Topic: Problems with friend's laptop

[David]

A friend of mine gave me his laptop to look at the other day. It has been constantly crashing recently and has my biggest enemy in the computing world - Windows Vista. He has also said a few times he deosn't like it and had allowed me to downgrade it to XP after the sucess with mine. So a new XP disk arrives, I put it into the disc drive, get the usual "Setup is loading blah blah" and then a blue error screen comes on saying "Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer."

Any idea why this is doing this? Has Microhardshowerofsoandsos put some update to prevent Shiesta from being over written since I did mine in February? Is there any other way to reformat the hard drive instead of via the Windows XP disc?

XP is genuine, I've no recovery disks, no Shiesta disc and no idea if the laptop has any recovery hard drive partitions.

[Pin]

Sounds Like a Thermal overload Are The air vents Clear, most People put Lappies on a Soft Surface and Block the Air flow and once They Start over Heating They are Prone To Do So, I  have a Dell (Well The Wife Uses it Now) Wirh a Cooling pad under it Still Freeze's of Shuts down once in a Blue Moon

Worth looking At I Tried a flat ice pack for a Few Weeks

Have You tried a System Restore Back to The Earlest Date Possible

And is There a System Recovery in The Start Menu ?
 

Talking As A None Computer Techy Person


 

[David]

There don't appear to be any restore points, Pin.

And I can't find any system recovery either.

To be honest the more I see this rubbish operating system the more I hate it.

[StrangerWithin]

As Pin suggested, possible thermal protection or maybe the HD is on its way out or even a dodgy memory stick?

[Mature4evr]

Regrettably, Windows Vista hinders the process of downgrading to prior, operating systems.  However, I hope this will resolve your predicament:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/06/22/how-to-downgrade-windows-vista-to-xp/

[obsdoc]

Problems with Windows Sheista?!?!  what CAN you mean? 

[David]

There isn't any thermal protection I'm afraid.

I've tried hooking up an external hard drive in the off chance that's been the problem and still I get the Blue error screen.

Sadly the link isn't much help but I have found software that should reformat the hard drive outwith Windows XP disc.

[David]

Further research tells me I need to download a hard disk driver for the XP setup to detect it and then put it on a floppy disk and boot from there. Did anyone consider that computers/laptops from the last few years don't have floppy drives on them? Roll on the external floppy drive now...

Considering his laptop is the predecessing model to mine they seem markedly different in their setup.

[StrangerWithin]

Further research tells me I need to download a hard disk driver for the XP setup to detect it and then put it on a floppy disk and boot from there. Did anyone consider that computers/laptops from the last few years don't have floppy drives on them? Roll on the external floppy drive now...

Considering his laptop is the predecessing model to mine they seem markedly different in their setup.

That doesnt seem to make much sense really. By rights if you boot from an XP CD it should give you the option to install XP from the disc. Then you will get all the normal warnings about losing the drives contents but you would just click yes and proceed. I have removed Vista from three PC's in our house and installed XP instead and have had no such problems David.

[David]

It belwiders me as well SW considering I did it smoothly on my laptop back in February, no problems what so ever. XP detected the wireless LAN, ethernet adapter, DVD-RW drive, graphics without additional drivers.

[Mature4evr]

Did anyone consider that computers/laptops from the last few years don't have floppy drives on them?

Behold the alleged advances of contemporary mechanization.

[David]

Everything appears okay now.