Laptop woes

[Rover Ryan]

My 8 year old laptop that was running beautifully, has been well looked after, runs W7 perfectly, and has a great 17" screen is now dead. Both the bloody hinges holding the screen up have snapped and seem to be unavailable as spares (for a reasonable price.)

Gutted

[Savory]

is there a way of using a latop with a broken screen (wont display anything) by connecting the laptop to a working screen on another laptop or external monitor?

if so, how?

[iamarover]

there's probably a vga out or some other graphic output that you can connect to a monitor.

[Rover Ryan]

is there a way of using a latop with a broken screen (wont display anything) by connecting the laptop to a working screen on another laptop or external monitor?

if so, how?

Easy. As IAAR said there will be a blue VGA socket in the side of your Lappy, Connect your Monitor with the appropriate VGA lead and it should show up straight away on the monitor. Even better if you have an HDMI slot and have a TV that is HD you will be able to link that also.

[Savory]

nice, cheers lads

[Rover the Top]

I've had a frustrating weekend with my laptop.

On Wednesday night, I left it on, converting a video file so that it would stream to my Xbox360. When I woke up on Thursday, the laptop had apparently rebooted at some point during the night as it was back at the log-in screen. It then spent Thursday and Friday installing the same 4 Windows updates every time I turned it off. And when I tried to watch the video I'd converted on Friday evening, the Xbox360 couldn't find my laptop on my network.

On Saturday morning I discovered there had been a problem with the Windows updates and this rectified itself. However, I still couldn't get my Xbox to link up with the laptop. Eventually I got bored trying to restore the connection and watched the football, cricket, more football and went to bed.

But on Sunday I decided I was going to get to the bottom of what was wrong. I got to a point where I'd reinstalled the Xbox360 as an extender, but still couldn't connect to it. Following online advice I tried to check my Firewall settings... and discovered all the standard Windows 7 security features had been turned off. The Security Centre itself wouldn't even restart.

After a lot of pissing around, I managed to restore various broken services so that the Security Centre is working and the Firewall is on again. But now the laptop can't find the Xbox on the network to reinstall it.

At which point I gave up and watched some awful Denzel Washington film. But if anyone has any advice on what my latest problem might be, or how I check to see what other damage has been done to my machine, it would be appreciated.

[Gibbon]

Oh god, windows regularly pulls that kind of shit when I have other plans.

[mrblackbat]

Check what your to see whether they're both still on the say homegroup; it's probably been corrupted and recreated since the windows 7 update cock up (which was fun, wasn't it ).

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/wind ... e-easy-way

[Dan]

Lets hope it was an update cockup and not something malicious that killed the services.

Incidentally, I think there could be an issue with the last few W7 updates, we've had a few PCs at work with the same symptoms, cycling through the 4 most recent ones over and over. Not noticed the firewall issue, but I wouldn't as we don't use it anyway.

[Rover the Top]

Incidentally, I think there could be an issue with the last few W7 updates, we've had a few PCs at work with the same symptoms, cycling through the 4 most recent ones over and over.

There was - Microsoft fixed it Friday night/Saturday morning. I guess the updates would also explain why my laptop rebooted by itself on Wednesday night, if they were waiting to be installed and I wasn't watching for any warnings of an automatic restart?

The Security Centre wouldn't start because some other service (WMI) had been corrupted. I couldn't say if it was working before the update problem, though. But until I got the Firewall up, the Xbox couldn't see the laptop, but the laptop could see the Xbox. Now the laptop can't find the Xbox, but I'm not sure if I need to change a Firewall setting or like blackbat says, fixing the issues has buggered up my Homegroup.

[mrblackbat]

Wednesday is the scheduled day for Windows updates, yes. If your machine is on and connected and you have windows updates configured to run automatically that'll always happen on a Wednesday.

[Dan]

There should be a setting allowing you to switch the firewall off just for your home network / workgroup, whatever they call it. That should make sure there's nothing blocking the Laptop-Xbox connection

[Rover the Top]

Yup. Turned off the firewall on just the Homegroup and the connection is back. Huzzah!

[theadore]

So... i'm now the sort of person who can replace a laptop LCD... which is just as well, because I was already the sort of person who stands on his laptop.

[Gibbon]

Am I still on Facebook?