Time Laptop - Broken and out of warranty!

[Evil Homer]

Okay lads and ladettes, I need a wee bit of help.

My sister has a Time laptop (which I told them not to get but my dad and stepmom *grr* insisted it would be fine). Now its broken and I tried to restore it using the CDs given but I got a critical error (with both sets of CDs in exactly the same place, about 3/4 of the way through).

I then rang Time on £1 a minute (twice) asking for more CDs but eventually they told me I would have to pay £59 for 3 CDs because the warranty has ended. I then hung up the phone.

I then tried to install my standard copy of windows pro. After some fiddling about it did come up with the windows checking file screen once before saying that my CD was corrupt too!

What is the best course of action now? I don't want to pay £59 for the CDs from time only to find out that its an actual hardware fault which is why it isn't reading any CDs.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

[BUFF]

Don't suppose that you can do a network install or have a usb/1394 connected dvd/cd player?

[Evil Homer]

Well I wouldn't know how to do a network install but as the nic on it wasn't working before and was one of the reasons for reinstalling I wouldn't hold out much hope for it. As for an external DVD/CD player...I dont have one.

If I could get hold of an external DVD/CD player of some sort how would I get it to boot from it rather than looking for the internal drive?

[Jiff Lemon]

At what point are you getting the critical error and what exactly is it saying?
What was the fault before you started the reinstall process?

You tried running any bootable utils to check for hardware errors? (memtest and partition magic are the 2 that spring to mind).

[joshwa]

If you have a Windows 2000/XP CD - but it can't read it - try making a backup of that CD onto a fresh CDR - that way you know that there won't be any scratches on the CD etc - then try installing Windows from the fresh backup CD.

[Evil Homer]

I'll try the old disks agen to find out what the errors are.

The problem was that programs weren't loading, certain hardware wasn't showing up in the device listing, crashing, couldn't get on the network. To tell the truth it had never worked well since the day it arrived from Time.

Boot utils? No I haven't but I shall now.

[Evil Homer]

Well I just tried using my normal Windows CD and it sed 'ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded - Error Code 7'. Mean anything to anyone?

With the time disk the error comes on the 2nd disk of 3. It says "0x0B Read fault"

[jsterling]

does this microsoft support page help at all?

[Evil Homer]

does this microsoft support page help at all?

No None of the things I can do work.

[Jiff Lemon]

Got a CD/floppy cleaning kit? Or tried cleaning the CD lense? I'm wondering if it's just struggling to read the CDs/floppies.

Other drastic measures include removing the HDD, put in a USB enlosure, copy the I386 folder to the drive, put it back in the laptop then boot up with a floppy boot drive and install from HDD - Drastic measures I know!

[Evil Homer]

Got a CD/floppy cleaning kit? Or tried cleaning the CD lense? I'm wondering if it's just struggling to read the CDs/floppies.

Other drastic measures include removing the HDD, put in a USB enlosure, copy the I386 folder to the drive, put it back in the laptop then boot up with a floppy boot drive and install from HDD - Drastic measures I know!

I do have a VERY old CD lense cleaner which I tried but had no effect.

Im guessing that removing the HDD would involve unscrewing and actually taking a lot of it apart? Could be worth a try tho as I do have a USB enclsure, as luck would have it.

[the insaan]

Well I just tried using my normal Windows CD and it sed 'ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded - Error Code 7'. Mean anything to anyone?

With the time disk the error comes on the 2nd disk of 3. It says "0x0B Read fault"

i used to work in the service centre at time/tiny, i'm afraid ntkrnlmp.exe could be a variety of problems, your hardware suspects are RAM or CPU, but first i suggest you use the windows 98 startup disk and FDISK the entire hard drive, wipe the partition clean and rebuild it using FDISK, then you will have to do a full format, and then do a fresh install

[Evil Homer]

i used to work in the service centre at time/tiny, i'm afraid ntkrnlmp.exe could be a variety of problems, your hardware suspects are RAM or CPU, but first i suggest you use the windows 98 startup disk and FDISK the entire hard drive, wipe the partition clean and rebuild it using FDISK, then you will have to do a full format, and then do a fresh install

What about the error fromt he actuall Time Recovery CDs?

0x0B Read Fault

Can you tell me what that means?

Windows 98 startup disk? But I'm trying to install XP

[Flibb]

Thought it was possible to install xp without the cd's by getting a 2.5" to 3.5" HD adapter cable?? Plug it into your main rig and away you go. There was mention of copying XP onto a HD and then installing from there on a thread the other day. Just an idea.

[Evil Homer]

Anything that's going to involve the HDD is going to require a lot of unscrewing because its sealed inside. Something Im rather relectant to do but if it comes to it then what can you do. Altho if anyone could give me a good link to somewhere explaining what exactly would have to be done that'd be smashing.

[Evil Homer]

Okay. I just tried to open it up to get to the HDD. No luck. A nuclear warhead couldn't get into this thing.



P.S. Does anyone have any thoughts on this error I got after the initial Boot screen? It starting to try and boot from the CD then this came up

No Bootable CD In ATAPI CD-ROM