Owner : Ms. Sheila
Unit : Toshiba Satellite A135 - S4527 Laptop
Operating System : Win Vista and Win XP (Win Vista was Corrupted)
Technician : Drokz
PROBLEM :
Toshiba Satellite A135 - S4527 with Win XP Operating system have problems with playing media files like to play music or play videos. It also made Photoshop CS to be corrupted and unusable. There was no sign of virus attack.
CLIENT REQUESTS :
File Backup (PDF, Word, Excel, Presentation, Pictures, Mp3, etc..)
Web Cam should be installed and run
Limewire and Photoshop should work
INTERVENING FACTORS :
Toshiba Satellite A135 - S4527 is lost
WebCam driver cd also lost
OBSERVATIONS :
Photoshop doesn't work
Media Players won't play any media file
Web Cam doesn't work
Can't establish a connection to the internet
TROUBLESHOOTING PROCEDURE :
- Since the laptop doesn't have any support cd (it was lost), we need to have a backup of the currently installed driver. This can be achieved by using softwares capable of extracting currently installed drivers in your computer. In my case, I used Hiren's boot cd and then DoubleDriver. It can easily be downloaded and also free.
- The requested files were then had backup and saved it in a 300-GB External Drive.
- It is now time to troubleshoot what makes all things go wrong. I then asked Ms. Sheila what was the last action she or a user has done to her laptop. She said that an XP Service Pack 3 was installed and everything went unusually wrong. There is a proper procedure in installing the Service Pack 3 Update at the Microsoft Support Site
- I uninstalled the Service Pack 3 from the Control Panel but the changes of the update seems to be already "permanent"
- Now the update might have possibly caused the changes, she said the installation was stopped and restarted. And upon restart, there was another instance of Win XP on the boot selection screen. 1 for Vista and Two for Win XP. The installation should be rolled back through System Restore. Here is the procedure for System Restore:
a. Go to "Start" Button then to "Run"
b. In your "Run" box type "restore" (without the quotations)
c. Click on the "rstrui" icon and run the System Restore
d. Choose a restoration point and the system will automatically restart to restore to the given restoration point.
- In our case System Restoration didn't work out. So we need another program to have the system files fixed. So I used ERD Commander to do the job.
- After using the ERD Commander, results were just the same. The changes made by the update could not be rolled back. So I decided to re-install the XP SP 2 Operating System.
- The XP installation was done and files were saved to the local drive. Also, the drivers were updated from the driver backup made earlier using Hiren's Bootable CD.
- The Web Cam was also installed and it functions well after the Operating System Re-Installation. Installed Photoshop and also working well. The failed Service Pack 3 installation must have caused the problems.
REPORT :
Failed Service Pack 3 Update of XP if not installed properly causes undesirable results like making other programs not run and or makes it not run because of its strict security.
