Have had our P25 S670 laptops (2 purchased) for less than a year (business
use). We had 1 that refused to boot and sent it in for depot service
(warranty). We are now on our 3rd projected date for the parts (MB) to come
in and it is now 2 months and waiting.

Guess what I think of Toshiba and their repair service AND lack of customer
care and their "I really can’t speak english" customer support!!

Just sign me:

NEVER AGAIN!!

Hi,
When I try to launch my Compaq laptop I get:
" QuickRestore Can Not Continue – Error Code PQCFG-1 "
The whole screen is red with a blue rectangular and the letters are
flashing.

The only thing I can do is to hold the power button and turn it off.
I can then hit F8 and enter safe mode before this happens but that’s it.

Could someone please help me with this.

Thanks

IS

I have a Compaq Presario laptop, a few years old.  I started having
trouble a while back with the power adapter.  It seemed that there
may have been a short in it somewhere, as I had to kinda twist it a
bit right at the end where it plugs into the laptop in order to make
it work.

That worked for a while, until one day I was using the laptop and
started to smell smoke!  Sure enough, there were little wisps of
smoke coming from the vents right by the power supply.

Since then I just the laptop sit (replaced with a desktop).  But the
other day I figured I would give it another try.  I plugged in the
adapter, and the green light lit up like normal.  The laptop would
not boot, however.  I clicked the power button and got nothing.  And
sure enough, after about ten seconds I started to smell that stench.

Questions: A) Any idea what happened?  And B) Is this fixable, or is
the thing shot?

Thanks very much in advance for any insight you can offer.

My problem is to figure out how to use a Motorola E680 cellphone, which
runs Trolltech Linux, and can function as a dialup USB modem, using
Windows, to provide wireless access to the Internet, can be used as a
modem with a laptop running Linux (in this case Mepis Debian 3.3, but
that doesn’t seem to matter). I have tried kppp and wvdial to no avail.

What does work is to boot the laptop under Windows, and run a
Motorola-supplied program called GPRSManager which issues dialup
commands to the phone creating what I presume is a ppp connection. That
works fine. I can browse, send and receive email, etc. (However I
haven’t figured out yet how to send email from the phone or reply to
messages received. I can receive email on the phone at
5122995…@tmomail.net, but want to set up a mailbox that can send and
receive email.)

It was suggested that I send an initialization string

AT+cgdcont=1,"IP",:internet2.voicestream.com"

but this and variations on it using kppp or wvdial just return ERROR.

I can issue just the dialout number using

ATDT*99# but get NO DIALTONE and
ATD*99#  but get NO CARRIER

using either kppp or wvdial.

Incidentally, on wvdial I had to insert a line in the /etc/wvdial.conf
file

Stupid mode = yes

and set the Username and Password to " " (blank) to get it to run.

I ran the strings command on the GPRSManager.exe file and examined the
(ASCII text) driver files for the Windows programs, but none of them
seem to contain anything that would issue anything resembling the above
suggested initialization command. Apparently some initialization
command is needed to set up the dialing of the number.

It would be nice to be able to get a computer running Linux to talk to
a phone running Linux. Of course, it would be even better if the phone
were a router rather than a dialup modem, but we can all join in urging
the cellphone manufacturers to come out with a product like that.

If anyone has any solutions, or can suggest other groups to post this
to, please email them to jroland at linux-migration.net.

I am posting this for a friend since he can’t use his 17 month old laptop.

This is the scenario:

Sony VAIO laptop model # PCG-FRV27

His DC power jack was having problems in the past. He would have to jiggle
it to get it to charge. Now its at the point where it cannot charge at all,
and his computer is nothing more than a paperweight.

He is out of warranty and Sony wants $700US dollars to repair the laptop.
They say the motherboard needs to be replaced. This sounds rediculous in my
opinion.

It seems that the DC power jack adapter would need to be replaced and
soldered onto the motherboard.

I would say a reasonable price for this repair would be a 100$ or so for
labor and less than 30$ for the part.

Does anyone have any information on this? From what I’ve searched this is a
common problem with VAIOs and Sony customer service isn’t helping at all.

Are there any external battery chargers that he could use to get by? Would a
docking station let him have use of his pc if the DC jack is broken?

Sincerely,
Jonas

I apologize if this is too much of a common/gerneral question…

I am looking to buy a Dell notebook computer & was wondering what would
be a good choice for the money? I would like to use it for the
internet.. watch DVD’s .. have good graphics for games & burn cd’s
etc… Anyone have a decent one & a good value for the $$? Thanks in
advance.

Looking at getting my First Laptop and I have been doing some research and I
pretty much know what I need for my needs, so to speak, and I have some
Power/Battery questions……

1) Am I correct in my understanding that a 12-Cell, 94 WHr, 14.8 VDC =
Approx 3.5 Hours of Usage?
2) Are there stand alone chargers for said Battery or any battery for that
matter?
3) I would assume that a Laptop, like a Desktop, has some sort of Stand
By/Sleep Function to save power usage?
4) What is more Power Effective, or conserative if you will, a P4 or
Celeron?
(I know M Class or Centrino would probably be the best, but I am not going
that way)

Heres my specifics…..

Dell Inspiron 5150 or 5160, maybe a 5100 (one of the 3 For sure)

Either a P4 2.6 GHZ CPU or Higher, Max @ 3.06 HT
OR
Celeron 2.8 @ 400/533 FSB

512 MB SDRam @ 333 MHZ
40 – 60 GB HDD @ 5400
32 MB DDR XGI Volari AGP 4 X ( Not a Big Gamer Here)
24X CD-RW/DVD
1350 Internal Wireless

Yes, this is a Refurb from the Dell……

Thanks for any help….

Hi,

I have a Dell laptop (CPx) running Windows 2000.

For some reason I don’t have "standy" (or "hibernate," which I know you
need to enable explicitly) in my "shutdown" options (I just have log
off, restart and shutdown).

I’m not sure what I need to do to get the options to show up. The
hardware supports it (hardware manager shows ACPI PC). And if I hit
"function escape" on the laptop, it goes into standby (and I get the
Windows "preparing to standby…" message). I just can’t figure out how
to get the options to show up so I can do it via menu options and not
via a keyboard command. Not that big a deal, but annoying that Windows
doesn’t present the options…

Also, no hibernate tab shows up in the power control panel.

the A20m takes a micro pga2 package processor.  Has anyone try to
upgrade the processor to 1ghz? does one have to flash the bios or is it
plug and play?

I am having difficulties with  my touchpad drivers on my Vaio PCG-F590.
There is supposed to be a touchpad driver for this Alps unit on the Sony
site which automatically installs drivers with an exclamation mark in the
Device manager.  Even if installed in safe mode. And suspiciously it calls
this internal touchpad a USB HID device, which doesn’t sound right.  The
touch pad works with the internal windows PS2 drivers but it is so sensitive
that the cursor jumps all over the place in normal use while typing

I am using Windows XP Pro

There was a rumour of all these drivers being on some site called
http://db.rfi.de (which seems to have changed its address since it was last
mentioned on these boards).

Does anyone know how to get this Touchpad to work or access this German site
to download drivers for this computer please? I am also having some
difficulty with the keyboard: If you touch some keys accidentally it often
closes a window (losing all work you are doing) or opens one or  jumps to
some esoteric function which is indicative of the drivers not being
installed properly.  Sony is of course no help at all beyond condescending
to tell me that the Touchpad is an Alps on whose site there do not appear to
be drivers even if I COULD identify the model