15 replies to this topic

[Diamons]

Ok, so my uncle gave me his laptop to format -> install XP (*cough*cracked*cough*)

Anyway, seemed like a simple process, eh? Turns out, the XP Installer couldn't find a Hard Drive. To fix that, I needed to disable the SATA setting in the BIOS. Simple, right?

"Please enter BIOS password." For the love of god I couldn't get the password for 8 hours. I tried short circuiting the CMOS battery which I never got to access because the screws are so freaking tiny. I then went for resetting the password through DOS which lead to no avail because I had already formatted.

-8 hours later-
After going to the park, eating chinese food, chatting on AIM a bit, I went back at it. I gave that laptop everything I had, and -PRESTO-I forgot that I had set the password and not the manufacturer or my uncle. And it was quite simple because I use one of 3 passwords for everything :]

So...install...ladeedoo...zzz....(1 hour later) "WTF!? WHERE'S MY ****ING DRIVERS!". Yeah. Wireless network wouldn't startup, no sound, no video, no Nothing.

Belarc Security Advisor pulled up nothing. After a bit, I got my wireless working (took 1 hour itself ._.) and kept messing up CDs when it asked for a CD. kay, now. Compaq is so freaking stupid that you need an external patch from Microsoft for High Definition Sound Speakers - it's not even referenced on the laptop downloads page! Oh god..I wanna marry Google...*makes out*...anyway...So liek...I started at 11 AM, and finished at 1 AM.

I'm a phailure

But I made 30 bucks :]

[Josh]

Honestly, BIOS passwords are a bit unnecessary for most people's computing needs. Is someone really going to sneak into your room, [over-]overclock your CPU, and wait for you to turn it on? Also, I would have just went to the store and bought a screwdriver set so I could reset the CMOS, rather than spend 8 hours doing nothing productive/feeling frustrated.

You might want to get an 2.5" external enclosure in case you ever have to do something like this again. It's much easier to take care of the formatting and create a functioning hard drive on another computer than it is to use fdisk or the XP install utilities, which take forever to load up.

Don't proprietary drivers get wiped every time after a fresh XP install? I've had to install XP on my brother's computer about 6 times, and after the third time I realized I had to put them on a disk because downloading audio/video/network card drivers each time became a terrible pain in the ass.

Welcome to the forums, by the way!

[z2z007]

Yea, you have to put back the drivers yourself and Belarc will not recognize anything because it looks for devices by their drivers. Normally, you just have to search through the computer manufacturer's site for all of them. It is a bit tedious and time consuming hunting all of them down.

[techkid]

Diamons, on Jul 3 2007, 02:25 AM, said:

Belarc Security Advisor pulled up nothing. After a bit, I got my wireless working (took 1 hour itself ._.) and kept messing up CDs when it asked for a CD. kay, now. Compaq is so freaking stupid that you need an external patch from Microsoft for High Definition Sound Speakers - it's not even referenced on the laptop downloads page! Oh god..I wanna marry Google...*makes out*...anyway...So liek...I started at 11 AM, and finished at 1 AM.

I'm a phailure

But I made 30 bucks :]

I just want to point out that based on the times that you provided as to when you started and stopped working, you were making about $2.14 an hour.

[Diamons]

techkid, on Jul 3 2007, 12:14 PM, said:

I just want to point out that based on the times that you provided as to when you started and stopped working, you were making about $2.14 an hour.

I lol'd.

[techkid]

Diamons, on Jul 3 2007, 12:42 PM, said:

I lol'd.

I love how the internet shorthand is changing so rapidly. What in the world are you saying there? "I laughed out louded?"

[NickC]

I think he/she means "I laughed out loud"

[azntechguy]

Welcome to the real world, Diamons! Who says that computers aren't high maintenance?

One of the bootable floppy (and bootable CD for those computers which do not have floppy disk drives anymore) that I always carry in my black box (which my essentials CD case looks like) has a tool for resetting BIOS PINs and Windows passwords (for most XP users, I find that I don't even have to resort to that utility. A lot of people leave open the #1 backdoor, including myself admittedly. I have nothing in this computer that I would worry about if I lost it anyway.). Oh yeah, both of the utilities are common enough to find online anyway.

