Laptop Technical help required Forums

Jana

I have a Compaq Presario laptop which I have had for about 4 years. Apart from having a rubbish battery we get on fine together until recently.

It has now started to need to be booted up 5 or 6 times before working properly it is mainly the mouse that doesn't appear to load. The mousepad is extremely jerky and nothing works then the whole thing has to be closed down by holding the button in, causing a scandisk (now known as a Yawndisk in our house due to the boredom of it) then restore the activedesk top (guess what we call this lol)

It has a 5 year warranty from a well known dealer that is extremely purple. When I rang the said Purple Peoples Helpline and described the problem I was asked if I use dial up or broadband. On hearing Broad band they said they were 70% certain it is a problem caused by broadband.

I feel this may be rubbish myself and as I was advised I need to ring the Purple helpline again on a 0870 number I can feel a long and fairly expensive phone call taking place. I asked the chap about this who claim they make a loss on the phone calls. I said as I paid almost £400 for the warranty I feel a bit disgruntled at paying for an 0870 number too.

Any one had any similar experiences or know what may be wrong. I am sure if I found a PC Forum they could help but I probably wouldn't understand their replies.

Help rebooting 5-6 times seriously cuts into my browsing time.

Phil905

Hi Jana, I assume you know that Compaq have been taken over by Hewlett Packard ( HP ), so if you go to their website you can choose your Compaq Presario model and get help from their dedicated support people. On the couple of occasions that I used them for help with my Presario 1200 we managed to solve the problem so I suggest that you give them a try.
HTH, Phil.

bsb2000 · NE Rally Co-ordinator

I can't help you any more than to say a total refresh of a system (Which has had any sort of Internet connection) that is 4 years old would be my first course of action.

Ian

RobMD

I would agree with bsb2000 that a reformat and reinstall of Windows is the best way forward, but if you don't want to do that, try a clean up instead.

If your Mouse is a USB type, use a PS2 type instead (It has a round plug instead of the flat USB type plug).

Stop any programs from auto-updating (including Windows).
If using Win XP, disable error reporting.
Disable Windows Messenger from autostarting.
In internet Explorer, go to Tools-Internet Options and on the general tab delete Files and Cookies (you may need to log on to some sites again when you visit them, but you can delete them safely).
In the windows Folder on Drive "C", open the TEMP folder and delete all the contents.
Empty your recycle bin
Get Adaware SE free from http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/
run it, tick the boxes and clear out any junk it finds.

If you have Norton SystemWorks installed, run Windoctor.

Finally run the disk de-fragmenter.

This should help matters somewhat.

Anonymous

Yep...trash it and reinstall windows as your drivers are dicky at the very least.

BillD

Hi,
I will tell you of a recent (yesterday) personal experience which amazed me!
I cannot recomend this to anyone else but if you are desperate try it at your own risk.
I have a 6 month old Gericom (via Aldi) laptop with which I have been very satisfied. It has a 2 year warranty and 2 year insurance. After a while I tried to burn a DVD and it would not do it so I rang the Hotline and they said we will collect it and put it right. As I was shortly leaving for Europe, that's another story, they said get in contact when you get back.
After the trip and back in UK I was preparing the laptop to be sent away and strange things started to happen!!
At first I was having difficulty renaming and deleting files and folders.
Then my keyboard and touchpad would have no effect at all.
When I rang the Hotline again to arrange to have the laptop picked up I told the man about the new fault.
That's no problem he said we can fix that now. This is what he told me and I did, switch off, remove the power lead and the battery. Press the ON button for about 10 seconds. Now replace battery and switch ON.
Hey Presto, keyboard and touchpad working as new.
As I said it worked for me but I don't know why and I cannot recomend it but on the other hand I cannot see what harm it can do either.
BillD

MOTORHOMER

Hello

here is a useful forum. They may be able to help:-

http://forum.onlinehelp-uk.com/

Motorhomer

Anonymous

I agree with all of the above. After a length of time of saving and deleting files the hard drive becomes fragmented. You could try de-fragmenting before re-installing windows. But it may be a waste of time just re-installing windows over the version you already have. The best thing would be to re-format the hard drive, then re-install windows. To De-fragment do the follwoing:-

Go to Start
All Programs
Accessories
System Tools
Disk Degragmenter

Very Happy

SidT

Billd. I was advised to do the same or similar when I had a "dead" laptop.
Switch off at the wall and pull the plug out, wait 10 secs then plug it back in and switch mains on and then the laptop and everything worked ok.
Cheers Sid

gelathae

You have a virus probably a Trojan Horse that has probably entered via System 32 dll. Basically you need to reinstall Windows but in doing so you will lose all your data and get the computer back to the position on the day it left the factory.

I have suffered 2 similar outbreaks in the last two weeks while navigating to links posted on this site.