Dell Inspiron E1405

[zeke1312]

When booting the laptop running XP it says it found new hardware (the Sony DVD+-RW DW-Q58A drive). The install wizard attempts to load the driver (which shows OK under the computer/hardware tab) but fails. Also if I try to format the hard drive I can't as it sees programs running....I don't see any running. My problem started when the left button on my keyboard ( I use the keypad for my mouse)no longer works and is now very erratic with the pointer going all over the place when I attempt to use it.Somehow the DVD player started having problems after that. If I get my DVD player problem solved I should be OK. Any ideas? Thanks. It seems there may be some settings in the registry corrupted.

 

[concorde]

As for the DVD problem, I'm sure you already tried to reinstall the driver, so...does it work if you use it?


Are you formatting within Windows through the command prompt or by left clicking on the hard drive icon and choosing Format? You have to do this in order to successfully format the drive: restart your computer holding down the F8 key. Choose to start up in Command Prompt (or Safe mode with command prompt) and you can go from there. You have to be in MS-DOS mode to format or repartition the hard drive (you can repartition graphically within Vista, that's a good thing about Vista even though I don't care for it!)

 

[zeke1312]

I've tried reloading the driver but the driver can't be found by the hardware wizard. XP keeps saying it found new hardware. The reason I attempted to format the drive was to be able to load the system software...but wait I can't since the laptop can't use the DVD player! Somehow the driver has been corrupted or the wizard can't find it for whatever reason. I can't use the CD that contains all the system drivers.