Windows vista crashed. changed bios to load xp. worked. old files on hidden drive. problem is cant connect to internet. driver files on hidden drive. Now what? Try to find driver and load it?

your explanation is very confusing. your internet connection must come from a modem either directly or remotely thru router. your mentioning of hidden drive does not make sense. drivers are not part of internet connection. you need to reset the modem and router if you are connecting through it. turn everything off. unplug router and modem. after 15 seconds unplugged, plug only modem in, wait until lights stablize; now plug router power back in, wait for lights to come on;,next turn PC on. Wait until completely booted up. go to control panel click on Network Internet, when opens try to find the local connect to network. if none, then your modem is not receiving signal or IP Address from your internet provider(comcast,centurylink, whoever). check status, if active fine. if active but icon says no internet access then your router is not set correctly. you may have lost its set up and you will have to reset up your router. you should have the step or instructions for doing that. after resetting and network active, restart computer so that is receives fresh settings from router.
if no network is found after restart you may have to reconfigure your internet connect by using the internet connection wizard(control panel).

Patricia,

Left-click on Start, then Right-click on My Computer.
Left-click on Properties at the bottom of the list.
Left-click on the Hardware tab.
Left-click on Device Manager.

Once Device Manager has fully loaded left-click on the + sign, next to Network adapters.
What Ethernet chipset are you using? Intel, or Conexant?

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/Product/dimension-1100

Communications (6)
A) Intel - Driver 9 /5/ 2006
B) Conexant - Driver 10/ 21/ 2005

Network (3)
A) Intel - Driver 12 / 1 / 2005

If you have an Intel chipset suggest you download AND install both Intel driver files listed above.

Burn to a CD disk. Put it in your optical drive of the needed computer. Go to My Computer, and DOUBLE-click on the drive letter, of the optical drive with the CD in it.

DOUBLE-click RIGHT ON the file name.
Follow the instructions of the Installation Wizard.
(Just click on Next, Next, and Finish)

Driver: Small piece of software that allows the Operating System to communicate with a device.

Windows XP is the O/S, the ethernet chipset is the device.

When asked to restart the computer - No.
Turn the computer completely off, then after 1 minute turn it on.
(Hard Start)

Still no?
Ethernet adapter card is shot,

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3350631&CatId=200

For additional questions please post in a Comment.

Regards,
joecoolvette

Click start menu then click search. After that when the search wizard is displayed, click all files and documents with that green arrow. When you click that, drive will appear below then choose, drive you want to search. when that runs normally with the search, try to open on My computer then click second partition hard drive to access to your files and folders.
Thanks.

In my travels through this nightmare called Windows, there have been some real issues. I ran into this same problem with XP with SP3, What I did was set up a virtual machine running Vista Premium and loaded the SATA Optical with the Vista OS which recognized it right off. I was able to use the drive just fine when using the Vista in the virtual machine but was not seen in XP. Have not found a decent work around this....just waiting for Windows 7 to come out so I dump both XP and Vista and start over learning another new curb, but at least I've been told that a huge amount of drivers are to be loaded into the new OS...we'll see.

Ok download drivers for vista then extract and find folder VISTAx86 open and right click net8185.inf and choose install option, if not install and have problem post coment rere, "dont work" ang find for xp, link here for official

Installing USB sound card (any windows)

1. Do not connect or plug the USB sound card
2. install the software and driver
3. restart the computer
4. connect the USB Sound Card
5. windows found new hardware
6. select find hardware automatically.
7. if windows cant find the driver select browse CD (contain driver)
   

i have 3 soundcard installed in my computer (XP Pro SP2,Vista Enterprise,Ubuntu Linux) 1 built in and 2 USB.

built in I use for speaker, 1 USB I used for monitor to my DJ mixing software, 1 USB I used for telephone(VOIP)

I doubt it is a virus as you have not indicated doing anything that a virus could have been transmitted to your system. The blue screen of death at boot up time simply means the files that find your operating system are not working properly. Specifically, if you want to Google them they are NTLDR (NT Boot Loader), Boot.ini (tells the system the name and location of your system) NTDETECT.COM (inventories your hardware) and HAL.DLL also monitors hardware. If you could get those three files on a disk-NTLDR, Boot.ini and NTDETECT.COM, then it would boot. They are located in the C:\ drive of any computer with windows but you have to release the hidden files button first...best thing to do is go to the Microsoft Knowledge Base at support.microsoft.com and research your error and those files..you're not the only one this has happened to so there may be a fix in the knowledge base. Besides its good practice to use the Knowledge Base as you can find out about any answer on windows there..good luck. Please rate this solutionl.

If you would like to start up in the xp ,At computer start up hit F1 or F2 there are so many ways some times its hold the del key ,once your into the BIOS you can change the boot order of your drives to make the drive xp is on load first .You will have to do this everytime or buy a program that will do it for you .I would just leave the power unpluged on one of the drives until you need it that way it will be safe from a virus or if you have a hard drive crash you always have one good drive .Hops this helps.

have you got the windows xp disk or the windows vista disk . go int the bios and change the boot drive to the dvd drive . and boot from the dvd drive , but be carfull you might need to down load the sound card drivers first ont the modem drivers , just in case windows xp or vista cant find them.

Winxp? an "old" computer that probably only works with an old style keyboard? just a guess.