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Reinstallation on laptop

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
On monday my laptop randomly stopped working, I could log in as normal but nothing worked, no icons would open, couldn't bring up the start menu or anything.

Did a reinstallation using the discs that came with the laptop, laptop now works however the appearance is different (everything much bigger, resolution is crap) and we keep getting weird messages when we log in, something to do with 'skins' and we have 0 memory left on our c drive (recovery) and no my computer icon on the desktop or anything.

We only bought the laptop on 30th May from PC World but they said we have invalidated the warranty by using the reinstallation discs (even though they were provided with the laptop) so they wont repair it for us without a fee.

Anyone know what we can do other than pay for someone to fix it? Any IT gurus who can recommend something?

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I doubt their 'warrenty' includes software issues anyway so using the recovery disc made no odds.

    Chances are the recovery disc is just a vanilla XP disc without any of the laptop-specific drivers to make things work. What make is the laptop? Usually if you go to the manufacturer's website and go to their support pages you can enter the model and download all the appropriate drivers to make the screen the right size and make other bits work. lemmie know if you need some help tho :)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Sounds like you don't have any display drivers installed. Reinstall Windows again but make sure it's connected to the internet whilst you do it. Windows should pick up the connection first and download everything you need.

    make sure you backup all your stuff, it might be that you'll need to do a clean install.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Whowhere wrote: »
    Reinstall Windows again but make sure it's connected to the internet whilst you do it. Windows should pick up the connection first and download everything you need.

    :no:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Thanks for the help, we have managed to sort it now without taking it to PC World. It's a DELL Inspiron 1545 and we will be avoiding PC World and probably Dell from now on.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I cant say I have ever had an issue with PC World apart from morons telling me stuff that I knew to be blatent bullshit, but it was just most of the time down to their lack of knowledge, rather than any kind of deception.

    Dell I have never had issues with either, though the people I know who have had issues, have mostly been because of customer service when something has gone wrong.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm glad that you've got it sorted Fruit Loop. I have a Dell Inspiron laptop too - different number from 1545 though. Mine has CD 1 for Windows and CD 2 for drivers and after installing those 2, I find that the machine works 100%.

    Funnily enough, with Acer, they sometimes encourage their customers to perferm a reformat to rule out software issues before sending their laptops back to Acer. Even though PC World insisted on the opposite, I think you'll find that Dell themselves will actually have the same stance as Acer.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    noog wrote: »
    :no:



    Worked when I did it, or maybe that was just Vista.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Whowhere wrote: »
    Worked when I did it, or maybe that was just Vista.

    Yeah Vista / Windows 7 generally has slightly better out the box suppot for 3rd party hardware, and the online driver search actually (sort-of) works.. but there's no reason you cant just go to device manager and reinstall the driver there, afaik it should still attempt a driver search without having to do a full reinstall
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