Windows installation and seemingly whole harddrive ruined thanks to a retarded wireless adapter from netgear?

December 27, 2009

my dad bought the WG311 v3 wireless adapter from netgear for his computer. after installing the software it disabled user switching and logon…only the administrator that installed the software could logon. it said I had to uninstall the software so I did and next time I tried to find a way to just install the device driver without the software…well I did and then windows wouldent boot…it said NTLDR missing so I booted from the XP disc to do a repair…I ran bootfix…it didnt work. then I ran mbrfix(master boot record) and that didnt work…I also copied ntldr and ntdetect to root from XP cd. now here I am with the harddrive in my computer on vista and Im looking at the drive with computer management\disc management and it shows the drive as a single partition with 76.33GB FAT file system (which is correct) but if you explore the drive or check its properties it says there is only 10MB total space with 3.4MB used the only files on the drive are ntldr and ntdetect
wyntry is absolutely right(I especially like your reply to dwight lol) but I ran out of text space for the original question(evil 1000 character limit)…anyway as for that downloadable hotfix I did find that and wanted to use it but I made the mistake of researching the problem after trying to fix it myself and thanks to that wrongly installed driver I cant boot to windows to install the fix. thing is…I was going to reinstall XP but as I mentioned b4 even tho it is an 80GB HD and disc manager sees that…explorer itself only sees it as 10MB and when I go to install XP thats all it sees as well. so it wants me to format the drive but thats not an option for me as there are important things on the disc…is there a way to access the data so I can copy it to my HD’s on my computer so I can reformat the drive safely and then reinstall XP? that looks like what Im gonna have to end up doing…I just dont know how to access the "vanished" data on the drive…

USB ports stopped working and I’ve tried everything. Is it a software or hardware issue?

August 5, 2009

A few days ago I was syncing my Samsung Cell Phone to my Inspiron 1150 and afterwards the computer cut off. I restarted it and neither one of the USB Ports in the back of it are working. Below are the following measures I’ve tried to resolve this issue.

1.Called Dell Tech support a multitude of times
2.Ran a Customized USB Test from the Dell Diagnostics CD and all checked fine.
3.Ran a Express USB Test from the Dell Diagnostics CD and all checked fine.
4.Ran a Symptom Tree Test for USB’s on Dell Diagnostics CD and all checked fine.
5.Ran a Thorough Test from the Dell Diagnostics CD and all checked fine.
6.Ran a Test from the Dell Inspiron ‘Fn’ key at boot and all checked fine.
7.Downloaded & installed from Dells Web site the most recent Bios, Division 7.
8.Downloaded & installed from Dells Web site the most recent Chipset Drivers.
9.Plug and Play is running & automatic in the Services portion of Computer Management.
10.USB is enabled in the Bios.
11.There is no damage to the USB Ports or plastics.
12.All USB items that wont work on my Inspiron 1150, work on other computers.
13.I’ve uninstalled all USB’s from Device Manager, restarted the computer, and reinstalled.
14.Ran the System File Checker (SFC /scannow) and all checked fine.
15.Ran Norton to check for viruses and all checked fine.
16.Ran Ad-Aware to check for spyware and all was fine.
17.I’ve left the computer unpowered for 8 hours, no plug and no battery.

With all of that done, still no USB device plugged into either of the 2 existing ports on my Inspiron 1150, show a device in Windows when something is plugged into them. No, mouse, no printer, no, flash memory drive, no nothing. Even though I see the flash memory drive light up showing its receiving power from the USB when it’s plugged in, it still doesn’t show in windows. Dell through technical support has said it’s a software issue, then hardware issue. But the diagnostics all show the hardware is fine. I did purchase a 2 port USB PCMCIa card for my Inspiron 1150 and its USB ports work fine, even though earlier today Dell technical support said that there was no such card that would function in my PCMCIa Slot. Technical supports solution, as always, is to reformat and reinstall Windows. I’m willing at this point to try and do a repair to windows to possibly see if I can get the two primary USB ports on my computer to work. But for some reason it’s asking for my password to start the repair and I’ve never ever had a pass word. Does anyone have any solution to my USB problem or a way for me to resolve the pass word issue so I can attempt to repair Windows?
Thanks for your reply programmer2718 and forgive me if I’ve not replied correctly in this forum. But to answer your questions:

1. I have XP Home SP3.
2. When trying to repair Windows with my Windows Installation CD, it asks for my Password. I tried to chat online with Dells technical support but was asked to send them a e-mail because they were so busy. As of yet I’ve not received a reply.
3. The two existing USB ports on the BACK of the computer do not work. Neither of them function, even though my flash memory stick lights up showing its receiving power from those two non-functional USB ports.
4. I purchased a PCMCIa card that has two USB ports. Those two USB ports work when I put the PCMCIa card in the PCMCIa card slot on the SIDE of my laptop.

So, it seems that your suggesting I should use Ubuntu and try to see if that operating system will see the two USB ports that aren’t apparently functioning in my Windows XP. I’ll try that and see. Thank you.