Time Laptop - Broken and out of warranty!

[Agent]

The CD isnt bootable ?

Tried taking it out ?, it should boot normally then.

[Evil Homer]

Its a Windows XP Pro CD, surely it should be bootable? The point is I'm trying to get windows to install but can't

[Agent]

If its legit, it should be bootable.

If you cant get it to work, provided you have a floppy drive : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

[Evil Homer]

If its legit, it should be bootable.

If you cant get it to work, provided you have a floppy drive : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

Thanks I'll try that

Also, if anyone had any more thoughts incase this doesn't get it working tonight I'd most greatfull. Because if I can't fix it today, it's going back to Time tomorrow which will cost a fortune but time is an issue so any help at all would be great.

Thanks

[the insaan]

i know your trying to install xp, but the windows 98 startup diskette has all the dos commands needed for FDISK, windows xp does not come with dos

do you have a silver laptop or a black one

[Evil Homer]

Its silver. Why?

If you wanna know the exact model its a Traveller 1600, if that helps.

[Evil Homer]

I just tried it with the floppies and got this error at the end of formatting

Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged.

Make sure the drive is switched on and properly connected to your computer. If the disk is a SCSI disk, make sure your SCSI devices are properly terminated. Consult your computer manual or SCSI adapter documentation for more information.

[Daymonkey]

sounds like a bad hard drive to me have you tried scanning to search for bad sectors etc and do you know anyone with a external drive connector if you do borrow it and try that .

[Evil Homer]

Right. Last night i scanned the disk with the Fujitsu HDD checker thing and it passed that. I then used the Fujitsu HDD eraser thing to competely get rid of any info left on the HDD (which took HOURS!) I've now tried installing from my Windows Pro CDs + the floppies but it isnt recognising my CDs at all. It says insert the CD labeled Windows XP Pro but its already in.

I tried using the Time recovery disks but because there is no longer a partition it won't load and I can't get a partition because I can't seem to get into the right version of DOS to run fdisk.

[Daymonkey]

does the cd-rom recognize the cd and does the setup even start now

[Evil Homer]

Nope

[turkster]

Have you tried a Memtest boot floppy? It could be your memory causing the problems. You can get it here. (you just need a working computer and a blank floppy )

I had a probem similar to this before with a newish computer ie refusing to read disks and stopping part ways through installation due to errors etc becuase of memory problems. I tried numerous different OSs and disks before I thought of checking the memory. The memory was completely borked but the disks etc were fine.

[Daymonkey]

Isnt there something to do with if the goods are out of warranty and they malfunction isnt there something that will save him from paying ,time ,money for fixing a laptop that was made to a good standard anyway(always the same with time in my experience).

[the insaan]

ok, the silver ones wernt actually built by time, they are just branded time, they were built by a company called mitac, so it may be worth sending mitac an email sa i know Time are aresholes when it comes to customer support, we wernt allowed to repair those laptops, they were sent back to mitac

[Spud1]

Ok i think i can help you, provided you have what you need

Wheni got my laptop off ebay, it didnt have a CD drive, just a floppy and a NIC. so HTF was i supposed to get windows98se on it? ans == copy the CD onto the hard drive via a dos network. fun

So, what you would need would be your [inthiscase XP] CD on your main PCs hard drive (running any version of windows), a floppy drive on both your main PC and your lappy, and a NIC with crossover cable/switch/hub in each. You also need to know what model of NIC you have in the lappy, eg 3com/intel/cisco etc etc

if you can get all that i will walk you through the process takes about 30mins to do, then you simply install from your hard disk

[Evil Homer]

Ooooooh, cheers. But its too late It was sent away to Time Monday morning to make sure it was fixed before she had to go back to uni. And I must say, despite all Time/Tiny/The Computer Shop's downfalls (of which I have found there to be many) and despite the fact it cost a fortune to do, the turnaround time for repair was phenomenal. It was picked up Monday morning and despatched back to us yesterday so with any luck it'll return to us later this morning and I'll get the diagnostic sheet so I'll finally be able to know exactly what was the problem. I sure hope it was a hardware fault cos I'll be peaved if it was something I could've fixed.