What to do with a defective laptop ??

[arunb]

What to do with a defective laptop ?? [RESOLVED]

Hi,

I have a laptop that is fairly old, it is pentium 3, 256 MB rAM and can run XP on it.

While formating the drive, I found that the CD drive would not work, I got the drive replaced but even then the CD drive would not work. The service man told me that there was something else wrong with the Laptop.

Since the laptop was partially installed with WInXP , I tried to boot using a USB drive, but this did not work either.

Kindly suggest what I should do with the laptop. ?? IS there any way I can use a LAN network for booting. because the laptop is a good one and I do not want to discard it...


thanks
aa

 

[Hero999]

Since the laptop was partially installed with WInXP , I tried to boot using a USB drive, but this did not work either.

I don't see how having a parltially installed operating system on the hard drive can stop it from booting from the USB drive; are you sure the BIOS supports booting from the USB?

Are you sure the CD drive is damaged and it isn't your Windows CD that's damaged?

You could try installing an alternative operating system like Linux from the USB drive.

What else does the service manual say is wrong with it?

 

[arunb]

I have tried several different CDs of Windows Operating systems. The boot options has an option for an USB Floppy disk, since I do not have one I cannot boot from it.

Also I do not have a service manual...

thanks
a

 

[Hank Fletcher]

Hey, arunb. There are just too many variables in play here. In order to avoid running in circles, can you try to better explain the symptoms, i.e. what's happening and what's not happening, what you've got, and what you've tried and how you went about it?

 

[ericgibbs]

hi,

As 'Sir Hank' says , we need more input!
[Sorry Hank, couldn't resist it,, saw your other post re-hanky]

I dont follow what 'partially installed' means.

Were you trying to format the hard drive using a XP disk in the CD drive when the laptop hung up?

You say that you have tried a USB drive, is that a usb connected CD?

Have you tried going back to basics and using usb connected 'floppy drive' with floppy disks and trying a hard drive format that way.

You could also try you hard drive in another laptop.

 

[ThermalRunaway]

Is the CD Drive enabled in the BIOS? You can set it so that the OS will not boot from CD, and if that is set it could be your problem. Also, it would be interesting to see if the CDROM drive is being recognised in the BIOS.

Have a look and tell us what you see!

Brian

 

[picasm]

It would help if you give the make/model of laptop.

Some types have a built-in diagnostics accessible at bootup or even a recovery partition on the HD which may still be intact if the partition has not been deleted.

 

[Hero999]

Try getting a cheap USB stick and putting writing live Linux image to it, then boot it.

Then you should be able to get your system to boot it and install it if you like.

I don't know about Winwoes though, it might be possible to copy it to a USB but I wouldn't know where to begin and I probably couldn't tell you even if I did so since it would involve circumventing DRM which is against the forum rules.

 

[Super_voip]

There plenty of sites around with how to make bootable USBs, I have 3 x 1Gig sticks one with U3 and portables apps, 1 linux boot and 1 just for storage

 

[HarveyH42]

How about jumpers on the CDROM. Haven't done an PC work in a few years, no laptop experience, but remember some jumpers for master/slave/auto-detect. Double check the power and IDE cables and make sure they are tight.

 

[Eclipsed]

Within my experience with laptops, which isn't that broad, you usually have to press one of the "F" keys at power on to get the boot options.I have several Dell laptops that require you to press the "F12" at power on and select "boot from CD" or it won't boot from anything other than the harddrive period.And as far as I know, older BIOSes just don't support booting from a USB anything.

 

[ericgibbs]

Within my experience with laptops, which isn't that broad, you usually have to press one of the "F" keys at power on to get the boot options.I have several Dell laptops that require you to press the "F12" at power on and select "boot from CD" or it won't boot from anything other than the harddrive period.And as far as I know, older BIOSes just don't support booting from a USB anything.

hi,
If he Googles for his laptop model type and bootup he will find lots of sites that list the 'enter bios setup keycodes codes'
Did this for a friend a couple of weeks ago, OK.

Try it with you own Dell laptop, just as a trial.

 

[Eclipsed]

I was refering to a special "boot options" hotkey menu, not the regular "F2" BIOS setup.My Dells don't even have a CD boot option in the BIOS, only from the above stated menu.It's quite annoying, you have about .5 seconds to press "F12" or no go.

