Job Discussion Forums

thelastdon · Joined: 16 Jul 2004 Posts: 8

I have been in Japan for about 6 weeks and my lap top has crashed.My only means of communication with the outside world!
I live in Nakamura-shi near Kochi does any one know where I could get it repaired I have tried the local computer shop which was not very helpful.Better still does anyone have a windows xp pro boot disc I could use to try and reboot the system?
Thanks

canuck · Joined: 11 May 2003 Posts: 1921 Location: Japan

Use your cd as a boot disk. Put it in your cd drive and start you computer. There should be something that pops up on the screen and asks you if you want to boot from your cd. Just follow the instructions, like "Press any key".

Eleckid · Joined: 03 Jun 2004 Posts: 102 Location: Aichi, Japan

That happened to me once when I got here. Forget about taking to computer stores to get it fixed, they can't. I found out that I knew more stuff about computers than them, & that they said they couldn't fix my computer cuz it's in English & they only have Japanese softwares. Fixing it is really expensive & so if you can't fix it yourself, consider buying one from here.

I was able to fix it. My co-worker dl'ed boot disks from the microsoft site & I was able to reinstall my win xp pro. But you gotta have your setup disk with you.

canuck · Joined: 11 May 2003 Posts: 1921 Location: Japan

Just use the cd as a boot disk to reinstall. If you're system is not set up to read the cd first, the hard drive second, you might need to change the squence. Hit delete, as the informatin says when your computer normally starts up with the bios, and play with it from there. It's not rocket science.

The computer repair shops are excellent in Japan. Most are not afraid of English computers either. Most the computer people can read English too. If you decide to buy a new computer, I'll take your old labtop off your hands, instead of throwing it in the garbage. Wink

Eleckid · Joined: 03 Jun 2004 Posts: 102 Location: Aichi, Japan

thelastdon,

Maybe where I live is a small suburb, so there's no computer shops here which was able to fix my computer. I went to like 7-8 shops in my area with my Japanese friend & the best offer they gave me was to send my computer to IBM Japan, which wouldn't guarantee to be repaired.

Anyway, I have win xp pro too & just putting the setup cd in & config it to boot up using the cd drive first will not do (I tried that). win xp pro does not allow me to reinstall. The only way (as you said in your first post) is to get the boot disk which will make it allow to reinstall itself. You can dl it off of the microsoft site (as I said earlier), I don't know where, just do a search in there. The total floppies used were 6. Installing the boot disk program & reinstalling win xp pro (which you'll need the setup cd) takes less than 1 hr & all my info (except for the drivers for some of the peripherals) were saved.

Good luck.

Mike L. · Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 519

canuck · Joined: 11 May 2003 Posts: 1921 Location: Japan

thelastdon · Joined: 16 Jul 2004 Posts: 8

Thank you all for your replies.
Firstly my lap top does not have a floppy drive and I am waiting for a boot disk cd to be sent over from England.So when it arrives I will try and reboot from the cd. Not sure about changing the boot seq in the bios to cd drive first? How do you do that?

canuck · Joined: 11 May 2003 Posts: 1921 Location: Japan

Hit delete while starting the computer. Read the the text sometimes when you boot your computer.

Eleckid · Joined: 03 Jun 2004 Posts: 102 Location: Aichi, Japan

Maybe what I wrote earlier confused some ppl, I mean, yes, of course you can setup your comp so that it boots up using the cd drive first (and not all computers uses the del button for going into the bios, some is like F something...I forgot (sorry). But the person who copied the boot disks for me gave them to me in floppies, knowing that my computer has floppy drives. It would've worked the same if he gave me the file in a cd.

What I was trying to say was that using my win xp pro setup cd to boot up did not work for me. Maybe some versions of win xp pro do not allow itself to reinstall by simply putting the setup disk in. I had to get the special boot up program for that. My win xp pro is the 2001 version, so it's probably an old one (that's why it didn't allow itself to reinstall automatically).

Sorry if it confused anyone.

ocyrion · Joined: 20 Oct 2004 Posts: 20 Location: Chiba, Japan

Hey,

You could try repeatedly pressing F8 just before you get the XP loading screen. Just tap away at F8 from the moment the PC resets until you get a menu with "Use Last Known Good Configuration". This might allow you to boot up XP ...

Good luck