Problems with my M1330

I guess the main problem is that it has a tendency to lose its ethernet connection. Once it happens, the only way to get it back seems to be to reboot. It's resulted in several failed Windows Updates. I've tried installing the Broadcom drivers at the Dell site, but the ethernet wouldn't work at all after that so I used System Restore to undo the driver update. When it loses the connection, the orange light where the ethernet cable plugs into the laptop flickers. I can unplug it and it will stop, but will start flickering as soon as I plug the cable back in and will never make a connection until I reboot. I never had this problem with my 1720 and I'm wondering whether it's a driver problem or whether my ethernet card is flaky.

I'm also trying to figure out why I can't get SP1 installed. I tried running

sfc /scannow

from a command window using Run as Administrator. It always finds corrupted files that it says it can't fix:

Using the following:

findstr /C:"[SR] Cannot repair member file" %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log >C:\users\username\sfcerrors.txt

I get the attached file with the list of files that can't be fixed.

I've also tried booting from the Vista DVD and running sfc from the repair console

sfc /scannow /OFFBOOTDIR=C:\ /OFFWINDIR=C:\windows

and I get the same result about not being able to repair the files.
Could the sfc problem be what's preventing SP1 from installing?
Are the corrupted files something that could be affecting my ethernet?

 

did you uninstall your drivers first? and also disable it and then install drivers.

 

I tried to. It would not let me uninstall them for some reason. After 20 minutes of waiting for them to uninstall, I decided it wasn't going to work and quit the uninstaller by way of Control-Alt-Delete.
Also it seemed like the taskbar knew I'd disabled the card while Device Manager did not. I couldn't figure out what was going on.
I wasn't sure if installing the new drivers by using the Setup that came with them would work or not. It didn't.

 

I worked on it a while last night, and I got the ethernet card drivers uninstalled this time. I don't know why they didn't uninstall the other times I tried. Maybe they were "in use" or caught in a loop or something.

Almost as soon as the uninstall was finished, a window popped up asking to install new drivers for the card. I pointed it at the folder where I'd extracted the drivers from Dell, and they installed. Strangely, They seem to be the same drivers I had before though. The Dell site lists them as being July 2007 drivers. But in Device Manager it still says they are from April 2007. Hopefully uninstalling them and reinstalling them will fix the problem I've been having with the card, even if they are the same drivers.

I also managed to get SP1 from Windows Update last site. I updated the drivers for the fingerprint scanner and uninstalled the sound drivers and SP1 showed up on Windows Update. It started downloading and partway through the download a driver for the sound card installed itself without my approval. It was some generic "High Definition Audio" thing though, not the Sigmatel. After SP1 finished downloading it asked to reboot to finish the install. When that was finished, I uninstalled the "High Definition Audio" driver and reinstalled the Sigmatel audio driver. I think there is actually some improvement in the amount of static I've been getting in my headphone jack (doesn't seem to be quite as bad), but it's not gone completely. Hopefully the problem with the ethernet is fixed, but I'll have to use the computer a little more to know for sure.

I still have the problem with sfc /scannow detecting corrupt files.