Bizzare Lappy problems

Neal

Neal

Neal

Associate
Joined
3 Jul 2007
Posts
446
Location
round the corner from O'C
Hi all,

Im trying to fix a friends laptop, unfortunately they have no idea how to use a pc, and insist on trying things aa million times above their level...

Pc is

Toshiba Equium A100 with a 1.73 dual core cpu, 1gb ram, O/b graphics running vista 32bit.

I had installed them Avast anti virus, and was running withthe windows firewall. Since then they have uninstalled it, and installed Zone Alarm, then uninstalled ZA and installed AVG.... and commodo firewall... once they had done this their internet connection (wireless) was borked. Easy fix i thought.

Upon closer inspection they seem to have foo'barred the vista install... with explorer crashing out after 10 or so mins....

I would use the RESTORE cd, however the clever dick has removed part of the drivers that the cd/dvd rom drive uses... leaving it un-useable. And the only way of reinstalling them is by DOS... I dont know how to use dos... nor do i want to, its boring and to easy to mess up.

I have downloaded the drivers but they will not install under any circumstances... other than dos... and the recovery cd doesnt auto boot???

not only that, but vista thinks ZA is still installed, it also thinks Avast is installed, even though the programme files are non existant... get so far into investigating it and it borks out.... freezes and turns off... safe mode doesnt bork, but still have un-install problems and the "ghosts" of the 2 prevoius anti virus packages.

So now im left with a laptop that i cant bloody fix, and he's going to be a few ££ out of pocket as its a brick at the mo....

Im stumped.. any ideas what to try next

TIA

Neal
 
lol your guess is as good as mine! I checked with toshiba and there should be a driver and 3 associated files... only 2 associated files are there! i cant extract the file i need form the driver pack I downloaded...

all i get is "the device driver is up to date and correct" on one hand, then when i enable the device it says the driver is corrupt.... most annoying!!

He says he was messing with the device manager, as it failed to initialise but like I say he has no clue how to use a pc, he probably has trouble using a toaster!

System restore only goes back 10 days.... not much use to man nor beast.

He's coming back with all the manuals and disks the lappy came with. looks like i'll be busy tonight, wiping vista and re-installing it.

Just a major pain in the a-s-s
 
Some people just shouldn't be allowed computers.

May be worth uninstalling the IDE controllers from Device manager and letting Vista re-install them?

That said, I'd be doing what lord filbuster said, just nuke it back to a clean setup.
 
Dano said:
Some people just shouldn't be allowed computers.
Click to expand...


LMAO so true!

Well i managed to get the dvd drive working taking a few values out of the registry (an upper and lower value) seems he has 3 different lexmark printer drivers on it, and they have corrupted the dvd drivers by not being properly vista signed drivers!

Its been wiped, and vista is installing as we speak.

Have a good mind to charge him a few £ for my troubles!

Thanks for the replys lads.

Neal
 
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