[Rider]

Hi all.Recently bought a Dell Inspiron 5100, could not access Internet with the built-in wi-fi card, so had to use Belkin Wireless G Notebook card instead. Installed Belkin software. Everything was fine for a couple of days. Today turned the lapton on and was notified that Belkin encountered some problem and needs to close. Fine. Still tried launching IE. It worked. Then the system notified me (I have Windows XP) about the updates being ready to be installed and that the computer wiill be restarted automatically in 5 minutes (quite normal and standard procedure for Windows, even though a bit annoying). So it began restarting but finally just shut down and I was never able to turn it back on.Removed Belkin card, still no success in turning Dell back on. Put Belkin card back onto my old laptop (IBM ThinkPad 600X), worked fine there except for a weird thing: right bottom corener pane kept switching notification from "no connection available" to "connected to "mynetworkname"" back and forth all the time. Tried searching the web for possible answers - failed to find any. Any ideas what da heck?Thanks!!!T

[Cosmo]

Belkin's software is crash happy. Use window's zero configuration instead. There should be an option in Belkin's utility to use that as the default.

[Rider]

i'll try... but the problem #1 for right now is that the laptop does not turn on now. At all. Seems like it even doesn't go to bios at the start up...there's even no start up whatsoever. The screen stays dead black and the only "signs of life" are the orange lights blinking next to "battery" sign on the keyboard.I'm not a hardware expert at all, so I guess it can be anything - the worst is that the mother board might be fried. But why????

[pocold]

Hi: Rider and STEVE BASS, I have a Inspiron 1000 that crashed on me when I pulled the flash drive. I had two installed and used the "Safely remove hardware" feature but pulled the wrong one. As I was 8 months out of warranty (I have 4 other Dell's - 1 a couple of months old) and Dell refused to assist with giving me a solution and fix, but would be happy to work on the computer - estimated cost $400 - I paid $525 for it new! Well after speaking to a few people it was suggested that the hard drive had damaged sectors from unplugging the flash drive. The solution I have to get it started is (from Dells web site): Unplug the power. Remove the battery. Remove the CD drive (2 screws on bottom) open the drive door via the emergency open hole, to pull the drive out of the laptop. Remove the hard drive (2 screws bottom front of laptop) then two screws holding in the drive - slide it out and set aside. Remove the Belkin wireless connection. Now in reverse reassemble the laptop plug in the power. Attempt to power on, if it starts to post, attempt to go to safe mode or f11. If it will start and go to Windows you have a problem with the Hard drive and or the OS. Try to reinstall the OS and see if that solves the problem. I can get mine running but it still goes dead sometimes and I need to disassemble and reassemble to start up again. PC World had listed a Freeware to completely erase the hard drive and I've been thinking about that but the instructions don't explain how to make a DOS start up CD as I have no floppy. I've salvaged all I needed off the Laptop so redoing the hard drive won't hurt me (The HD is a Hitachi and sell new for under $100 if I end up replacing it). Good luck and I hope you can get running.STEVE BASS - any help on making that DOS startup CD??