brianaaskew

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!

TriggerFinger

try to install starting with the chipset driver first then the video drivers. but remember to uninstall ALL related drivers first in Device Manager before you do anything else. sometimes when we install drivers, they install some programs too in ADD/REMOVE. so best if you check also ADD/REMOVE and uninstall related programs there too. after doing these 2 things, then install chipset and video drivers.