(no subject)
Okay, I'm in need of a little help. Just thought I'd toss this out here in case anyone has an answer....
I recently acquired an old laptop (about 9 years old), figuring I could put it on the table and be productive while watching TV...I don't watch much TV because of the location of the TV and my computer--I'd have to twist my head almost 180 degrees to see it--but since I'm paying so much for cable, I need to actually start using it. Besides, I always miss out on so many shows that I've wanted to see because I'm always sitting here trying to get some writing done or working on my Cafe Press store or some other project...
Anyway. So I picked up this laptop on eBay for $30. I figured, what the hell, for thirty bucks I can afford to upgrade bits of it every now and then...I planned to put in a new hard drive, DVD drive, etc. It's got a CD drive now, and a USB port, so I figured I could either plug in the card reader or use a CD-RW to transfer the stories/novels/whatever I'm working on. But I ran into a problem...
The CD drive doesn't work (it appears to be broken). No matter which CD I put in it, I get a "D:\ is not accessible. The drive is not ready." error message. But it gets better...
The laptop won't recognize anything I plug into its USB port. It just detects an unknown device and tries to install drivers, but can't find any drivers for it. I've tried the card reader, the external hard drive attached to my PC, the external DVD-RW drive for my PC...none of them work because the laptop can't find any drivers for them. And since the CD drive doesn't work, I can't put the drivers on a CD and install them from that. And since the USB port doesn't recognize external devices without drivers, I can't use it, either.
Today I bought a USB cable to link the laptop directly to my PC. Guess what? It didn't work. Neither computer could detect the other.
The laptop also doesn't have a modem, so I can't download the necessary drivers.
So...essentially, I've got a laptop that's absolutely useless because I can't transfer any files to/from it.
Here's what I'm wondering: if I put a new CD-RW drive in the laptop, will I be able to install the drivers with it? If the laptop won't accept a device without drivers, but the drivers can't be installed without using a device that the laptop won't accept without drivers...? Would the new CD drive work enough for the drivers to install? Or would getting a new CD drive be yet another waste of money?
I've tried everything I can think of, wasted a huge chunk of my day off trying to get this thing to work, and I've gotten absolutely nowhere. So...I'm open to suggestions.