Recovering Dell PCs

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
33,467
Location
West Yorks
ive got a brand new dell laptop that im less than happy with. Only used it a day, and its blue screened on me twice, itunes wouldnt install at all, no matter how many times i downloaded it. MSN messenger wouldnt install, took several reboots and several downloads before it would.

windows updates were randomly failing on me

and to top it all, ive downloaded 4od, and it comes up blank when playing stuff back. Ive read up on what seems to be a common ish problem, but none of the fixes suggested on the net work. Daft thing is flash works as iplayer works and i can view flash websites fine

but i dont think its 4ods fault. Ive got a vista desktop and an XP laptop both installed it fine first time without faults.

Only thing i can think to do now is format it. But there doesnt appear to be a recovery partition. Ive got a dell branded OS disc however. Is this just a vista disk with Dells logo on ? furthermore will the key on the bottom of the laptop work if i try and re-install using this disc ?
 
Yep. You won't need the license key and also won't need to activate. Which dell laptop is this and is it Vista? Beware that with some current models if the laptop is set to AHCI mode for the hard drive controller you may need to add the updated AHCI controller driver from dell's website at the disk partitioning screen otherwise the Vista install may fail or you may get a stop 7B BSOD on first boot. If the disk controller is in ATA mode then you'll be fine.
 
well ive reformatted

and its sorted all of my problems. (well mostly)

everything installs first time now. Itunes, messenger, dell mediadirect update etc.. and no more blue screens crucially.

however 4od still doesnt work.
 
I have read on different occassions, that the first thing you should do when you get a Dell desktop/laptop is to do a clean install, and also remove all the rubbish that Dell puts on it.....they run well after that apparently. :)
 
One thing I would note, a very common vista problem that sounds the same as what you had (not necessarily your problem however). Is do one thing at a time straight after (re)installing. A lot of things on vista will *try* to install although the installer service is being used and it will come up with some error code where google/ms kb revels nothing.
 
Horses for courses to be honest.

If you have hassles then you have no option really, to address them, like MrLoL has had to.

However, no offence, but saying all Dell standard builds require reformatting immediately is a rather "blanket" statement.:cool:

My XPS 1530 ran perfectly, "straight from the crate" and has barely broken sweat at everything I have thrown at it so far including office tasks, gaming, web design and graphics/photo imaging. :)
 
i couldnt be bothered doing a clean install so just used the factory image again

that was fine, so it was clearly something that installed or uninstalled improperly screwing the system, because its fine now.
 
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