Franken-Comp

Hello

Two years ago I purchased a laptop from Target (EW! I know V_V) and, uh, well just this morning I had to wash the hard drive and re-install windows. No big deal, yeaH? No. Apparently, this particular brand of computer requires that the notebook utilities and resources be installed via a second cd-rom.

A cd-rom that my very small sister put in the dishwasher...


Anycrap, this didn't faze me, many of my cds and such have fallen prey to her need to use large kitchen appliances. I figured I could use the second pc in the house to download all the sound, video, and internet-like drivers, and then copy them to my own pc.

I looked in the device manager, and for the first time in a long time, I actually cried.

Everything... EVERYTHING on this notebook is unbranded.


Even the casing.

I got it at Target, and the only label on it says "Colorware" and there is no other brand label on it whatsoever. I dug a little deeper, to find out that the components are of several different brands!


So far, I have found toshiba, hp, and ibm pieces.


Why the hell are these things sold?
GRAAAAAAAAAAAR!
/end roar


Yeah, so now I have no eeking idea what to do, if anyone's heard of this and could perhaps point me in the direction of a { large scythe to kill the manufacturer with} location where I can learn more, I'd { offer sexual favors} be eternally grateful.

 

Moral: Never buy laptops from a store that also sells furniture.

 

Why don't you contact the store you bought it from? Either they should be willing to sell spare recovery CDs or the laptop should already have a hidden partition containing the recovery content.

 

rofl @ SmoothTofu: Yeah. I know. T_T I should really not.. ever... do that again.

But yeah. LESSON LEARNED. Trust me.


bc135 - Target no longer sells this computer (it's a li'l obsolete-ish). I already called them. They also told me that they got it from somewhere else... and couldn't tell me anything. One would really figure that someone working in the electronics department should know more than their own name, but boy was I surprised. ~eyeroll~


I also looked for this magical partition of love and joy - it does not exist.

edit: I have remembered the intel-thingies and the realtek-thingies but there's some mystery-thingies I'm still lacking.

I r screwed, ya?

Ya.

ANYONE WHO READS THIS: Pretty pink computers sold at target are fine to buy... if they're for decoration only They should never be turned on.

Ever.

 

Poor you How much did you pay for it/specs?

 

They MUST have some information for you... start bugging them. They're just being lazy.

 

I paid just under 800$ for it, I think it was $830 with shipping.

It's specs are...

~drumroll~


You should know that I don't know what any of this means

Or if it's the right information.

Genuine Intel CPU
T2050 @ 1.60 ghz
800mhz, .99 GB ram

It's running XP SP2
Just about 100gb HD space.

 

1.Well, first of all you need drivers for your chipset. That's either made by intel(the chipset is i945p/gm in your case), nvidia or ati\amd. An easy way to find this out is this: do you have integrated graphics? If yes, then the IGP manufacturer is also the chipset manufacture. Or, if everything else fails, try them one at a time. there are only 3 posibilities.

2.Then, you need video drivers. Again, there are only 3 big manufacturers: intel(integrated only), ati/amd and nvidia. You can try installing everest to tell you what video card you have. It will work even whitout any driver installed.

3.As for the sound, you said it yourself that its a realtek solution. And, since that notebook isn't very old, it almost certainly has realtek HD audio. Download the driver from the realtek website(there are only 2 drivers, one for the old ac97 and one for the more recent hd audio, so you can't miss it).

4. LAN card: there's a chance that it gets detected by windows automatically. If not, you can try realtek again, since they are one of the most popular(theres only one lan driver on their website, so you cant miss it). other lan chip manufacturers are intel, atheros, broadcom etc.

4. WLAN: same as above, with the mention that your best shot is intel(3945 abg to be exact)

And there you have it. the most important parts of your notebook. As for the rest, i don't really know. If you could find out their manufacturer, you could try googling it. For example: texas instruments card reader driver.

Hope it helped

 

Bubba - I'd be very appreciative if I knew what any of that meant I fixed it though, by downloading like 100000000 different things and trying them all until I found some that worked.