[avponce]

I bought this computer over a year ago, so I have no warranty. I have tried turning it on several times and I have ran every possible test on the mini. I can't even remember how it happened, I just know one day I turned it on and the windows welcome screen came out, it loaded and then it went into a black screen with a flashing underscore. I bought an external CD drive and tried rebooting the system, so I turn on the laptop, Press the F2 key I believe (boot menu option) and then choose CD/DVD boot. After that another screen came out saying to press any key to start the boot. I press any key and nothing happens. I don't know what else to do, can someone help me?

Note: The F8 button and the F11 button lead straight to the black screen so those are not options.

I don't have money to pay Dell to fix my computer or to buy a new one. Please if you can help me at all, it would be really great!!

[rrfranczak3]

1st of all where do you have the external DVD plugged into the Dell or an AC adapter? only one of the USB ports on the Netbook are powered and the DVD drive might not have enough power to run if its plugged into the wrong USB port

2nd. I am guessing you have enabled 'Legacy USB' in the BIOS also?

3rd. You have tested this DVD in the drive on another system to verify that the disk IS bootable?...

4th. is it a copy of an install or an original licensed copy?


PS. Welcome to the forum.....

[avponce]

Thank you for your reply and for your welcome!

I bought an external CD Drive that is plugged in through the USB Port..I found a few original reinstallation CD's in my house(2 for Vista and 1 for XP)

However....

After trying to run the XP one several times, the only one that worked was the Vista one and so I rebooted the computer with that one. After I reinstalled the operating system as Vista, the computer worked fine. However, my issue now is installing the drivers. I need the wireless internet driver to use the wireless option in the computer and I can't seem to find the compatible one. Can you help me with this?

P.S the Vista I installed is 32bit so I don't think it will affect my mini at all and I am assuming all of these discs came with the laptop when I originally bought it because they were all together.

[rrfranczak3]

the Dell site should have all the drivers you need, the XP drivers usually work well for Windows 7 so I am guessing they should work for Vista as well, Vista as far as I am concerned is nothing more than a BETA version of Windows 7, I would try to upgrade soon, Vista contains many, many bugs

[avponce]

What driver takes care of wi-fi though? When you say "update" do you mean to Windows 7? I can't afford to buy that yet, so what are the disadvantages of having Vista? I always thought it was better than XP..

[rrfranczak3]

actually it is not better, also all those disc you said you have, one of them should have the drivers on them, use another computer and copy the drivers disc to a USB drive and install them from there

[avponce]

Yes I have the disc, but every time I try installing something for the wi-fi it says it is not compatible.

[rrfranczak3]

what happens when you go into device manager and look at the wifi card?, does it show a yellow triangle there or what does it show?

[avponce]

Yes a yellow icon with an exclamation mark over it.

Also, the network adapter has the same icon.

[rrfranczak3]

the yellow icon means that the system is not recognizing those items,, right click and delete the adapter, and let the system reconfig itself, after you delete those items, the system should automatically find them and install them properly