Re: Need help with neighbors laptop
Here's why you want those factory discs... (IOW, here's all the problems you're likely to run into now)
You won't run into any issues with Windows Updates in the future because M$ thinks you have a pirated copy of Windows.
All your drivers will work.
If the laptop is equipped with a DVD player or CD/DVD burner, the software for that will be there.
Those little extra buttons on the keyboard will work.
If equipped, the buttons to turn the wireless/bluetooth on/off will work.
The little on screen doodads when you adjust the volume will work.
Your touchpad will work right.
If that laptop has the acer power management stuff, it'll be in there.
The backup utility is in there. If that's done properly. The problem you had eariler could be fixed in only a few mins.
Well
DUH. That's blatantly obvious to even the most casual observer.
I said in my original post that I'm a super-user but not a DOS expert. You did READ post #1 above, right?
I've built my own machines from scratch, picked out motherboards, chipsets, memory, drives, etc. from the GET-GO. I've done programming... but it was LONG ago and in hexadecimal. I was a space systems engineer for NASA, DoD and commercial satellite companies for 20 years. As a Mission Controller at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I gave GO for launch on a $3.4 billion spacecraft put into orbit around Jupiter. Later, I transitioned to the telco I/T world as a project manager and QA manager.
Getting everything working right when you HAVE a disk is EASY. It's when you DON'T have the disk that the specialized DOS workaround skills are needed.
The owner of the machine is a 17 y.o. kid with little to no computer experience, but he's highly skilled around the farm. He welded together my outboard engine stand quickly and effectively. He's had the computer for nearly a year now and it hasn't been working. He got it from his teenage sister who lives out of state and she had it for several years before giving it to him. SHE lost the original VISTA disks somewhere along the way. The kid managed to scrounge up
XP disks yesterday and I got his machine running.
I had HOPED to be able to get some DOS advice on how to get his VISTA operating system back up and running without using a bulldozer to reformat his hard drive and lose everything he already had. Getting that advice turned out to be more difficult than I'd hoped.
Doodads my hairy butt.
Don't be condescending to strangers.
