Ping: PHILO

~BD~

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Feb 23, 2014, 6:37:40 PM2/23/14

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If the laptop I repaired and set up with Ubuntu 13.10 for Peter, my
builder/friend, connected quite happily to the LAN here in my house,
what might have caused it to fail to automatically connect in Peter's
own home?

Guidance welcomed!

--

philo

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Feb 23, 2014, 6:52:28 PM2/23/14

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I recently gave a friend of mine a loaner HP laptop that worked fine
here and when she got it could not connect.

Some laptops (this one anyway) had a button to turn off and on the
wireless connection and she must have pushed it thinking it was an
on/off button.

Check that first. (It only took me an hour to two to figure that one out)

Next...do they know how to use the wireless icon and to select the
network in their house and enter the password? It will only connect
automatically after the initial setup is completed.

Finally, if it's a very old unit, the wireless card my not have the WPA2
protocol that any new router will require...but I suspect that is not
the problem. If the laptop is old and your own wireless router is also
old it may be using an older protocol (WEP)

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/wireless-security-protocols-wep-wpa-and-wpa2.html

~BD~

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Feb 24, 2014, 3:56:56 PM2/24/14

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philo wrote:
> On 02/23/2014 05:37 PM, ~BD~ wrote:
>> If the laptop I repaired and set up with Ubuntu 13.10 for Peter, my
>> builder/friend, connected quite happily to the LAN here in my house,
>> what might have caused it to fail to automatically connect in Peter's
>> own home?
>>
>> Guidance welcomed!
>>
>
>
>
> I recently gave a friend of mine a loaner HP laptop that worked fine
> here and when she got it could not connect.
>
> Some laptops (this one anyway) had a button to turn off and on the
> wireless connection and she must have pushed it thinking it was an
> on/off button.
>
> Check that first. (It only took me an hour to two to figure that one out)

Thanks! Most Dell machines have that facility (or so I believe!).

> Next...do they know how to use the wireless icon and to select the
> network in their house and enter the password? It will only connect
> automatically after the initial setup is completed.

I explained today - my friend will try this evening!

> Finally, if it's a very old unit, the wireless card my not have the WPA2
> protocol that any new router will require...but I suspect that is not
> the problem. If the laptop is old and your own wireless router is also
> old it may be using an older protocol (WEP)
>
>
> http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/wireless-security-protocols-wep-wpa-and-wpa2.html

Why on earth would I have imagined that *you* knew the whole story?!!!
Not everyone reads ALL Usenet posts! ;-)

Here's some background!

=

I've been driven even more nuts by the builder hammering away in my
bathroom - and he's still not given me a serviceable shower!!!

What he DID give me though was a Dell Inspiron N5110 laptop totally in
bits with a small bag of screws and a duff hard drive! It also had a
broken screen hinge! It had been dropped on the floor by the nine year
old son of my builder friend, Peter! It was in pieces, having been
taken apart by an ex-systems analyst friend of Peter in order to remove
the 2.5 inch 500GB hard drive. I discovered that it was actually
necessary to remove the keyboard, motherboard and dvd/CD unit in order
to remove the hard drive? How? I watched a video on YouTube!

I tested the hard drive and confirmed that it had failed. The good
news, though, was that I have a bone fide copy of Disk Drill which I
used to recover 88GB of data from the duff disk! Like most folk, Peter
hadn't backed up his data! FYI - http://i62.tinypic.com/m75q1j.jpg I
transferred this data to my portable hard drive(PHD) lent it to Peter
and he has now copied the data to a new Windows 8 laptop at his own home
and returned my PHD to me! Great fun - and the only cost involved has
been my time! As I'm sure you know only too well, it's a great feeling
when you can help someone out of a hole!

I am pleased to report that I also successfully mended the broken hinge
using JB Weld and ordered a replacement 500GB Hard Disk last Friday from
Amazon. Although I didn't elect to pay extra for next day delivery (or
indeed pay *anything* for delivery!) you can imagine my surprise when
the hard disk arrived on Saturday morning!

