Various problems, possible drivers/services broken or missing

LeoLeonardoIII said:

ignatzatsonic said:

You CAN do a complete reinstall IF you have the 25 character Product Key, which should be on a sticker on the PC.

Is that so? What would that entail? How would I do this? Is there any significant risk to doing a reinstall like this? I just checked, and I DO have the product key sticker in place still.

You would go here:

Official Windows 7 SP1 ISO from Digital River « My Digital Life

and download the ISO that matches the version your PC shipped with---Home Premium 32-bit, Home Premium 64-bit, or whatever it is.

Burn that ISO to a disk. Install from that disk. Activate it with your Product Key.

There is no risk. It's the one way you can do a clean install at no cost. You should probably go to your PC manufacturer's web site and download the LAN driver (Ethernet driver) so you will be able to re-establish an Internet connection following the clean install. The other necessary drivers should be included within the downloaded ISO.

Then go to Windows update and let Windows update itself.

You would have to back up all of your personal data beforehand because it would be deleted during the clean install. The clean install will delete all partitions you now have and create new partitions as needed.

You will have to reinstall all programs. You will lose any programs your PC manufacturer may have included in addition to Windows. You will end up with a legal and activated Windows installation. No more and no less.

When you buy Windows, what you are paying for is that Product Key. Safeguard it.

ignatzatsonic said:

Burn that ISO to a disk.

Does it have to be a certain size disk? Like a DVD compared to a CD or something? I need to know what kind I have to get in order to fix my poor compy

It needs to be an ordinary DVD.

My system properties says it's a 64 bit OS.. this means I want the "English x64: X17-58997.iso"
out of the two options it gives

English x86: X17-58996.iso
English x64: X17-58997.iso

right? <:3

right.

58997.iso

One last thing before I try to do the reinstall over the weekend..
I'm not sure which LAN driver thing to get, I found this site: Certified LAN Drivers
via google, but I'm not sure which is the one I need.
I know it's an inspiron, from dell
i see 'intel' on a sticker..
but under the 'intel' section there are a lot of different ones, and when searching Intel's site for help I got lost ^^;

See attachment..
I tried using some microsoft fixit thing a couple times, but it never could do anything at all..

I tried it a different way, booting from the disc and formatting my HD from there before installing from the disc..
That was the only way it worked, else it gave me errors and said a file that was in the recovery drive (D:) was corrupted and unreadable, and thus refused to let me proceed.
After I backed up all my files and before I did the OS reinstall, I had put in more work searching for the appropriate driver for my ethernet/wireless/lan whatever, and downloaded all of the ones that might work, and save them on one of my externals for later retrieval. One of them in fact did, which I discovered after the install.
After liberal use of Windows Update, which is finally present, and a dozen or so computer restarts, everything vital seems to be in order.
The only problems so far are on my own part; namely I didn't know where my browsers bookmarks lie within my computer when I was backing certain things up, so those were all lost, but ah well...
Thus far my computer seems to be in decent working order, though a bit slower than usual, but the fact of the matter is it is healthy.

I thank you all for your assistance, it is immensely appreciated.