monkeyboy

hey,

i bought a A3 printer yesterday (HP 2800 buisiness) and i wanted to connect it to my laptop. It had an USB connector. Now, my previous experciences with USB were, that you just had to plug the machine and wait to XP recognize the stuff. So i plugged it in, and started the printer for its testpint pages. While it was printing these pages, i inserted the CD for the drivers, and i started to install them. But suddenly my laptop shut down, and i can't restart it!!
i can boot it, it goes to de black windows XP initializing screen, and then again it reboots, over and over again.
Does this have something to do with me playing stupid with not following the install order of the printer (printer on/test page - install driver - connect printer to laptop)??

STRAT

can you F8 it and start it in safemode?

monkeyboy

well, when it boots, it goes right away to the screen with the options
-safe mode
- safe mode with network
- safe mode with command
- last succesful boot
- normal startup.

non of these options work, the laptop keeps rebooting after the black XP screen

STRAT

i've just had this exact same problem when sorting out a m8s computer.

it booted to the start screen giving me those same options, but nothing worked and after 30 secs it went back into it's boot up loop.

you'll need to go into the BIOS (hit DEL a few times at the beggining of the boot-up stage to get into it) then navigate your way to where your pc boots up the drives.

change it to install and boot from the cd or dvd drive first in the list. Then you'll need either your original WinXP boot disks or your bootable manufacturer's disks that came with your laptop. Stick those into the cd or dvd drive you specified first, then take it from there. All you need is a kick starter to get the appropriate keyboard drivers going again.

Sometimes XP SPII messes things up at a fundimental level, even by an innocent task as installing an un-recognised external device.

if this fails, take it down your local pc shop. they'll get it up and running within 5 mins. it's an easy solution.

then, when up and running again, go into the windows utilities and create urself a boot-disk just incase this thing happens again and you dont have your original disks to hand.

monkeyboy

thnx, i'll try that. hope it works...

monkeyboy

ok, i can't find a original XP CDrom (it's a laptop from aldi/ medion). Only CD's i found are the product recovery, and an application/support CD. I suppose i have to use the product recovery. Using this, will i lose all my data and files? or is it just quick repair in XP?

STRAT

nope. you'll only loose data by either re-formating or breaking your HD.

(but dont quote me on that. computers are funny buggers at the best of times and do horrid unexplainable things all the time)

monkeyboy

problem solved!! and printer up and running

thnx strat for your help

STRAT

no probs m8. glad to help