Issue1

[Grudux]

My Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop was recently infected by "something" so malicious that I ended up wiping the slate clean. However, I failed to make sure that I have my restore disk handy (I still can't find it). So, I had to purchase a new Windows XP CD, loaded the software, found many of the now missing drivers, and thought that I am so damn perfect; everything is going to work and look just as it did before my infection. However, I am now experiencing three issues:
1. I cannot get the sound to work.
2. When I try to turn the computer off, all the icons disappear, but it will not actually trun off. I am forced to press and hold the “off” button each time.
3. Each time I reboot, I get a message upon startup in the lower right hand corner informing me that there is a problem with the wireless connection driver.
Can someone please help?!

[jholland1964]

Did you purchase the computer from Dell? If so they should have a record of the purchase and if you log onto their site and type in your Service Tag then you should get a page which has all drivers needed for your system. You can actually call them and they can direct you to the proper drivers. This is even for a system who's warranty has expired. I have done this several times before for several different computers I have worked on.

[Grudux]

jholland, thank you for the advise. I did go through the process, and I now have sound again, but... after loading all the drivers I still experience the following:

1. All icons on the desktop appear blurry, and stretched horizontally. Any attempt to fix the resolution has no affect on this display.
2. I still cannot turn off the laptop the “normal” way. I have to hold down the OFF button down to do so.
3. I still have a box in the lower right-hand corner upon start-up, which states “Adapter problem / Driver is not installed”.
Can you help? Thank you.

[cauzomb]

Ensure that your graphics card drivers are installed and that the resolution is set to match the display.

To determine which graphics card is installed, open the control panel, and system, under hardware, click on display adapters and note which model adapter is installed;

There are some graphics adapters listed as OPTIONS, on the dell support site as well as an integrated intel graphics card. The driver that should be installed depends on which card/adapter is physically installed. If it is factory, and only has the integrated graphics adapter, then it should be the "Intel Graphics Media Accelorator 950"
What is actually installed depends on how your system is configured from the factory, prior to shipping, or if it has been upgraded, you need to know which card it was upgraded/configured with etc..

Here's a list of the possible graphics cards that your laptop could have been configured with originally, the list is located at dell.com, support, product model: e1705, specifications.
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 "Addon"
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS "Addon"
ATI Mobility™ Radeon® X1400 HyperMemory "Addon"
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 "integrated into the motherboard"


The physical display screen is listed as having the following features

Maximum resolutions:

WXGA+
1440 x 900 at 16.7 million colors

WUXGA
1920 x 1200 at 16.7 million colors

Refresh rate
60 Hz

[jholland1964]

jholland, thank you for the advise. I did go through the process, and I now have sound again, but... after loading all the drivers I still experience the following:

1. All icons on the desktop appear blurry, and stretched horizontally. Any attempt to fix the resolution has no affect on this display.
2. I still cannot turn off the laptop the “normal” way. I have to hold down the OFF button down to do so.
3. I still have a box in the lower right-hand corner upon start-up, which states “Adapter problem / Driver is not installed”.
Can you help? Thank you.

For comments 1 & 3 I would say this means your Video or Graphics Adapter driver is NOT installed. You will not get a clear, sharp desktop until the Adapter Driver is installed.

Now you said in your first post that

I failed to make sure that I have my restore disk handy (I still can't find it). So, I had to purchase a new Windows XP CD, loaded the software, found many of the now missing drivers,

This computer is old enough restore disk would be only for the operating system, period. The computer probably have also come with a disk called Drivers and Utilities. This would be where you would usually get the actual drivers for the computer, not from an XP CD. The XP CD may very well contain some drivers, frankly I cannot say for sure, but these would just be sort of "general Microsoft drivers" which "may" work with your system.
In order to get the proper drivers you need to know the actual hardware on the system, by manufacturer preferably.
As I noted in my first post to you, you should be able to get the original configuration of the computer, EVEN if it is out of warranty, by going to the Dell site and typing in your system Service Tag. A page would come up which will list every piece of hardware on YOUR personal computer. It will tell you hard driver manufacturer and model number, Display Adaprer, Audio Adapter, Your Modem, Your Network card, cd and cdr and dvd drive manufacturers. All of this would be shown on this page, and also should be shown on your original paper work. You also should be able to find much of this in your System Properties, Device Manager. If you don't have ANY of these original disks and I would think you should have received at least three or four, then you are going to have to do this search either on the Dell website...and I am certain the information will be found there if you put in your service tag...then you will have to look in the Device Manager for each item. Note the manufacturer and the specific hardware item and then go to THAT MANUFACTURERS website and get the latest drivers from each. Download them to the computer and then install them.

