OK Another lappy problem...... :-(

[Fay]

 

[Simon E]

What would I do in this situation, I would probably reinstall XP, or whatever operating system that you have. Coping off all useful files first. Because one can waste a lot of time second guessing the problem

Nice idea Simon, but what happens when you do all of this and the problem is still there?

I'd rather spend a few hours tracking the problem down to prove one way or other where the problem is, rather then spend 8 or 9 hours reinstalling xp and asscoiated software,
Only to find it was a hardware problem, been there, done that and bought the T Shirt.

ps. ask Fay  i've spent quite a few hours trying to get her old camera to be installed as a camera and not a garden bench.
In the end we had to re-install windows, so far thats taken over 9 hours!!.

Mac

9 hrs, something seriously wrong there, I reinstalled xp and it took about 30mins. Loaded up the internet and updated all the drivers as well. What are you using XP on floppy

si

[Simon E]

If a formatted XP HD was shoved in Johns lappy, would it work ?
I know it won't be happy because most of the drivers will be wrong, but would it run and could it update relevant drivers?

Yes it would, did this with my girlfriends daughters PC, your right drivers are a pain but we got it up and running on 16bit colour no sound etc and then just got the drivers off the net for the laptop.

easy si

[Simon E]

About the USB device are there any conflicts in device manager....

This all seems very much like Xp is screwed up a bit, with an XP disk you could always try and Repair the version of XP that is loaded onto the laptop. You could also trying creating another partition, make it a bootable part and installing a second op system onto the laptop and try to boot into this. and see if you have the same problem.
Although you will need a couple of pieces of software,
ie: Part magic, Win 2k, enough disk space spare on the laptop etc etc.

Again I would say,,,,, pain though,.... backup all you want to a external device, format and start again.
Install is about 30mins on XP. Then install a couple of bits of software onto it to test, word etc and test for a couple of days to see if everything is ok.

If stuff fails then it ain't XP, It could be memory, easy to swap out and find out. It could be the HD, again easy to check, if you have a spare HD... Motherboard..... pain in the ..se...... New laptop time.


Can always come have a look as I have been fixing these things for the last 23yrs
si

[JohnP]

Thks very much Si - At the moment (touch wood) it all seems to be working apart from the fact that I need to make sure I have a USB mouse plugged in when I am on batteries. That isn't a big issue & I can certainly live with that. I am loath to reformat/ install win XP Pro purely because I have so much other damned stuff on there as well (data & applications etc.) I have most of the important stuff backed up now in case it goes 'belly up' & I know apps etc. can always be installed again but I'm just a bit concerned about getting it all to work together. I know when I image for example if I don't plug things in the right way around then ports dont work, cameras dont operate etc. etc. Just look at the probs that Fay is having....

I think I will struggle on as is for now & maybe try & get a 2nd laptop up & running sometime soon before this one finally dies. I have about 15Mb out of 55Mb left space wise...

Thks again for all your help,

John

[Mac]

9 hrs, something seriously wrong there, I reinstalled xp and it took about 30mins. Loaded up the internet and updated all the drivers as well. What are you using XP on floppy 

si

Nope not really
the first version of windows xp pro didn't work. (Incorrect product key, and yes it was original and not a copy) that took about an hour, gave up in the end, this included setting up different partitions 1st.
Second install (XP home) finally worked, took about 60 mins. but because it was a restore disk, it re partitioned the disk, so that needed to be done again, 15 mins.

Then i installed hyperos and set that up, duplicated the os, & switched the os, 25mins,

Then we set to work installing all of fays software, and drivers, testing each and every camera with each bit of software after they were installed.
This is because Fay was originally having problems with camera drivers and software.
then we made a backup of the system (before i left, in case anything went wrong later) -10 mins.
total time about 6 hours.
Fay then continued to install all of her other software. which i believe has taken her another 3 hours.
The beauty now is because i've set up hyper os on her system, should anything fail it will take about 20 mins to reinstall her laptop
OS and all the software and drivers. instead of 9 hours.

Hyperos is similar to nortons ghost, except you can run multiple o/s partitions up to 22
Mac.

[Simon E]

She must have loads of software, but normally a base xp load will take 30-40mins to install. Software and drivers will take longer. I thought you meant that to load xp alone it took 9hrs. I was thinking that the cd was having trouble reading the disk or something.

Just wondered if anyone is doing any kind of scan disk on the HD's, to see if the HD's had any bad blocks etc.... and were on their way out?

si