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- Joined
- 11 Nov 2003
- Posts
- 860
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- South London
Hi,
My GF recently bought a 2nd hand Sony X505 laptop from an auction site. It worked fine for about two weeks, but since Thursday it has started dying. Possibly as a result of being dropped and / or being sat next to a Hi-Fi speaker.
Symptoms are-
Basically, it is completely fubared
I've tried creating a new XP admin account and deleting the old admin account, Running AV scans, disabling all non-essential programs in ms config etc, but nothing seems to make any difference.
I'm starting to come to the conclusion that it needs a format c and fresh install of windows.
Now, the thing I am worried about is that because it is 2nd hand, it came with no driver disks (eg for the wireless card, external DVD etc).
So if I do do a fresh install of windows, I'll have to hunt around to try and find the various drivers needed.
So my question is -
a) Am I doing the right thing here going for a re-install?
b) If so, how can I get a list of the drivers that I will need to install once I have re-formatted and re-installed XP?
Any help would be much appreciated,
Fred
My GF recently bought a 2nd hand Sony X505 laptop from an auction site. It worked fine for about two weeks, but since Thursday it has started dying. Possibly as a result of being dropped and / or being sat next to a Hi-Fi speaker.
Symptoms are-
- Everything is very slow in windows. Opening an explorer window takes 5-10 seconds for example
- On startup, a Genric host Processes for Win32 Services error
- Certain apps won't even launch (eg MSPaint, Forefox). Instead you get an error message saying "the application failed to initialize properly"
- Sometimes when you load control panel, loads of the icons are missing
Basically, it is completely fubared

I've tried creating a new XP admin account and deleting the old admin account, Running AV scans, disabling all non-essential programs in ms config etc, but nothing seems to make any difference.
I'm starting to come to the conclusion that it needs a format c and fresh install of windows.
Now, the thing I am worried about is that because it is 2nd hand, it came with no driver disks (eg for the wireless card, external DVD etc).
So if I do do a fresh install of windows, I'll have to hunt around to try and find the various drivers needed.
So my question is -
a) Am I doing the right thing here going for a re-install?
b) If so, how can I get a list of the drivers that I will need to install once I have re-formatted and re-installed XP?
Any help would be much appreciated,
Fred
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