Dell Inspiron 8100 Can't Use Windows Update?!

[Bill LaFleur]

People,

My girlfriend's Dell Inspiron 8100 recently died. I wiped the hard
drive clean and installed Windows XP Professional. Something is wrong.
Here are the symptoms:

1) I go to Windows Update and it keeps giving me a message that there
is "new windows update software required". I click the button to
"update now", the window flashes "windows update is downloading and
installing the required software" and goes back saying "new windows
update software required". I can hit that "update now" button over and
over again, but nothing [as far as I know] gets installed. At that
point if I close Internet Explorer the Dell freezes and is completely
unresposive except for powering down. On rare occasions it doesn't
freeze.

2) Most of the time that I do a restart or shutdown, it gets to the
Windows page with the "Logging off..." message and freezes. This
happens 90% of the time.

3) I went to Yahoo's site to get her Yahoo/SBC dialup and figured I'd
check the demo. A few seconds into starting the Flash movie it
freezes.

4) I can bring up Internet Explorer and surf around for quite a while,
then suddenly it freezes.

5) Yesterday I booted it and left it running, doing nothing at all,
for a couple hours. No freeze.

I've installed Security Update for XP KB823980 and the Blaster Removal
patch but that's done no good.

I can't figure out what the common thread is! Must be something wrong
with Windows but I can't figure out what. I've been to Dell's site but
there's nothing like this mentioned. And Microsoft doesn't seem to
have anything but security patches, which I don't believe is the
problem.

Help?

Bill

 

[Guest]

Well, when you say that you installed XP Pro was the dell
drivers re-installed ?? If you did not use a restore disk
you may not have the required ones, laptops are kind of
picky and most have OEM drivers.

 

[Keppy]

You need to be sure to download all the Dell drivers and those for that OS
from the Dell site.
Carol

 

[Shaun Collett]

Bill,

Have you solved this problem? I just did the same this as you and I'm
having the exact same problems.

Same notebook: Dell Inspiron 8100.

Shaun

You need to be sure to download all the Dell drivers and those for that OS
from the Dell site.
Carol

People,

My girlfriend's Dell Inspiron 8100 recently died. I wiped the hard
drive clean and installed Windows XP Professional. Something is wrong.
Here are the symptoms:

1) I go to Windows Update and it keeps giving me a message that there
is "new windows update software required". I click the button to
"update now", the window flashes "windows update is downloading and
installing the required software" and goes back saying "new windows
update software required". I can hit that "update now" button over and
over again, but nothing [as far as I know] gets installed. At that
point if I close Internet Explorer the Dell freezes and is completely
unresposive except for powering down. On rare occasions it doesn't
freeze.

2) Most of the time that I do a restart or shutdown, it gets to the
Windows page with the "Logging off..." message and freezes. This
happens 90% of the time.

3) I went to Yahoo's site to get her Yahoo/SBC dialup and figured I'd
check the demo. A few seconds into starting the Flash movie it
freezes.

4) I can bring up Internet Explorer and surf around for quite a while,
then suddenly it freezes.

5) Yesterday I booted it and left it running, doing nothing at all,
for a couple hours. No freeze.

I've installed Security Update for XP KB823980 and the Blaster Removal
patch but that's done no good.

I can't figure out what the common thread is! Must be something wrong
with Windows but I can't figure out what. I've been to Dell's site but
there's nothing like this mentioned. And Microsoft doesn't seem to
have anything but security patches, which I don't believe is the
problem.

Help?

Bill

 

[Shaun Collett]

Bill,

Have you fixed this problem? I had the same exact issues.

Wiped Dell Inspiron 8100 clean and reinstalled WinXP.

Thanks,
Shaun

 

[Shaun Collett]

I installed the lastest NVidea video drivers from Dell and all seems
to be working properly.