Laptop Help Please

[pennydog]

I got a "Westinghouse Intel Celeron M 1.46GHz / 802.11 Wireless / 512MB DDR2 / 60GB HDD / Dual Layer DVDRW / 14.1" WXGA / Windows XP Home / Notebook PC" for Christmas. My husband opened it when it arrived and set up user accounts and made sure it worked before the 30 day return policy expired. Anyway, I opened it on Christmas Day and was getting ready to set it up to run off my wireless router and when I tried to put in my WEP code, I noticed the capital letters did not work. I tried shift, cap locks, shut it down, rebooted, re-instaleld the "resource cd" that came with it and nothing. I called tech support (yes they were working) and the guy told me a "level 2 tech" would call me back the next day and that it seemed I had an older resource cd.

Ok I wait nearly the whole day for a level 2 tech to call me back and they never did, so I called them. The tech I got had me go through the same steps as the day before. He keeps insisting I click on a utility that is not on my cd. He has me hold and then comes back and tells me I need to send them the laptop for repairs (???) and it will take 2-4 weeks to get it back. I thought it all sounded strange, but what do I know? So I decided to call back today and ask if they could just send me new cd to see if that would fix it. What are the chances of me getting the same tech as last night, well I did and he was not too happy that I was calling back (or so it seemed). He told me the missing utility had nothing to do with the cap function not working and they needed to repair it.

Sorry this is so long, but does anyone here have a clue as to why it does not work now when it did in mid November? Do those functions just stop working on a new laptop? I never even got to get out on the internet, we have not installed an AV or any programs yet. It has WIN XP only and no other programs except what was installed when purchased.

Thanks for any info.

[pennydog]

Sorry I did not mean for this to post 3 times.....can someone delete 2 of them?

[jstanek7]

Do you have a usb keyboard to try and see if the capital mletters work with it?

[SuperSparks]

This is one of those problems that could be either hardware or software. Did you re-install Windows from that Resource CD?

[pennydog]

Thanks guys for the info. I do not have a usb keyboard to try. We thought about re-installing WIN XP but have not tried that yet. We will try that and see if it works. I will post back the results.

Oh yeah, a stupid question here, how do I re-install WIN without it deleting or over riding all my other things on the laptop? When we upgraded from WIN 98 to WIN XP on the Thinkpad, that took all our other programs off, the dvd movie player etc. Actually the WIN CD has never been opened, so I guess they use one they have to load it on the laptop. I do have the key though to register it.

[SuperSparks]

You can try doing an over-the-top reinstall. Boot up with the XP CD in the drive and let Setup run. Go past the "C" and "R" repair options by pressing Enter just as if you're doing a clean install and you'll eventually get an option to "Repair an existing installation". That's the one you want. If it asks about formatting you've gone wrong, so start over.

You'll get to keep your existing apps & settings, but you need to re-install SP2, Windows Updates & any unsigned drivers afterwards. NOTE: Be aware that you'll lose any protection from Blaster / Sasser type worms. Don't go online without a firewall, whether the built in Windows one or 3rd party.

How to perform a re-install of WinXP

Repair XP

WinXP Non-destructive Total Rebuild

[pennydog]

Thank you Sparks for the info. We will try this later this afternoon and see if it works.

[pennydog]

We got the laptop working and the capital letter feature works. I am not sure what we did to it to make it work again, but we did not have to re-install WIN XP (yet). A co-worker of my husbands looked at it, clicked around on a couple things and the feature started working again. I was able to set it up to our wirelss router and then download the AV etc.

I have another question, when I went in to the network to set the WEP code, the profile was mylaptop so I set our WEP code there and it works. If the "mylaptop" profile was that of a neighbors, then my WEP code would not have worked, right? There are a couple other really low signals there that I assumed belonged to a neighbor.

Thanks for all the info given in getting the laptop up and running.