Welcome to RCF - WHF

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

Sorry you lost a long post I know just irritating that can be. It's happened to me before but not so much because the forum has gone down but because of this freaking wireless keyboard. If I hit the wrong key it closes the page! %%$# LOL Firefox has a solution for that, they have a plug in that allows you to open the page you just closed and my post would be there. But now I'm using SeaMonkey and it doesn't have that plug in.

Lets hope HP is quicker with that graphic card than they were with the mobo!

Brick wall

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

Just spent two hours on the phone with hp, and one tech guy was kind enough to help me and he witnessed what I was going through.

Ok the mobo doesn't have the same video card and therefore by pc rejected it, 1 long 3 short beeps. I was just looking and there are other differences too, but they both have the same part number. My card was about 1o times larger in size.

Anyway, first, after 90 minutes I got my money refunded, next they transfered us back to india to the parts store. I gave the guy all the numbers on the video card and he said wait a minute then some lady came on and wanted to know how she could help us, I guess we got disconnected. He grumbled and I told hin thats how its been going and he explained to the lady thatwe were disconected and then I told him I wiould just prefer to get my money back and he said i already did that and don't have to buy another mobo, so I told him I will just buy a new laptop and that was that.

Staples has a nice compaq for $450, one gig ram, 160 gig hd, dvd with lightscribe etc so I am going to go to staples in about an hour to buy one or order one if not in stock. The sale ends sunday but I want it now. It has vista but after a year I will just buy xp, or sooner.

I think I will have the mobo fixed rather than replaced. It really isn't damaged, just on component is burned. Then I will have two laptops.

I can take that aprt in about 30 minutes now and back togther in 30 mintes. I had to do that 4 times now, and it is in pieces again waiting to be fixed.

I got some photos before I packed it up to show the differences between the two.

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

Geez, computers really keep you hopping Dave. You should be an expert on dissembling a laptop that's for sure.

Good luck with the new one. You may even learn to like Vista before it's all over with. Before buying yet another XP I think I would hold on a bit, I'm sure MS will be coming out with anther OS pretty soon since Vista was such a disaster.

sunny

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

well I bought it, getting ready to fire it up.

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

so far its going ok, I think I will be able to live with vista for the laptop. It did stall out already though.

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

I have a question, probably a dumb one, how can I get data off my broken laptop? can I just drop the hd in my new laptop, what would happen, could I burn a disc to get the data? The old one is 60 gig and new one is 160.

I have been looking and peope say fixing a motherboard is too risky, so this might be the end of old laptop unless I but a new one on ebay for about $175 on up. I guess I will just look for a deal on a broken laptop with good motherboard.

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

I would NOT recommand dropping you old HDD into your new laptop.

As I've said before I know absolutely nothing about laptops so I may be feeling in the dark here but is there a way to hook up a 2nd HDD to your new Laptop via a ribbon cable? That would be the quickest way to do what you want, once hooked up as a slave you could move the files you want to your new HDD.

Lacking that ability the only thing I can think of is putting the old HDD into an external hard drive case, it will then plug into a USB port on your new laptop and you will be able to read it. I haven't priced external HDD cases but I've heard they run under $20 dollars and are a good thing to have around anyway.

sunny

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

I checked on it and I can buy a case for the hd and get info off of it and then use it as an external hd. It cokmes with a cd that installs the info to pc so it will except the different hd. It costs $50 and couldn't find on ebay.

http://reviews.cnet.com/storage-accessories/apricorn-ez-upgrade-ide/45 05-6517_7-30536726.html?tag=txt

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11379_7-6445033-1.html

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

Apricorn EZ Upgrade IDE Universal Enclosure Kit?

Under System Requirements it says:

OS Required
Apple MacOS 8.6 or later

dontknow