Laptop Woes.

Nick_oliveri

Hello, i have gotten myself a friends laptop, it has a broken CD drive and refuses to connect to the internet. I have tried with the 3g modem thingy that he owns and i have tried with my ethernet line from eircom.

It will not connect to the net, get updates, HTTP etc. Funny thing is, i can ping to both ip's and nameservers(www.boards.ie). Ive tried antivirus scanners (ex safe mode!) and this winsockfix program that seems to work in most similar cases. Hiijackthis reports nothing funny, theres nothing weird in the registry, tried AVG updated and spybot updated (transferred from a PSP memory card).

Theres one thing thats a bit fishy, in Add/Remove programs there is an F-Prot for windows that you cant remove. I dont know whether this was installed or what. It just gives an error that it cant find the uninstaller or something. This is not running and conflicting with other antivirus' BTW.

Its not anything to do with the LAN card being off to save power or anything, ive checked this over and over. The IP's in the LAN connection are set to DCHP (my computers and laptop use the same config and can connect) I have tried his 3g modem in my laptop and it works, albeit slow.

Internet explorer was set to use the 3g modem and i turned this off for my ethernet test and used the LAN in the settings and still no joy. It just times out.

Now i cant boot from USB in the Bios and theres no working CD drive or FDD. Theres only the LAN option. Which i found a bit daunting trying to find a slipstreamer for XP over the LAN.

So im asking two things, whats the easiest slipstreamer/RIS program (for XP Pro) and does anyone know what could be causing this? There is no warranty left on this Laptop, it was bought a good few years ago in America and is a Toshiba Sattelite A15-S127. I have tried updating the drivers. But the 3G modem uses USB so that kinda rules out bad drivers. Could it be a conflict maybe? Thanks in advance to any replies.

Edit; all running processes in Taskman seem to be legit.

matt-dublin

make sure there are no lan setting pre configured in IE.

tools>internet options>connections>lan settings.

everything should be empty in here, except for the checkbox that says automatically detect settings

Nick_oliveri

me wrote:

Internet explorer was set to use the 3g modem and i turned this off for my ethernet test and used the LAN in the settings and still no joy. It just times out.

Yep tried that. Its not recieving updates or anything. I dont think internet explorer is doing that.

MarkR

If you can ping, but can't get websites try putting in a dns server into your connection properties. Happened to me before, very strange.

matt-dublin

are your ip settings static or dynamic?

sounds like you've got a dns error, but if you're able to ping boards.ie then you shouldn't have a problem

try this:
enable dhcp
open a dos prompt.
type ipconfig /flushdns
then ipconfig /registerdns

then try and browse.

Nick_oliveri

Dynamic. Didnt work. This POS is starting to vex me.
Could a rootkit do this?

Edit: The application management service seems to be missing.

Alun

A possible option to do a fresh install of XP on a machine like this is to take out the hard disk and either put it in another laptop or connect it up via an adapter to a desktop machine (both with a working CD drive, of course). Start up the XP installation, and just at the point when it has completed copying all the installation files and reboots, power it off and put it back into the 'broken' laptop. It'll then just carry on the installation where it left off. Once you've got it working you can use an external USB CD-ROM drive if you need access to a CD-ROM.

Nick_oliveri

Dont have an adapter and i wont have a chance with another laptop till the weekend after next. Hmm, looks like thats the best option.

Seems easy.
http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/ToshibaA15/SatelliteA15_laptop_disassembly_1.htm

Alun

Nick_oliveri wrote:

Dont have an adapter and i wont have a chance with another laptop till the weekend after next. Hmm, looks like thats the best option.

Seems easy.
http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/ToshibaA15/SatelliteA15_laptop_disassembly_1.htm

The hard disk usually comes out pretty easily without having to resort to that kind of thing I'm not too familiar with Toshibas, but on Dells it's usually just a case of removing two small screws (marked with little hard disk symbols on the underside) and the whole thing then just slides out in a caddy.

Nick_oliveri

Does it use ide and normal 4 pin power? Hmm

Alun

Nick_oliveri wrote:

Does it use ide and normal 4 pin power? Hmm

It uses a 44 pin connector that combines the standard 40-pin IDE with 4-pins for power, but is physically smaller. You can get simple adapters like this that you can use to connect a 2.5" laptop IDE drive to a standard 40-pin IDE cable. You can get them in the usual places like Maplins or Peats.

Some modern laptops do use SATA drives, but I'm guessing yours is not that new, seeing as you've just been given it for free.

Note though that usually on the laptop drive there'll also be some kind of little adapter thingy that converts the bare pins on the drive to an edge connector that can slide into a corresponding connector in the laptop more easily. These usually can be prised off simply with a screwdriver, but be careful when doing this not to bend the pins on the drive, i.e. prise it off evenly on both sides and very gently.

Capt'n Midnight

alternatively

if it's a toshiba then the CD should be removable with one screw near the middle of the bottom of the laptop - beside the slider that the screw stops sliding
another tosh cd should work , other wise you'd have to take the bay apart and put another slim cd in it

you can pickup 2.5" usb ide adaptors fairly handy, but formatting a drive in it might not make it bootable when going back in the laptop

knoppix has pxe boot option - you boot the knoppix CD on another pc on the same network, share all the drivers and hopefully one matches your laptop and it boots into linux so you can see what's going on

a usb CD drive to read files from
a usb floppy should be bootable


or copy the XP files to a folder on the laptop and run setup there and install to another folder instead of windows , program files will be a mess though

Nick_oliveri

Alun wrote:

A possible option to do a fresh install of XP on a machine like this is to take out the hard disk and either put it in another laptop or connect it up via an adapter to a desktop machine (both with a working CD drive, of course). Start up the XP installation, and just at the point when it has completed copying all the installation files and reboots, power it off and put it back into the 'broken' laptop. It'll then just carry on the installation where it left off. Once you've got it working you can use an external USB CD-ROM drive if you need access to a CD-ROM.

Tried this option using a second lappy (Dell) and got no where. Only a black screen on the Toshiba when i put it back in. Now it is a laptop with no OS, no Internet, no anything. I have broke more than i fixed.

Someone...help...please.

Edit: Will the Dell Cd Drive work in the borked Toshiba?

Alun

Nick_oliveri wrote:

Tried this option using a second lappy (Dell) and got no where. Only a black screen on the Toshiba when i put it back in.

What do you mean, you got nowhere? I assume you got to the stage where you'd managed to start the install on the second laptop, and it had finished copying all the files to the hard disk, yes? And what do you mean exactly by a black screen? There must have been some kind of message when you tried to boot up the laptop with the hard disk put back into it?

Nick_oliveri

Nahh, i think its some sort of VGA problem or resolution or some such. The screen is a bright black. Copys all the files to the hard disk, "restarts", you switch the HD, feck it back in to teh toshiba, and it does the bright black screen. Interesting thing is, the hard drive action light isnt flickering on the laptop when the bright black screen thing is happening. So theres feck all going on.

You can hold F8 on startup and it shows that menu, tried everything including VGA mode and still no luck.