hi chaps brought a dell omnibook 4150 yesterday it came with windows 2000 installed with all the ports working i.e usb com1 ect so stuck it on the net downloaded some security stuff and some windows updates, but once the updates were installed it wouldnt connect to the net so i decided to install xp now the usb port is not seen at all in device manager and the com port has a conflict .

i tried to download the drivers for the pc but they seem to be in dos can any one give any advice on this

cheers jay

 

install xpsp2

 

right so can i download this to another pc , copy it disck for the laptop ?

and stu u recon thatll do it
cheers jay

 

remove EVERYTHING (delete the partition in XP setup, thats blanks it 100%)

install winXP SP2

go on dells website, and download ALL the drives for the laptop, burn em onto CD and install them 1 by 1 (reboting between installs just incase) when thats done goto http://update.microsoft.com and download all the windows updates.

your laptop should now be fine with all divers working and installed 100%

 

ive tried to remove xp but it wont let it happen jim ?

 

Jim's right - when you put the new operating system on, it overwrites all the drivers etc that the previous installation was using, and although XP will cover most things, some of the other stuff needs the manufacturer specific drivers.

Not sure what you mean about i tbeing in DOS thou mate

Is it not booting up into windows at all now?

 

jay hows it right it loads up xp fine erm the drivers ive got off the hp site wont work on xp only built for dos systems ?

 

HP drivers for a dell machine? I dunno a great deal about Dells as I've never owned one but are those the ones it tells you to get ont he Dell site, as I would have thought they'd have their own?

As for XP, you need to go into the setup BEFORE booting, usually thru hitting delete, and set your boot device to CD. Then you should get onto the setup menu and be able to choose to delete the partitions

 

cant access that theres a password on the bios sys

 

Oh no

I'm not sure how you're gonna get around that!

Will try and find out for you tho, if Jim can't help on that one?

 

so the HDD is set as the 1st boot device and it wonr boot from the CD?

you'll need to format the HDD manually (bootable) when before the computer gets turned off copy the files from the CD to the HDD

be warned, so one thing in the wrong order and your PC wont boot

do you have access to another PC? get yourself an adapter so you can plug laptop HDDs into a PC (about 5quid on ebay) and do it from the main PC, itll be much easier

 

easiest way is to take case apart and remove CMOS battery

also there is a jumper switch that you can move across and back again and this will reset the BIOS to default.

im sure if u cant find this jumper switch that by removing the battery for a while will erase all passwords.

 

stu, you dont normally get that on laptops nowadays, or if you do its hidden under loads of inaccessable stuff

 

my bad

never read laptop



in that case flash the bios

 

jim how can i format the hdd cant get it to do it

 

ok it'll be hard if you dont have any tools. lets work on fixing the existing setup

can you gt the PC on the net? if so i can see if i can remote into it

 

nope that me prob only had a usb connection and thats bollixed ive bin tryin to find a sp2 that i can download to my norm pc then copy to disck but no luck

 

sp2 will sort it, had loads of usb problems on fresh installs and sp2 ironed most out.

 

Yeah SP2 sorted some USB stuff for me too.

 

jay, not good news:
http://board.softpedia.com/lofiversi...php/t1109.html

looks like the omniboox 4150 will not work properly with XP

 

Bang the 2000 back on it!