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USB laptop troubles...... help?

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Ladysmokeater
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08 Dec 2005, 10:10 am

Ok I bought a Dell Inspron 1150 back in may. it was a refurb, but everyone i know raved about the dells and the refurbished laptops, so I got one. I didnt get the extendid warentee......

Bout three weeks or so ago, The two USB ports puked out. They wont register anything, they only give power to the item. I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers, ran all kinds of diagnostics, and madesure the devises were working... all no avail. I contacted Dell support online and they said to RELOAD windows that it was a software issue (we ran another diagnostic pgm that checked circuts and all was working fine). My bro in law is a computer tech and says that its the motherboard and I should have never gotten a laptop, that Im an idiot for not getting the extended warentee, foolish for gettignthe laptop, you name it.......


I want an other opnion..... BEFORE I reload windows......


Any suggestions?



alex
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08 Dec 2005, 10:15 am

If you have windows XP you can try a restore installation (you would do this the same way you'd do a complete reinstall but you'd be able to choose the option) which will not do anything other than replacing windows files.


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s0uThp4rk
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08 Dec 2005, 3:58 pm

Well, if it truly is a hardware problem reloading windows shouldn't make any difference.. If I were you, I'd run a cd bootable version of Linux, like Damn Small Linux (DSL). I don't trust windows, but I use it anyway... Whenever I'm having trouble with it I check in Linux to see if it's the same, then I basically know it's the hardware... I have a feeling this is probably hardware though, but windows certainly can act strange. There might be an alternative to the USB ports you currently have, but I'm not sure.. I haven't really dealt with laptops too much, I just got my first one a little bit ago.. (My first real one, my other was an old one that i just played around with... couldn't get the network card i got to work with it but that's off topic.. lol. )



Ladysmokeater
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12 Dec 2005, 10:48 am

i know this sounds stupid... Whats Linux?



Fogman
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12 Dec 2005, 2:06 pm

Ladysmokeater wrote:
i know this sounds stupid... Whats Linux?


This should be a good intro

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux


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Sarcastic_Name
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12 Dec 2005, 6:49 pm

Did you ever try resesting? Just asking, you never mentioned doing it it. It's always the most obvious answer.


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Ladysmokeater
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16 Dec 2005, 10:06 am

how do you mean?



Ladysmokeater
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28 Jan 2006, 9:44 pm

after resetting and restarting and reloading everything twice, Dell finally agreed to "look at it". Funny they said I had no warentee untill I meantioned the lawsuits others have brought on them over this same issue.anyhow, they had to replace the motherboard. NOW IT WORKS!! ! YAY!! !