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strange windows 2000 problem

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mxthunder

Member
Joined
Dec 27, 2004
Location
Northeast Ohio
I have a toshiba portege 3110ct with windows 2000 on it using a PCMCIA ethernet adapter for a network card. This computer was given to me and used to have zone alarm installed on it, so I had to remove every trace of that before i could even get the stinkin thing online. i finally got it, and now AIM works fine, and firefox works fine for about the first 20 min, then firefox acts like it cant get a connection, however aim will still work, no matter what. its like theres something blocking both firefox's and IE's access to the internet. if i restart, it will work fine for the first 20 minutes again. There are no additional processes coming up and everything is disabled in msconfig. Im really stumped on this one.


Also does anyone have any ideas on how I could reformat this thing. It has NO internal floppy, NO internal CD rom and no other boot devices that will work without windows. So i really cant do anything to reformat and reinstall.
Thanks!
 
Might have a solution for you, try do adware and virus scan. mostly like its infected files interfereing with the software.
 
Brilliant idea. Tried it but no luck. I also did a reg clean. Whatever it is, it happens after 10 minutes of uptime. Im really stumped on this one. Event viewer shows nothing that helps.
 
Is it a DNS issue? Try to connect to a website by ip instead of by name. It might be a name resolution issue instead of an actual network connectivity issue.
 
mxthunder said:
Also does anyone have any ideas on how I could reformat this thing. It has NO internal floppy, NO internal CD rom and no other boot devices that will work without windows. So i really cant do anything to reformat and reinstall.
Thanks!
Yes. I do. Use an external floppy or optical drive. Also you may connect notebook hard disk to a desktop computer then format (may require adapter).
 
I had a laptop like that. Some of them won't even boot off external floppies or cd's (depends on the bios). Some will.

Check the bios, you may be able to use bootp to boot if from an image over the network. (I'm not sure if windows can be installed this way, Linux can be. MS may prevent you from making a net bootable image of their CD's.)

If you absolutely can't get windows on it, you can yank the hard drive out, plug it into another pc, and install linux on it, then just drop it back into the pc. Unlike windows, it will just boot up and work anyways, it won't care that it's in a different pc (if you use the right distro).

You can do this with windows too if you managed to find some hardware with a close enough configuration that windows can recover by autodetecting the new hardware. The closer the better, the more changes, the more likely windows will BSOD.
 
MRD said:
I had a laptop like that. Some of them won't even boot off external floppies or cd's (depends on the bios). Some will.

Check the bios, you may be able to use bootp to boot if from an image over the network. (I'm not sure if windows can be installed this way, Linux can be. MS may prevent you from making a net bootable image of their CD's.)

...you can yank the hard drive out, plug it into another pc, and install linux on it, then just drop it back into the pc. Unlike windows, it will just boot up and work anyways, it won't care that it's in a different pc (if you use the right distro).
Not true for all versions of Windows.
 
Which version(s) of windows will allow you to install on one PC and boot on another, with arbitrary changes to hardware?

I know windows 2000 will not, as I just tried this last week, and it BSOD'd me. =P
 
MRD said:
Which version(s) of windows will allow you to install on one PC and boot on another, with arbitrary changes to hardware?
Windows 98, Windows ME, and I believe Windows Preinstalation Environment. Also, Windows NT 4.0, Windows NT 3.0, Windows 95b, and Windoows 95 may too (never tried). Possibly also, Windows 3.11 for Workgroup or ealier versions of Windows, I have never tried completly changing the hardware with them.
 
Hmm thanks for all the ideas guys!! I do not have a external floppy drive for it but im sure I could come up with one. I do have a PCMCIA CD rom drive but i cannot get dos drivers for it. I never thought of the DNS issue, I will try that tonight.
 
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