Help: This sounds fishy to me...

Sensemaya

We are still working at System Restore.

Everybody's help much appreciated.

st999

How old is your son and how old is this "friend"

poppellerant

Ok I'll work my way down the first post and try to address any points I feel need addressing.

It sounds to me as a major catastrophe is about to happen to his laptop if this update or whatever is not done.

To me the only possible catastrophe that may happen, is by letting this person have your son's laptop. :eek:

your laptop may not boot up, or could start going slow

Complete and utter tripe. Perhaps if your laptop was set to boot from LAN (LAN is a network).

Friend: Ethernet, via BIOS which is the main mortherboard process, which will need solving, ive tryed to reinstall the driver but it errored like last time when i was on here.

...snip...

when i reinstall, i will be test ya hard drives and formatting it and install WIN8,,

He hasn't the faintest idea what he's doing which is why it keeps on happening.

The only reason he wants hold of your laptop is to 'upgrade' your BIOS and drag out the process by performing a needless error scan and full format of your harddrive. The only reason this would need to be done, would be to determine any phsyical errors on the harddrive itself, then santinise the drive (fill with zeros, providing he doesn't skimp by doing a quick format) in preperation for a installation of Windows.

In any case, it's always good practice to replace a harddrive with errors on it.

see it did not work, the BIOS needs resetting.... which i can do here on the server.
i will move other pc's out the way and put yours in express, so you will have it back in 1-2days

Firstly, he could talk your son through resetting the BIOS in less than 10 minutes. It's not rocket science.

Secondly, it seems to me there is some reason he is desperate to get his paws on your son's laptop. So, even in the unfortunate event you do pass it to this friend, make a note of all serial numbers, screws and how worn the screws are, if at all.

That's me done quoting now, LOL!

Ok I won't go into detail just yet, but what you should ideally do is rollback the drivers for the network adapter in question. Keep doing this until you can't rollback, then uninstall the driver. After this, uninstall the adapter then shut the computer down and restart it. Windows should find new hardware and install it's own drivers. If it doesn't install it's own drivers, then use this link to download the driver from HP's site

From the Start Menu, type in device manager then click on it or press enter. If not expanded already, press the little arrow next to Network adapters. Double click on Realtek PCle FE Family Controller. Now click on the Driver tab across the top. If possible, press the Roll Back Driver button and agree to any prompts which lead to rolling back the driver. Either after you've finished rolling back the drive, or if you can't click on the rollback driver, click the bottom Uninstall button to remove the driver. If asked to restart, do so.

If you restarted, bring back Device Manager and only expand the network adatpers and don't double click any. Right click Realtek PCle FE Family Controller and choose Uninstall and follow the prompts to uninstall the adapter. Reboot at this point, regardless, then install the driver.

If you choose to upgrade the BIOS (never a bad idea), use this link to download then run the BIOS update software and follow the instructions. Before doing the BIOS update, make sure that your battery is FULLY CHARGED and plugged in!!! Sorry to put that in red, but it is quite important!

Sensemaya

Thank you for so much help.

HereToday: Son ( my youngest - age 13 ) has done System Restore which took a long time. And he followed your link.

He will continue sorting it out after school.

poppellerant: Thank you so much for the information you have posted. We will look at it after school.

I'm extremely touched by everybody's quick responses and help.

This 'friend' is bad news indeed and I intend for this relationship to be severed once other things have been sorted out in the very near future.

It is obvious the friend wants the use of the laptop over Xmas, so he can think again and is in for a rude awakening!

Uxb

poppellerant wrote: »

Secondly, it seems to me there is some reason he is desperate to get his paws on your son's laptop. So, even in the unfortunate event you do pass it to this friend, make a note of all serial numbers, screws and how worn the screws are, if at all.

This is the bit that worries me as well
Should we be considering the possibility that the laptop will be used for criminal activities - hacking/fraud etc and then be returned to the owner who will be none the wiser - until the police call.

esuhl

Uxb wrote: »

Should we be considering the possibility that the laptop will be used for criminal activities - hacking/fraud etc and then be returned to the owner who will be none the wiser - until the police call.

I wouldn't have thought so. Any online activity that is "traced" will eventually determine the network connection (ISP account) that was used by the frauster/criminal. Using a different laptop wouldn't disguise which network was being used.

rmg1

True, but this "friend" could claim someone hacked the Wi-Fi signal and used their network without them knowing.
If they don't have the laptop in their possession when the police call it could cause problems.

And one more thought, I could be talking absolute carp!!

esuhl

rmg1 wrote: »

True, but this "friend" could claim someone hacked the Wi-Fi signal and used their network without them knowing.
If they don't have the laptop in their possession when the police call it could cause problems.

Well... possibly... Knowing that your criminal actions will lead the police straight to your door, but hoping that you can fob them off because you don't have an incriminating record on your hard drive doesn't sound like the plans of a criminal mastermind... But who knows...?

Sensemaya

My son didn't use his laptop last night as we were busy.

Interesting twist about using it for criminal activities but I don't think so.

Thanks for everybody's help. Let's see what the weekend brings...

142001

Evening I have been working on my laptop today and I think I have sorted the problem its running nicely now I will let you all know what happens.

Thanks for all your help:cool: