Well, unfortunately, my computer doesn't have a disc drive so there were no CDs included.  And none can be used either, obviously. As for the installation codes, I have no clue where they might be or what they might be, I didn't get the computer up and running.  But I still have the contents of the box, if anything in there can help at all. 

Ugh, honestly, it's not looking good at all...

On the phone yesterday Muhammed and I went through all that... safe mode, using Roxio restore, fucking with the BIOS, taking out the motherfucking memory card even, but nothing worked. 

Thanks again for all the help. 
I'll borrow a flash drive for sure. 

Haha, most important thing-- I need to find out if your computer can boot from a flash drive. It should say whether you can or not in your BIOS (there should be a list of devices you can boot from, and what order your computer tries to boot from them in. Flash drive or USB drive should be listed there). If you can check that, I'd much appreciate it.

Edit for real instructions:

1. Access BIOS.
2. Select the Advanced tab using the right and left arrow keys.
3. Use the up and down arrow keys to select Boot Order .
4. Check for USB Drive, Flash Drive, Optical Drive, or something similar in there.

If you can't find it there, post the entire list and I'll see if there's some wording for it that I'm forgetting right now.

Last edited by Yasha (06-08-2010 10:48:17 PM)

winksniper wrote:

And in Boot device Priority:

1st Boot device  [SATA:PM-ST9160314A]

....is there anything else in there? Anything at all?

Try it.... but if it only ever has that in the boot list, then that computer can't boot to anything else... which shoots us right out of the water

I'm going to try to put a new OS in using the flash drive like you said, I'll check in with what happens.

Yeah nothing.  Although I might not be doing it right so Idunnoooooo.

Last edited by winksniper (06-13-2010 06:04:15 PM)

uhh did you check the boot order in the bios. Since its a not custom built laptop you could try the recovery partition. You could try the consumer reports recommended method "annoy family member"

Last edited by gpink (06-17-2010 07:31:43 PM)

It's totally fine.  I've actually taken a break from trying to work on it, it was just causing me to have unnecessary fits of rage at it.  Since I still have until February to use the warranty, I was thinking I would just send it in as soon as I come up with $19 (for shipping costs).

Razara wrote:

As I mentioned in The Sims thread, Kealdrea's computer died. We'd been expecting it to happen for a while now. It doesn't even turn on. It just makes a loud noise, and does nothing. Any way to fix it?

There's lots of different possibilities from that info. I presume there was warning signs since you were expecting it? Motherboard failure sounds like a possible reason from where I stand, since that happened to me a few months back, but there are other possibilities.

Yasha wrote:

winksniper wrote:

It's totally fine.  I've actually taken a break from trying to work on it, it was just causing me to have unnecessary fits of rage at it.  Since I still have until February to use the warranty, I was thinking I would just send it in as soon as I come up with $19 (for shipping costs).

Give me a few days to get some shit sorted in RL here and then I will try cobbling something together for you.

Okay, thank you. 

chrisb wrote:

When I would start up my PC it was all like random colors and pixels and snow. I opened it up and it was incredibly dusty and I used a can of compressed air to get it all out. Still didn't work. I moved some things around and what seemed to work was fidgeting the video card and RAM. Computer is working fine now.

    Anyway to prevent this in the future? What was the cause? Should I get a new video card just in case?

    Thanks in advance!

Sounds like a case of overheating, or dust getting into the ports. Keep the case clean and away from obvious heat sources for starters, and see if the problem repeats itself. You may also try cleaning the ports more thoroughly with a toothpick or something, just in case (but carefully!).

I had this odd thing happen with my Blu-Ray playing capabilities recently: I was watching a video, when mid-way the system told me that my screen wasn't HDCP compliant - very much not the case. But the next day everything was A-OK, even though the diagnosis problem now claims that my video card's drivers aren't up for the task - again, they are, I've updated and checked. And everything works fine now, so my only fear is that this issue will repeat itself some day. This is why I hate the stupid DRM protocols.

I just bought an external disc drive and I found my XP reinstall disc.  I'm working on fixing it now.  :3

Got it working.

Sorry, Yasha, for making you waste your time trying to fix this problem.

Last edited by winksniper (07-09-2010 07:18:27 PM)