point… we generally only use IE to download other web browsers then hide the shortcut 😉

The third one is still sitting here in a box, but we expect the same browser issue. Luckily we know how to fix it ASAP after losing so much time trying to initialize the first two.

4 thoughts on “AST Refurbished Computers and Internet Explorer Crashing

    1. admin Post author

      Glad I could help. We are actually going to another provider and bypassing refurbs all together due to how poor our Staples/AST experiences have been.

      There are plenty of lower-priced alternatives (amazon, newegg, etc) for new products with the same or better specs.

      Staples will eventually price itself right out of market. We shop there less and less each month.

      Reply
  1. Gary

    hello sir, thanks for the IE fix info. Just bought an AST refurb (HP) thru TigerDirect.com – was pleasantly surprised to see MS Office pre-installed but wasn’t given the activation code(Product key) for it – should I have been?

    Reply
    1. admin Post author

      Glad my post helped… as for the pre-installed copy of Office, it is likely a trial version. That question would be better suited to TD customer support.

      Reply

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