We had lost all electrical power in our home at 7pm on Friday and it was
still off when the postman arrived at around 9.30am. With no access to
the Internet and therefore no means of refreshing my memory by watching
the video again, I decided that I'd attempt to rebuild the computer
anyway! What else was I going to do with no power?!!! Long story short,
here's a piccie of the three main parts once I'd installed the new hard
drive (it is housed underneath the motherboard).

http://i61.tinypic.com/x1j5mh.jpg

Once fully assembled, I fitted the battery, pressed the 'on' button and
.......... the machine jumped into life! Whoopee! I had never
encountered the miniturised thin flat cable connectors before, but once
I realised *how* they operated, the connections were a doddle! As a
quick test, I loaded Ubuntu 8.1 from a CD that I had ordered by post
some years ago. All seemed fine!

Peter doesn't have re-installation disks from Dell for Windows 7. I
contacted Dell and they offered to send a Windows 7 installation disk
and all necessary drivers for the princely sum of Ł30. I wondered if
there is there some way of downloading bone fide software from the
Internet and then validating with the product key information on the
sticker on the underside of the computer. Do you know if that is possible?

What I *did* do was install the most current version of Ubuntu, 13.10,
which gives you all the latest features. It's a bit of a mishmash
between Windows and Apple OS X but after watching a couple of videos on
YouTube I managed to find my way around without too much difficulty!
Peter took the laptop home with him last night to let his sons have a
play with it! He was over the moon!

=

Thanks for your helpful comments Philo! :-)

-

philo

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Feb 24, 2014, 5:01:44 PM2/24/14

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On 02/24/2014 02:56 PM, ~BD~ wrote:
>erneath the motherboard).
>
> http://i61.tinypic.com/x1j5mh.jpg
>
> Once fully assembled, I fitted the battery, pressed the 'on' button and
> .......... the machine jumped into life! Whoopee! I had never
> encountered the miniturised thin flat cable connectors before, but once
> I realised *how* they operated, the connections were a doddle! As a
> quick test, I loaded Ubuntu 8.1 from a CD that I had ordered by post
> some years ago. All seemed fine!
>
> Peter doesn't have re-installation disks from Dell for Windows 7. I
> contacted Dell and they offered to send a Windows 7 installation disk
> and all necessary drivers for the princely sum of Ł30. I wondered if
> there is there some way of downloading bone fide software from the
> Internet and then validating with the product key information on the
> sticker on the underside of the computer. Do you know if that is possible?
>
> What I *did* do was install the most current version of Ubuntu, 13.10,
> which gives you all the latest features. It's a bit of a mishmash
> between Windows and Apple OS X but after watching a couple of videos on
> YouTube I managed to find my way around without too much difficulty!
> Peter took the laptop home with him last night to let his sons have a
> play with it! He was over the moon!
>
> =
>
> Thanks for your helpful comments Philo! :-)
>
>

You are welcome and I bet you will have the whole thing sorted out
before too long. I now find that I am working on a lot of laptops and
was fortunate to have a friend give me a dozen of them to practice on.

I've managed to take some totally apart, repair them and get them all
put back together doing no worse than have an extra screw or two.

The best part of your post however was your reference to a potable hard
drive as a PHD.

I have three of them...but the next time I'm with my friends I'm going
to be modest and tell them I now have two PHD's!!!!

~BD~

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Feb 24, 2014, 5:22:21 PM2/24/14

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Hahaha!

I have no doubt that you deserve them, Philo! ;-)

Thanks once again for helping me with my inquiries!

-

philo

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Feb 24, 2014, 5:36:54 PM2/24/14

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On 02/24/2014 04:22 PM, ~BD~ wrote:
>
> I have no doubt that you deserve them, Philo! ;-)
>
> Thanks once again for helping me with my inquiries!
>
>

Sure thing.

I think that working on laptops will be the very last step for me on
embracing the new technology. (Of course I said that when I got a
typewriter.)

~BD~

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Feb 27, 2014, 10:23:46 AM2/27/14

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You might not have seen this yet, Philo:-

By Michael Kassner February 26, 2014

The Internet of Things is upon us. A panel of security experts offers
their insight into what they feel is right, and what they consider wrong
with the newest technology.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-experts-are-nervous-about-the-internet-of-things/#ftag=RSS56d97e7

Interesting article - IMO! Any comment from you?

-

Btw, my builder friend Peter is over the moon now! I explained that he
needed to click on the 'eyebrow' - ))) - at the top RHS of the Ubuntu
desktop screen - in order to trigger a drop-down menu.

Once he did this he immediately saw his own router, was able to add his
own router password and he was up and away surfing the 'net!

Thanks once again for your help m8! :-)

-