Urgent beard-level help required!!

[ex_matelot]

Girlfriends laptop just died

Dell Latitude CSX H500 notebook
Windows ME

Only has external CD drive.

Will not boot up,on trying to start it states registry error-run SCANREG.

Cannot find a way to get into msdos-safe mode,when selected, runs a quick diskcheck (improper shutdown) and then attempts to install some non existant,unspecified hardware.After that,im left with a blank grey screen that just says safe mode in top left and lower right side.

Have no system disks etc,does anybody know any other ways I can access DOS for the scanreg?

CAn Access BIOS etc via F2 on startup but....tis no good I think.

Thanks.

[Richard Spandit]

Judging by the fact you've managed to post on here, you've got a working computer. Do some Google searches for bootdisks and you can burn a bootable CD on your computer which should enable you to run DOS on hers.

[Mac the Knife]

ME (an awful half-arsed abortion of an OS) by default can't access real-mode DOS (MS fudged the ability to do so).

But this is fixable. See http://www.geocities.com/mfd4life_2000/

Hope it helps :ok:

[ex_matelot]

Cheers MAc,will try then there is the problem of transferring whatever I download from there!!

Richard..obviously I am posting from a different laptop to the one thats tits up!!!!

[Richard Spandit]

Richard..obviously I am posting from a different laptop to the one thats tits up!!!!

Yes, I got that, which is why I mentioned "your" and "her" computer... I was implying that trying to fix the problem when all you have is her broken computer might be a little difficult :)

Is her important data backed up? If so, you might want to think about installing XP (or Linux!!!). With XP you probably won't lose any data anyway...

[ex_matelot]

My major problem at the moment is ..the laptop is essentially dead,it has an external Cd rom attached,the bio settings do not have a cd device in the startup order,just-Diskette then hard drive.There is no floppy.

I am not much of a computer whizz (clean shaven;) so the link you posted Mac was a bit over my head.

Cheers for the help anyway chaps.

If only I could get to the DOS......for scanreg/fix...???

Edit

Have downloaded and copied a win me bootdisk,it instructs to copy to a floppy-,,dont have..so cannot use it as far as I can see??

[frostbite]

As you say the laptop has a CD but no floppy, and the BIOS is geared only for floppy or HD, could it be that the BIOS regards the CD as a floppy?

[shuttlebus]

Hmmm,

Now, perhaps your GF hasn't given you all the bits and pieces or I have missed something very basic. There has to be a way to boot the machine, as back in the days of Me the options were limited and MS only allowed two ways of installing an OS: -

1) Direct boot from CD
2) Boot via floppy and then install from CD.

So, which is it here?

I am not trying to be smart here - but to solve the problem we need to understand how dell expected the user to re-install the OS - I can guarantee they didn't expect you to send it back to them.....

Are the orignal manuals/disks to hand? It has either got to be CD or floppy....

Regards,

Shuttlebus

Edited to include..

Frostbite may have a bead on the problem... try popping the WinMe CD in the drive, set the Bios to floppy and see what happens. From memory an "install over the top" will not delete your data".

[BOFH]

I do not have a beard, but I detest problems which cannot be solved - somehow.

You are not the only person to have experienced this: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Q_21408843.html

I'm not magnanimous enough to cough up the $9.95 they want (and there is no guarantee of a solution).

The way I see it:
(a) You need the original floppy drive which came with the machine (or a replacement from Ebay or somesuch); or
(b) You mount the laptop's drive in a desktop with an 2.5" to 3.5" adaptor (PM me if you need to borrow mine) and fsck the thing there.

Assuming the lady in question would like to hold onto the machine for a while, (a) seems the best option. If there are really important data on the machine, (b) is preferable, as you've more control over what is going on.

BOFH