**HELP** Windows XP Laptop Totally Inoperable!!

Ok so here is what happened. When trying to find a way to remove Mcafee Security Suite from my computer, I believe what ever it was I downloaded and installed from an unknown site (thought it was safe and it was ridiculously hard to find any info on uninstalling from Mcafee's Site alone!) Turns out after running that uninstaller, it totally deleted many important files and rendered my laptop useless!

I have a Dell Inspiron 5100 with Windows XP SP2. Here are my problems:

1) CD Burner Drive itself has problems reading CDs. Sometimes it will read and sometimes it wont, keeps making clicking sounds as if it's trying to pick something up. After starting my laptop with XP CD inside, it notices the CD and goes into the "Reinstall Windows" phase with the blue screen but gets stuck at where it says on the bottom "Setup is loading files (Key and debugger) or something like that. Then the CD doesn't spin like its supposed to so it just fails completing that step and comes up with an error.

2) Anything you put into my USB hubs in the back, all it says is "Found New Hardware" and gets stuck there. Never does anything else. So this means that the external cd rom drive I have is useless as well.

3) Since many important files have been deleted, nothing works. No internet, nothing. Internet explorer window opens for s plit second and immediately dissapears.

4) I've tried formatting the harddrive in command prompt but it won't allow me to since I'm running off the same C Drive.

All I am trying to do at this point is wipe my computer out and reinstall Windows fresh. I've already backed up all my important stuff.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Have you tried using system restore to go back to before you attempted this mess?

 

I did and does not work. It fails with another windows generic message of some sort.

 

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I just got off the phone with a computer tech guy who acknowledged that I can't boot from an external cd drive but they said that was in Windows only. He said he would try and boot from that CD Drive another way but wouldn't tell me lol. He charges for his services which is why.

So what is this other way I can boot from an external CD Drive while not using Windows? Remember the problem in Windows is when I plug in the external CD Drive into my USB Port, it just says "Found New Hardware" but never goes anywhere past that step anymore.

Any suggestions?

 

Enter your BIOS by pressing F2 during the first part of boot up. In BIOS you can change your boot order. You can enalbe booting from an "external device", which is your USB connection. I'm not sure of your configuration, or even that F2 is the button for you, but you'll most likely need to enable the external boot AND set external as the first in the boot order.

 

I did exactly that last night. Its the option of Floppy Drive. I put that first in the order but it didn't do anything cos I don't think the USB External CD Drive is considered "Floppy" is it?

 

It may be that your BIOS is too old and can't see the USB as external.

You could get Ulimate Boot CD. Google it. It's bootable and you'll find out if you can boot fromt he CD taht way.

 

I checked the site out and it looks like I can't use it. It says you can build your Boot CD in Vista but not from your DVD drive. And my HP Laptop is a DVD/CD Burner drive.

I still might give it a shot though. Need to read through the rest of that site to see how difficult it is to build that boot cd. Again I hate that I am investing way to much time on a laptop that won't get me more than $100 lol.

**EDIT** Turns out they meant they don't have a resolution for XP on DVD's...they weren't referring to the actual unit. My bad. So I guess I can still try it.

 

You should give it a shot. It should work out quite nicely. Send me a stamp and I'll mail you my DVD.

I've got mine on a USB drive now.

 

So I guess my last question is this:

When I'm done making the Ultimate Bootable CD, what do I do with it? Put it in the external CD Rom drive and plug it into USB of my old Dell Laptop and bootup with that?

I'm just confused on the steps after I'm done building the CD.

 

You don't have an internal CD Rom drive?

 

I do but that's one of my major issues...it rarely works or bothers to spin. Just makes clicking and scratching sounds as if it's stuck trying to work or get a proper read. Otherwise if it fully worked, I think booting up from the Windows XP CD would have worked last night in a flash.

 

ok, this is a lot of work, but can you swap out the drives?

 

You mean swap out the hard drive? If so, a friend and I unscrewed a few covers on the back of the bottom baseboard thinking it was easy access to the hard drive but it was nowhere to be seen. This means it's somewhere deep inside and I'm not sure where to start unscrewing.

 

Can anything be done with an orange fire wire cable? I have one of those.

 

No, I was thinking about swapping out the optical drives. Remove the external from its casing and put it in the lappy. I dunno if they're compatible.

 

It has no "Factory Recover" in the startup options then, like F11 to start it going?

Simply method, imo, take out the drive and get some cables etc for it if you don't already have some and then connect it up to your desktop machine or a friends desktop machine. Should be seen as a new drive and from there do what you want to it - partition deletion, formatting etc..

You can even start the Xp install from there too, but sooner or later you will need to have a working cd-drive.

And I don't see why an external cd drive will not work outside of windows, I can understand why in windows as there are lots of optins that can affect them, but outside in normal boot conditions there should be no problem at all unless your usb ports are fubar'd.

CD as first option in the bios boot menu should always see the external usb drive, mine always does..

 

At this point I figured it's not worth it anymore. Brand new laptops today are $200 and up. All my data is already backed up. I'll try again some other time when I'm absolutely bored.

Thanks everyone!

 

Have you tried system restore in safe mode. My XP comp has failed system restore before and it has worked in safe mode.