The rules to follow concerning drivers are these;
Never get drivers from Windows Update or from a Windows Disk. Get them from:

1. The device mftr.'s website; OR
2. The motherboard mftr.'s website if hardware is onboard; OR
3. The OEM's website for your specific machine if you have an OEM computer
(HP, Dell, Sony, etc.).

Now as far as the shut down issue goes, often times this means that something is running in the background and won't let the computer shut off. You might try first shutting down the computer and then boot into Safe Mode. This will load the least possible required to boot the system.
Shut the computer off. Then press the power button to turn it on and immediately do the following;

1. Gently tap the F8 key repeatedly until you are presented with a Windows XP Advanced Options menu.
2. Select the option for Safe Mode using the arrow keys.
3. Then press enter on your keyboard to boot into Safe Mode.

Let it boot to safe mode. Things will look different, maybe, maybe not since your Video driver isn't installed. But when it boots fully into safe mode then try to power off using Start, Shut down and see if it shuts down. If it does then this will tell you that something is running in the background when in normal mode that will not allow it to turn off. If this is the case then do the following;

perform a clean boot
1. Click Start, click Run, type msconfig in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. On the General tab, click Selective Startup.
3. Under Selective Startup, click to clear the following check boxes:
• Process SYSTEM.INI File
• Process WIN.INI File
• Load Startup Items
4. Click the Services tab, click to select the Hide All Microsoft Services check box, and then click Disable All.
5. Click OK, and then click Restart.

Restart the machine, let it boot up then try the Start, Shut Down. If it shuts down ok without pressing the power button then you will have to narrow down what is causing the problem by re-enabling them one at a time, leaving the previous ones running until the problem occurs. Then you will know what the service is that is causing the problem.
Bear in mind that this may also be cause by not having all the drivers installed too. There are a large number of drivers required for the computer to run properly. You need to check that Device Manager to be certain that the drivers are all installed and that they are the proper drivers.

[cauzomb]

Jholland1964 is correct..

Could be the motherboard chipset driver for power management.. If you haven't already installed the factory driver set/utillities, best suggestion has already been made; Use your service tag to look up the appropriate downloads at dell.com

They should have drivers to cover the motherboard chipset, including power managment, lan, audio, video, special buttons and the touchpad, if it is equiped with one. If the laptop is currently configured as shipped from the factory, using the service tag to find support and downloads should get it going to factory specs, pay close attention to and follow the instructions listed at dell.com for installing their drivers/applications.

[Grudux]

Guys, is it legal for me to say on this forum that "I love you"? Thanks to your advice all my problems are solved!
But, I have one more question for you Though everything now seems to work just fine, when I double click the Internet Explorer icon on my desktop it takes a good ten to 15 full seconds for the browser to initiate. Is there anything that I could do to alleviate this delay?

- Grudux (Robert)

[jholland1964]

Guys, is it legal for me to say on this forum that "I love you"?

Don't know if it is "legal" but it is very nice

What version of IE are you using? Are you certain you have installed everything required? Have you done all the XP updates?

[Grudux]

I do believe that I loaded all items that were available for my laptop on the Dell website. The IE version is 7.0.6000.16705, and I did not allow the latest Microsoft automatic update to load (Service pack 3). I first want to hear some feedback from others to see if there are any bugs within this update.

[jholland1964]

The choice is yours really on the SP3. It actually contains all that was previously installed with SP1 and SP2. To be honest, I have not installed it yet. I manually update and have only installed what is critical and have chosen not to install SP3 at this time. Of course if it gets to the point where this would be required in order to get other updates I will do so, but until then I am holding off.
Folks did have problems with it when it was first released but have not seen any references to problems lately so they must have the bugs worked out.