I just erased my hard-drive and now have many problems

Saladsamurai

Here are two that I have right now:

1.) The monitor I am using is not the original. The resolution is a mess. Everything is huge. It will not let me change the resolution either. I have tried control panel->Appearance and themes->change screen resolution and this does not work, I cannot slide the little slider.


2.) I use a wireless router. I downloaded the driver for my RangeMax wireless adapter and installed it. Now I a little lost as to how to get back online?


Any ides for either? Thanks a bunch.

MATLABdude

1) Install the proper drivers for your video card / chip. By default, Windows (maybe it's only XP, 98 and/or 95) assumes a VGA display.

2) What was the name of your network? If you had some form of security on it, you'll need to remember the password / key as well. If not, you'll need to perform a hard reset to clear the settings off your router. Downside: now you'll need to get your router up and going as well!

Do you have any computer-inclined friends that owe you some favours?

Saladsamurai

1.) It is XP. So do I need the drivers for the Monitor? If so I found them at Acer, but it is a weird file format. What the hell is ".icm" ? And how do I get my PC to run it?

2.) I know the name of my network and the passkey. But it is an old PC. No wireless card. I have a USB adapter for that. I reinstalled the driver for the adapter, but I cannot figure out what the next step is. How do I get online from here?


Thanks!

junglebeast

The drivers are for the graphics card not the monitor. Drivers should just be regular .exe setup file and you should get them from the video card manufacturer

Go to Acer, select Service and Support, Driver Download, select Product Family (eg, Desktop), find your computer model number, then you should see a list of drivers come up; eg,

AGP Driver, LAN Driver, Audio Driver, VGA Driver. The VGA driver is the one causing this problem but you should install all the drivers they provide to get it back the way it was when you bought it.

MATLABdude

1) That's the one thing you probably don't need. You need to find the drivers for your actual video card (e.g. from ATI, NVIDIA, VIA, etc.) If your monitor plugs into a port that's on the motherboard itself, you've got an integrated video chip and will need to go to the website of the manufacturer of your motherboard (actually, you should be doing this anyways--chipset drivers and various controllers often aren't auto-recognized by Windows). Just enter your model number at the website, and you should be able to find all the specific drivers for your motherboard.

Incidentally, .icm is a colour calibration file, not a driver (and you don't need it); once you're net connected, you can go to Windows Update (TIP: go Custom, and not Express, and you can also find hardware updates) and see if they have an updated driver for it (usually, it only affects power settings, unless your monitor has special features):
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

2) That's okay; when you plug in your USB adapter, do you see a pop-up window showing the various wireless networks around you? If not, you probably need to update your computer to Windows XP SP2 or SP3 (that's when they brought in the wireless zero configuration utility and support for WPA and WPA2). Unless your wireless module has its own built-in connection utility, in which case you should visit their website and see if they have a 'getting started' guide for your module.

Instead of connecting through the wireless router, can you connect via Ethernet (the wired network cable thing--you may have ports on your router)? Even if you have to bypass your wireless router (this part is tricky because your computer is naked to the net--you probably want to install a virus suite and/or firewall first--or visit ONLY the Windows Update page: NO SURFING!) Alternately (I'm assuming you have another computer connected to the internet) you can download SP2 onto a USB key and install it from there onto your computer at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

EDIT: Beaten to the chase by Junglebeast

Saladsamurai

Okay. I am using another computer to find drivers. I will use it to search for the video card driver thingy. It's a Dell dimension 2400 fyi. I will also check put the srvice packs and post back here.

i think the reinstall only came with SP1.

EDIT ALSO: Should install the disc that says "For reinstalling v.9x/56K DATA/ FAX Modem" ? Or does that sound optional to you? Sounds optional to me. I don't fax.

MATLABdude

Well why didn'tcha say so? :-D

Go to dell.com, click on the Support tab at the top, and then click on the Product Support tab underneath that, and then click on Drivers and Downloads on the page. From that point, you can enter your Dell service tag (it's somewhere on the back of your computer), or search by model number. (Forget the part about the motherboard searching, unless you've replaced it along the way--Dell rolls their own, and yes, unless you have an add-in video card, it'll be integrated)

If you don't need the modem, you probably don't need to install it, but if you don't Windows will keep on nagging you to do it (in any case, it probably won't hurt you)

Saladsamurai

Yeah. I am at the dell site and for some reason it will not let me download the driver.

Does it matter that i am using a MAC to get the driver? It shouldn't right? All I am trying to do is save the .exe

I am Here and I scroll to the bottom to the video card and hit download. All i get is an error screen. Can someone else try it just to confirm that it is their site or if it's me?

EDIT: Using my other PC I can download it.

Saladsamurai

Yeah! Monitor issue resolved.

D-loading SP2 now. Hopefully that will help with the internet thing.

junglebeast

On a side-note, I've had instability problems in the past from using drivers supplied by the chipset maker so now I always make sure to get the driver recommended by the actual card manufacturer (eg, in my case that's eVGA not nVidia even though it's an nVidia card).

rcgldr

XP is now up to SP3, and Microsoft is now pushing IE 8 as an automatic update.

Saladsamurai

Right. I was not sure if I could go directly from SP1 to SP3.... I am up to SP3 now and everything seems to be running smooth thus far.

Thanks for all the help guys!

ALSO: MATLABdude, do you know by chance about the ".NET" framework? I was installing MATLAB and at about 97% completion it gave me a message about something to the effect of "the .net framework environment is not present on your machine..bla, bla, bla....please get it"

It completed the install and seems to be working fine. But, I am expecting to encounter problems because of that.

Do you know what this ".NET framework" is by chance?

MATLABdude

.NET is a programming framework that makes it easier for programmers to make visual elements in the Windows environment (and, incidentally, backend Windows stuff). You need it if you run programs that utilize .NET (and these programs will make it well known when they do!--so don't worry about it). Or so I understand.

As a rule of thumb, I don't install optional updates unless I need them. I install critical updates, and hardware updates, but usually not the optional ones. If you wanted to avoid a critical update, say, purely at random, Genuine Advantage, you can check the 'Don't remind me to install this update' checkbox in the Windows Update website (this may only work in Internet Explorer).