ADN

As some of you know, my main PC crashed leaving me to maintain my enterprise on a laptop...

For the most part, the specs on it are solid... It is an Evo N800w, Pentium 4 M, 2.4GHz, 1.5 Gigs of RAM...Very serviceable...

So, my question is to current laptop owners as to go about fixing it...

It seems as if the screen needs replacing, it has various bruises on it here and there...Possible, or PITA..? Also, what are some things I need to know about wireless internet...There seems to be a network around my apartment, which is how I've been getting online, and teh speeds are pretty decent, connectivity is iffy, but only because I don't know the source...

When I got the system, it would not boot...I ran the BIOS harddrive diagnostic, and it said that the drive was bad...So, I tried to format it, and sure enough, it stopped @ 63%...So, what I did was created a 30 GB partition and it worked fine....Yesterday, I took the harddrive out and examined it, sprayed it w/some canned air, and when I reran the diagnostic, it passed...So I'm wondering if the other 30 Gigs were somehow being misread because the drive was disloged...I was going to go through and try and create another partition w/the remaining free MB's and just use it for VMWare, etc...

Any tips, any questions..? Maybe help me get this puppy up to speed..?

ABSOLUTELY do a power system diagnostic on it. let is calibrate the battery, or it can fry. that is a serious laptop, and the most common defect is the power to video.

install.

http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/

highly recommended for laptops. and dump all uneccesary gear. basically it lets you create a power scheme that keeps the cpu running max. get a cooling pad or a fan just for contingency, if you plan on being on for long.

for visiblilty my suggestion to you is use the laptop, and connect it to your desktop monitor if the screen is not up to par. actually, use your keyboard and mouse, if you want... i do sometimes. you can not imagine how difficult it can be to replace the screen or what could go wrong, and it takes about 4.5 hands to do it. and then you have to recycle it, because it is a crime to have a broken one, or dispose of it in unregulated manners. it gets worse if you have touch screen, like i do.

but it can be done on other models http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic19537.html

you still have less video capacity that you are used to, but the familiar monitor will probably put you in "I'm working is safe mode" mentality.

sounds like your drive was dislodged, btw... or physically impeded by debris. there is also some other things t could be (according to my it guy) but its fixed now.

for wireless internet, you may have different methods to connect through winxp and through the actual wireless card application. i get varying levels of connectivity with these (win xp, link sys, *and some other thing that works VERY well in cafes but not anywhere else*), some net works work better in certain places for some reason, i think it has to do with the latency,.. not the frequency.

hope that helps, see ya next week!
raum

you absolutely need to get the program network stumbler to use to help diagnose connectivity and available wireless access.

sounds like the hard drive needed to be reseated with the contacts in the laptop, all is good now.

the screen and the backlighting are the single most expensive/hardest thing to replace on a laptop. typically when a screen goes out and you are still under a warrenty or protection plan, you will get a new/refurb laptop in short order. Most techs know trying to mess with all the bs proprietary connections and adapters for laptop screens is not worth the hassle.

I had an old laptop I wanted to use the screen as a secondary monitor for, when I added up how much it would cost to get the hardware I needed, it would have been more than just getting a new lcd monitor and it would have been a ghetto mod with wires and shit hangin all over the place.

-emanon

Thanks for the tips guys...

I have the battery program and Network Stumbler...The battery program I have figured, but this Network Stumbler program I'm going to have to figure out...I have some weird shit going on, because in my device manager, both the Ethernet port and the Wireless card have yellow splats on them, but somehow its working...

Loading Network Stumbler disables the Windows Wireless Service. When you close the program it will start it back up again, so that should not be the issue. Network Stumbler is good for letting you know how many wireless signals there are and also if those signals are WEP/WPA Encrypted, what the SSID is, and what the Signal:Noise Ratio is. Does Network Stumbler start making some pinging type noises after you load it?