Especially for laptops, after you find out the model number, but before installing, I think you should head straight off to the manufacturer's website and grab the latest appropriate drivers instead of leaving anything to chance. Really hate it when Windows XP installs well, but nothing works! That's a reason why I'm afraid to format both my computers regularly LOL. Still, nothing beats the challenge, eh?

[Diamons]

azntechguy, on Jul 3 2007, 07:15 PM, said:

Welcome to the real world, Diamons! Who says that computers aren't high maintenance?

One of the bootable floppy (and bootable CD for those computers which do not have floppy disk drives anymore) that I always carry in my black box (which my essentials CD case looks like) has a tool for resetting BIOS PINs and Windows passwords (for most XP users, I find that I don't even have to resort to that utility. A lot of people leave open the #1 backdoor, including myself admittedly. I have nothing in this computer that I would worry about if I lost it anyway.). Oh yeah, both of the utilities are common enough to find online anyway.

Especially for laptops, after you find out the model number, but before installing, I think you should head straight off to the manufacturer's website and grab the latest appropriate drivers instead of leaving anything to chance. Really hate it when Windows XP installs well, but nothing works! That's a reason why I'm afraid to format both my computers regularly LOL. Still, nothing beats the challenge, eh?

I reformat a lot, the only thing was, this time it was a different computer and it came from my Uncle (not tech savvy). Vista passwords can't be cracked as far as I know, because I tried using a...anyway...

[esong27]

techkid, on Jul 3 2007, 12:47 PM, said:

I love how the internet shorthand is changing so rapidly. What in the world are you saying there? "I laughed out louded?"

Why the heck state the obvious? Come on now.

[Josh]

Yeah seriously you made me wtfbbq all up in my hiz-127.0.0.1!

[Diamons]

ZoSo, on Jul 4 2007, 02:19 AM, said:

127.0.0.1!

Pinging 127.0.0.1

Pro hax0r right here.

[WhiteIce89]

Vacations are fun but ahh, there's no place like 127.0.0.1

[RacPaime]

You should have done a dual boot upgrade instead. That way you still got the old OS as backup with working drivers and everything (although less hard drive space). Anyway, you should have double-check everything before you upgrade the OS. There's a check upgrade utility available on the Microsoft website.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upg...ng/advisor.mspx
I used that to upgrade all my father's office computers to Windows XP Professional. Pretty useful especially it checks which drivers are in need of updates.
By the way, generally you do not need to format the hard drive. I never did it and had any problems with it by not formatting it. Furthermore all data will be deleted.
A clean upgrade generally deletes all applications and settings unless you choose a dual boot system. An upgrade will deleted the previous OS, but will attempt
to carry all settings and applications. All data will be saved in both types of Windows XP installations.

[Diamons]

RacPaime, on Jul 5 2007, 01:57 PM, said:

You should have done a dual boot upgrade instead. That way you still got the old OS as backup with working drivers and everything (although less hard drive space). Anyway, you should have double-check everything before you upgrade the OS. There's a check upgrade utility available on the Microsoft website.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upg...ng/advisor.mspx
I used that to upgrade all my father's office computers to Windows XP Professional. Pretty useful especially it checks which drivers are in need of updates.
By the way, generally you do not need to format the hard drive. I never did it and had any problems with it by not formatting it. Furthermore all data will be deleted.
A clean upgrade generally deletes all applications and settings unless you choose a dual boot system. An upgrade will deleted the previous OS, but will attempt
to carry all settings and applications. All data will be saved in both types of Windows XP installations.

The entire hard drive was one partition and there was no way to downgrade Vista -> XP. I knew the drivers worked...well because everything that Vista supports XP supports. It's not factual, but it's logical.

The format was done because of PC slow issues.Achieving factory speeds is, I'll say, impossible without countless tools and utilities, and even then it's a longshot. Besides, starting from scratch isn't bad once in a while. I format every 6 months.

[MySQL]

What I would recommend if one particular family or friend computer is giving pain. Just install XP with all the drivers. Image that hard drive with ghost or acronis. and everytime it screws up, just apply the image you're done. no pain.