[Inactive] Internet connection problems with laptop

[Hoov]

Take a strong flashlight and look at the jack in the back of the laptop. Make sure the contacts are nice and bright, and not blackened. Also check the fit of the cable into the jack on the computer and make sure it is not loose.

Let me know.

[bushka]

The connector is in good shape and tight, but I'll have to try the flashlight thing.  Maybe I'm lucky and there's a piece of lint stuck in there.

[bushka]

No such luck.  The connector is in good shape.

[Hoov]

GRR!

I would like you to try something unusual. I would like you to download Knoppix and burn it to a CD. Get the file named ADRIANE-KNOPPIX_V6.2.1CD-2010-01-31-EN.iso 

Use this file to burn an image to CD. If you don't know how to do this, let me know what CD burning software you have.

Once you have the CD burned, stick it into the drive of the problem computer and boot to it. This will start the Knoppix Linux distro. What I would like you to do is start one of the web browsers and see how it acts with your internet connection. Once you have decided, remove the CD from the drive and reboot the computer to windows and let me know how it goes.

[bushka]

Yeah, I'm pretty lost on burning CD's.  Our other computer had a CD burner but it hasn't worked in years.  Maybe there's a simple fix to it, I don't know.  The laptop can't burn CD's that I'm aware of.

What about the idea of reloading whatever software is on the recovery disk that came with the laptop to see if it can fix something that might have been corrupted?

[Hoov]

If you backup all your data, you can reinstall windows and then reinstall all your other software, but that still may not fix the problem. Do you have a friend that is on the geeky side that could burn the CD for you? Because doing it this way will tell us for sure if it is a windows problem, or a hardware problem.

[bushka]

OK, I'm asking around so we'll see.

[Hoov]

bushka, were you able to get that CD made?

[bushka]

Sorry for the delay, Hoov.  A few things came up.  I wasn't able to get the CD, but yesterday I went ahead and overwrote the hard drive with the Toshiba recovery disk.  So now the laptop software is reset back to original.  I haven't used it enough to see if the problem still exists.  However, I am having problems on startup.  Here's the message I just got, even after the reload:

Operating system not found (if I hit ctrl alt del a couple of times it usually will load)

PXE-E04 Error reading PCI (something)

The LAN adaptor's configuration is missing or corrupted.  Boot agent cannot continue...

These are the messages I have been getting on startup, but not necessarily every time or in that order.

[Hoov]

If I were you, and as you just did it, I would create an UBCD, run one of the fdisk tools on it (you have to boot to the CD) and delete the partition on your harddrive, and then use the recovery disk to reimage the harddrive.

I have not run into it, but have heard that sometime the reimage utilities will not do a true reimage of the harddrive, and problems can bleed thru from one install to the next.

Doing what I suggest will get rid of everything on the harddrive including the MBR and recreate it from the reimage disk.