Old Sony Vaio - Wireless is dead, among other problems

linkin

linkin

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Okay, my dad is having a problem with his old sony vaio. model number is PCG-GRT30P. It's a pentium 4 desktop replacement.

The wireless is dead. drivers are installed but it won't work. latest sony ones have been installed, it gets a "code 10 - the device cannot start" error with any version of the drivers. The wireless actually has a switch, which was on when we tried to use the wireless on it. no go. We even took apart the laptop to see if the connection had fallen out or something but we couldn't find it anywhere. laptops are a bitch to take apart.

Is it possible the wireless hardware has failed? and is it fixable?

The laptop also has a bad battery (holds little/no charge) and when unplugged the display goes funky, most likely because of some power saving setting somewhere.

Also, the function keys, well, no longer function. the laptop screen is very bright and we can't adjust it now.

Can anyone help?
 
There are probably options to troubleshoot..but why not try and reformat at this point..start completely fresh.
 
already done that :D the hdd has two partitions so i installed it on the second one. the first install is borked but my dad has all his stuff on that one.
 
You might want to find a cheap notebook hard drive and do a fresh install and see if the symptoms are still there. A corrupt windows could cause all those issues. I had to do a fresh install of vista basic one time for a client because the dial up modem would never connect to his internet service. After fresh install, it worked fine.
 
Try getting yourself a copy of Linux and running it as a LiveCD. Typically most hardware will work without much if any configuration. If it continues not to work, you can confirm it's hardware.

Also, if you have another laptop with mini-PCI (I assume this is before express-cards) you could swap the cards and see if it works in another computer.
 
Thanks for suggestions. the wireless is built into the laptop somewhere. I will try another HDD and linux/livecd.
 
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