Help

[jippison]

hello all i am looking for some help, i dont know where else to turn to. i have a tashiba laptop computer. i dont know if i need a new hard drive or what. when i turn it on it runs this thing that says PCI FAST ETHERNET CONTROLLER and it keeps doing that and thats all. any help will be appreciated.

[roaddog]

HI,
Has your operating system (Windows) found some new hardware ? If so it is probable looking for the drivers for the network card, in which case you need the driver CD that came with the laptop or you need to get the latest version of the drivers from the internet. That could prove difficult if this is the only computer you have. In that case I would get a friend to download the drivers for you.
Cheers
Mick

[PascoDoug]

Go into your BIOS and check the startup Boot order.

Make sure it's set to boot from the hard drive and not the NIC/LAN

[jippison]

thanks for the help. but neither of your responses help.

[roaddog]

Hi,
It could be that your operating system has suffered some serious problem. I wouldn't go to the expense of buying a new hard drive until I was sure the old one had actually failed.
On power up go into the bios settings and check to be sure the bios is finding the hard drive, if not then pull the drive and try it in someone elses laptop. If the drive is still not found then it is almost certainly faulty, if the second laptop finds the drive then it is most likely to be the Mobo that is dead, new laptop time.
Hope this is of more help, if not, then wait for a sunny day, get naked and lie in the sun, worry about the laptop some other time. LOL
Cheers
Mick

[Naturist4Ever]

hi, yes as roaddog said: the bios can't detect the HD as bootable, maybe it doesn't see it all or maybe it does see it but it has a problem with the bootsector. Have you been in the bios setup during booting to see if the HD is recognised by the system (usually F2 button says so in one of the corners of the startup screen). Try that and see if the HD is listed.

[jippison]

thanks for the help. what do i do if it is not listed?

[jippison]

i am at jippistick on yahoo. if anyone would like to chat about helping me.

[connorsdad]

You can go into your BIOS and turn off the ability for the Ethernet connection to be on or off....turn it off and then see what happens.

If that does not work, boot up and hit F8 and boot in safe mode. Go to the Add/Remove hardware in control panel, find that ethernet card (should have an X by it) and remove it.

After removed, reboot, do not install the hardware when found and tell it not to ask again.

This might fix it, if not you may need to do a reformat and reinstall.

GL.