Tech Support Forum - View Single Post

brianaaskew · 06-19-2008, 05:20 PM

Ok so I've been working on my husband's laptop to try and get it working again but the more I do the more I think it might be a hardware problem, which worries me cause I'm a software person not a hardware person. Anyway, here's the situation. It's a Dell Inspiron 8500 with Windows XP installed. It was working fine then one day when he tried to turn it on, nothing. The green lights on the laptop came on the but the screen stayed black. Tried again later that day and it turned on but the resoltion was crap with only 4 bit color and no other options to change it, then turned it off and it would not turn on again. Tried again a week later and it turned on but same res problem so I tried reinstalling Wondows thinking it may have been a virus or some files that accidentally got deleted. Now it turns on and off fine but the res problem remains the same and now for some reason it won't let me reinstall the drivers for the Ethernet controller, network controller, and oci modem. It finally let me install something for the display adapter but it still has the yellow ? next to NVIDIA GEForce4 4200 Go (Dell Mobile). I got on the live Dell chat to make sure I had the right drivers and I do, they are just not installing....PLEASE HELP!!!! Thanks!

06-19-2008, 05:20 PM	#1 (permalink)
brianaaskew Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 1 OS: XP	Figure this one out Ok so I've been working on my husband's laptop to try and get it working again but the more I do the more I think it might be a hardware problem, which worries me cause I'm a software person not a hardware person. Anyway, here's the situation. It's a Dell Inspiron 8500 with Windows XP installed. It was working fine then one day when he tried to turn it on, nothing. The green lights on the laptop came on the but the screen stayed black. Tried again later that day and it turned on but the resoltion was crap with only 4 bit color and no other options to change it, then turned it off and it would not turn on again. Tried again a week later and it turned on but same res problem so I tried reinstalling Wondows thinking it may have been a virus or some files that accidentally got deleted. Now it turns on and off fine but the res problem remains the same and now for some reason it won't let me reinstall the drivers for the Ethernet controller, network controller, and oci modem. It finally let me install something for the display adapter but it still has the yellow ? next to NVIDIA GEForce4 4200 Go (Dell Mobile). I got on the live Dell chat to make sure I had the right drivers and I do, they are just not installing....PLEASE HELP!!!! Thanks!