Alltel messed up computer | Tech Support | Forums

Anybody ever heard of an Alltel cell phone connected to a computer, for internet access, messing up the computer so bad that it won't even do a reinstall of the OS?

That's what happened tonight on our fire department computer. It has happened somewhat to the guy that owns the cell phone. His brand new HP laptop "locks up" within a minute or two of connecting to the internet using the phone. Alltel told him that it was happening because they aren't set up yet to work with windows 7 yet. But the department computer runs XP, not windows 7.

What he does when it happens is to remove the battery, and then put it back in. The computer then works fine. So we unplugged the department's computer from the wall socket and then plugged it back in. But nothing changed.

I can't even get it to boot up in safe mode. We tried every option we could think of but it won't recognize the disk to reinstall XP.

At this point we're gonna have to take it to a computer shop and pay them to fix it, unless somebody here has an idea we could try???

No, that hadn't been tried last night when we had the problem. The guy that owns the phone was going to go home and try it on his "old" laptop. Which was an XP machine. He'd stopped using the old laptop because it did the lockup thing one day, and when he finally got it to power up after that, he had the same problem that the fire department computer now has. That's why he went out and bought his new laptop.

I'll be talking to him later today and will find out it if it worked.