My friend recently gave me his laptop in the hopes that I could find out what was wrong with it. But, I can't seem to make any headway against the problems. It's running Vista and is an HP.
Problems.
1. No wireless or Wired lan connectivity
2. I can't install anything.
3. On start up the "safe mode" option shows up.
1. No matter what I try, I can't seem to set up an internet connection. This is compounded by the fact that whenever I do try I always get an error message. My friend said that something went wonky with windows firewall settings, and so I tried changing them, but it says that a device dependency failed to start. So from there I went into the device manager and diddled around with the network adapters. But as far as I can tell, they seem to be functioning properly.
2. My next thought is that it was a virus, so I put a copy of AVG onto my USB drive and tried installing it on the laptop. Again however I was thwarted. I can't seem to install anything either, Vista just gives me another error message.
3. The computer will boot normally into windows, but every time I restart it, the safe mode option comes up saying that windows didn't shut down normally even though I did. This worries me even more and makes me thing that some critical system file has gone AWOL or something.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. As my next thought is to tell my friend that his laptop is forked and he needs to wipe his HD and do a fresh install. Thanks for reading.
Problems.
1. No wireless or Wired lan connectivity
2. I can't install anything.
3. On start up the "safe mode" option shows up.
1. No matter what I try, I can't seem to set up an internet connection. This is compounded by the fact that whenever I do try I always get an error message. My friend said that something went wonky with windows firewall settings, and so I tried changing them, but it says that a device dependency failed to start. So from there I went into the device manager and diddled around with the network adapters. But as far as I can tell, they seem to be functioning properly.
2. My next thought is that it was a virus, so I put a copy of AVG onto my USB drive and tried installing it on the laptop. Again however I was thwarted. I can't seem to install anything either, Vista just gives me another error message.
3. The computer will boot normally into windows, but every time I restart it, the safe mode option comes up saying that windows didn't shut down normally even though I did. This worries me even more and makes me thing that some critical system file has gone AWOL or something.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. As my next thought is to tell my friend that his laptop is forked and he needs to wipe his HD and do a fresh install. Thanks for reading.