 

[ericgibbs]

I was refering to a special "boot options" hotkey menu, not the regular "F2" BIOS setup.My Dells don't even have a CD boot option in the BIOS, only from the above stated menu.It's quite annoying, you have about .5 seconds to press "F12" or no go.

hi,
I dont know if applies to the Dell, but it is possible to tweak the boot option delay time.

Whats the Dell model?

Regards

 

[arunb]

Sorry for the delay in reply, I was out actually, I will try best to answer your question.

Laptop Make: Dell Inspiron

Were you trying to format the hard drive using a XP disk in the CD drive when the laptop hung up?

Yes in fact I managed to format the drive. But when XP files were being copied the laptop just hung up, then I got an error that some files could not be read from the CD. I believe the CD is OK since I had used it a\a few days before.

1. The BIOS Screen indicates that the CD Drive was detected.
2. I also get the 'Press any key to boot from CD Drive...' option.
3. The CD drive starts the installation process and actually copies some files but it hangs up after some time.

Have you tried going back to basics and using usb connected 'floppy drive' with floppy disks and trying a hard drive format that way.

No I could not do this as (a) I do not have a Floppy drive for the laptop, (b) There is no port or cable connection to connect a floppy drive.

There plenty of sites around with how to make bootable USBs, I have 3 x 1Gig sticks one with U3 and portables apps, 1 linux boot and 1 just for storage

I have made a bootable USB stick, with linux OS in it,...selected boot from USB diskette option, but even this did not work , the laptop could not even detect the stick..

thanks
arunb

 

[mvs sarma]

Sorry for the delay in reply, I was out actually, I will try best to answer your question.

Laptop Make: Dell Inspiron



Yes in fact I managed to format the drive. But when XP files were being copied the laptop just hung up, then I got an error that some files could not be read from the CD. I believe the CD is OK since I had used it a\a few days before.

1. The BIOS Screen indicates that the CD Drive was detected.
2. I also get the 'Press any key to boot from CD Drive...' option.
3. The CD drive starts the installation process and actually copies some files but it hangs up after some time.




No I could not do this as (a) I do not have a Floppy drive for the laptop, (b) There is no port or cable connection to connect a floppy drive.


I have made a bootable USB stick, with linux OS in it,...selected boot from USB diskette option, but even this did not work , the laptop could not even detect the stick..

thanks
arunb

Hey, Arunb

If you reside in India, there are many people to service your Laptop. If at Hyd I could give you contacts.

Yeah--may be bios and other related problems. You may try out your HDD loading from anothe similar laptop and later, try back on your system.

 

[Torben]

Hi arunb!

I know you said in your first post that the CD drive doesn't work, but from later posts it sounds like it does work and the installation is failing at some point.

Can you boot a live CD off the CD drive? If you could boot a Linux live CD (Ubuntu or something) you should be able to access the C drive and format/correct it. Of course this will only help if the problem is that the C drive is corrupted somehow, preventing the installation from continuing.

Does the installation always hang at that same point? If so, what point is that?

Anyway, if you can safely use a live CD to reformat the C drive (say, to FAT32 or NTFS), the format should mark out bad blocks on the drive and let you reboot from the Windows install CD to complete the installation.

To boot from USB your USB drive has to be bootable and contain the proper boot files/images in the right places. How did you prepare it to boot from it?


Torben

 

[Rolf]

{snip}
Yes in fact I managed to format the drive. But when XP files were being copied the laptop just hung up, then I got an error that some files could not be read from the CD. I believe the CD is OK since I had used it a\a few days before.
{snip}
.thanks
arunb

I had several files that would not install on my last XP installation, I skipped the installation of the offending files and it went on to complete the installation.
Don't know what those files did but it has been fine fine for months.

 

[mvs sarma]

Hi Arunb,
can it be possible that the CD media what you have has developed some problem- please check with another copy of winXP and let us see

 

[Hero999]

Don't know what those files did but it has been fine fine for months.

That's Winwoes for you, it installs a load of shight that you'll never need. There again it's possible you might need them some day and a certain piece of software might cause it to crash.