Archive for year: 2012

My client’s Dell Latitude E6420 has a Novatel DW5800 LTE card in it connecting to Verizon. After about 3 months, the connection program said it couldn’t find the device. In the Device Manager, it showed “The device cannot start. (Code 10)”.

I reinstalled the drivers, but that didn’t change anything. I reseated the card and the Code 10 went away, but the program still was having a hard time connecting to the card. It did initialize it once, but still didn’t connect. I spoke to a ProSupport technician at Dell and without any trouble he sent me out a new card. The new card worked instantly upon replacing it.

If you have this card so bad (Novatel Wireless E362, DW 5800, WRYPD, 0WRYPD), comment here!

[update 8/1/12] I find it interesting that this card is no longer available in the configuration page of the Latitude E6420 and I can’t find it alone either.

Just to make sure there isn’t confusion, here is the Novatel card:

Here is where the SIM card goes (remove the battery first):

Here is where the Novatel card goes (or other WWAN/3G/4G cards would go, which is under the bottom cover):

 

 

I picked up a Toshiba NB205 netbook to work on from a client because immediately after the Toshiba screen it would just have a blinking white underscore in the top left of a black screen. When I searched on Google many of the top results were recommending buying restore CDs and reloading. I took out the hard drive and it booted just fine in another computer, so they are giving bad advice. I did find this discussion with so many that have had this issue:

http://forums.toshiba.com/t5/Batteries-and-Power/NB205-won-t-turn-on-properly/td-p/51431

I recommend reading the whole thing, but here are some highlights:

1. Set your laptop down on a smooth hard surface.

2. Put your left hand on the lower left of the case equidistant between the touch pad and the left edge of the case. About 1″ below the key board and press lightly, not too hard but you should feel the plastic give just a little. (sometimes I have to use my thumb to give it a little upward pull at the front edge at the same time.

3. Turn the power on with your right hand and keep your hand in place through startup…when you remove your hand do so gently.

9 times out of 10 it works on my machine, if your surface is hard and smooth (I use a glass table top, or a polished wood surface)  the pads will grip the surface and when you pull your hand away it will hold position for a good while.

I have also been able to get this to work in my lap by pressing on that general spot and lifting up gently on the front edge at the same time with my thumb. (sokoll99)

and

Step 1:

Take OUT the battery and only use the AC power.

Next squeeze in the general area right above the SD card slot (lower left)  I squeezed firm, squeezing and releasing many times as I powered on.  After about 4 times it worked. (mannyfernandez)

and

Popped the HDD out, put the laptop in the freezer for 10 minutes, reinstalled the HDD and the computer booted. Since it booted into the OS,  I took the opportunity to flash the bios with the latest. It has been working ever since.

To reitterate:

1. Download the latest Bios (win XP Self extracting ). Put it on a memory stick.

2. Remove battery and HDD and freeze computer for 10 minutes.

3. Quickly replace battery and HDD and boot computer. (charged battery is necessary to flash the bios. It has to be plugged in too.)

4. Flash the bios. (tuckerd)

 

After all this mine still wouldn’t boot, but at least it is better advice than doing a hard drive restore.

 

This is a very specific problem — you have run out of space, so you delete 10GB, 20GB, 100GB, yet the hard drive keeps filling up.

I first used RidNacs (a hard drive space utility) to help me see what directories are taking up all the space on the hard drive. Once you get that installed, choose the drive in question (usually C). In the case of the computer I was working on, it showed 185GB worth of data accounted for, but Windows reported that 270GB of 280GB were used. He then moved 45GB of data off to an external drive and within a few days he only had 25GB available. I noticed upon running RidNacs again that it listed some directories with “Access is denied” next to them. One was “System Volume Information” and one “Documents and Settings” Visit This Link. I struggled with getting ownership of them with the Security tab in Windows, so I found these instructions to do it with a Command Prompt. This stuff is probably going to be for professionals.

a)Go to > Start > All Programs > Accessories.

b)Right-click on Command Prompt, and then click Run as Administrator.

c)To take ownership of a folder, type the following command and press ENTER:

takeown /f <foldername in QUOTATION MARKS if spaces> /r /d y

d)Then to assign the Administrators group Full Control Permissions for the folder, use this syntax:

icacls <foldername in QUOTATION MARKS if spaces> /grant administrators:F /T

The /T parameter is added so that the operation is carried out through all the sub-directories and files within that folder.

(posted by Shinmila H – Microsoft Support)

Here is something that claims to be a simpler way to do this that I didn’t test yet.

Now at this point, I found that System Volume Information had 116GB and Documents and Settings 127GB.

I wanted to see if I could get Windows to reduce that or keep it from growing, so I went to System in the Control Panel, then System Protection and found that the Automatic restore points configuration is disabled by Group Policy. To overcome that, I used these instructions. (I deleted the DisableConfig key, even though it was zero.) Then I went back to the System Protection tab and unchecked the C drive. It warned that it would delete the Restore points (great!). Indeed it did. I then turned it back on and clicked Create to make a fresh restore point. I then checked the hard drive. 140GB FREE!!

I believe that this damage was done by malware and I wasn’t successfully about to fix all the Access is Denied directories, but I think the hard drive filling issue is now fixed.

Please comment below if this helps or you have things to add.