Need help on my nx8220

Although I am fairly familiar with the desktop and have built and configured a few desktop pcs, I'm an almost complete novice to the laptop world.

2 months ago I bought my first laptop, a HP nx8220 with M750 (1.86 GHz) processor and 512 MB ram. I've so far not installed much software on it and have used it mainly for surfing. The computer is very fast, I ran SupierPi and it beat my P4-2.4Ghz desktop by 20 seconds. Besides the rather dim & moody display the biggest problem I have with it are actually the frequent crashes of programs. IE in particular has been prone to crashes, problem seems to have originated from a microflash active-x control (flash8.ocx). I reinstalled flash-plugin several times but problem keeps coming back. I've noticed that the first crash usually happens after I unplugg the Lan and start to use WLan only.

Some thing definitely is going on my laptop. And i think it's just software. I for exmpale can not uninstall Yahoo-toolbar which I did on my desktop in a breeze. Today I tried to install Visual Studio 2003 on it and got the error message: "Setup has detected that another program requires the computer to reboot...", so had to abort the installation process. Rebooting the computer did not help. I wonder which is this 'another program'?

The taskbar shows that I have the following programs running: Norton Antivirus 2006, Bluetooth, Synaptic Pointing Device, etc. I in particular don't know what the latter 2 are for and would love to have them unstalled if I can.

What I really want to do however is to have the OS reinstalled manually like I did with my desktops. But with little experience with the laptop and wireless setup I really need some advices here. Any help greatly appreciated.

Tony

 

I would suggest using Firefox. Re-installing the OS should be easy. Just make sure you have all the drivers before you start.

 

What I would do first is to check your XP to see if it is SP2 version and update all avaliable updates from microsoft. After that I would install spybot from download.com, update and scan your harddrive. Also, you may need to see if your AV program had expired.

 

Thanks for the replys. I checked for the things mentioned here and found nothing wrong.

Now I am leaning more and more towards a manual reinstall. But before I do that I wonder what are the things I have to watch during such a process. Right now there are a bunch preinstalled software (HP Credential Manager etc), do I really need them (I use my laptop mainly for home use)? Also will wireless networking be automatically set up for me by the OS, or I have to do the setup/configuration self?

Can someone please outline the main steps I need to go through here.

Thanks!

Tony

 

For XP there aren't many main steps to list actually. Your computer came with a recovery/installation DVD from HP that includes all software and drivers that were preinstalled on your computer. But as other people have pointed out, you also have to install SP2 (if your DVD is that old) and all available updates from microsofts site. After this if you have have any doubts if you're missing something you can always check HP's site for the latest software and driver installers for your laptop model. Believe me its all there.

Your wireless will be set up during the installation process. The manufacturers driver is included in the installation media. Again if you have any problems, you can check this afterwards from HP's or the manufacturer's site. You of course have to do all the settings for your particular network setup yourself.

So in summary:
1. backup all your data (be careful with this one - you might have misplaced and saved stuff in the wrong place etc. - so look through the hardrive before proceeding).
2. Write down any settings you've changed. This would for example include your wireless network settings etc.
3. Recovery DVD in and reinstall. It's a good idea to make separate partitions for windows and everything else (documents and programs).
4. Download everything from Windows Update. If in doubt check out HP's site for lates drivers (but don't mess with the BIOS updates!!!).
5. Secure your computer. install and configure Firewall, Anti-virus and Anti-spyware programs.

I myself have gone through the masochistic rites of installing Windows 2000 and SuSe linux on my NX6125, neither of which isn't exactly 'supported' by HP. So you'll have much more fun I'm sure. Ask if you get any problems...