It sounds like the issue with your Dell Inspiron 1750 laptop could be due to a loose or faulty connection between the display cable and the screen. Over time, the repeated opening and closing of the lid might have caused this connection to weaken, or become intermittent. It's recommended to have a technician check and possibly reseat or replace the display cable to resolve the flickering or blank screen issue you're experiencing. This maintenance should help alleviate the frustration caused by having to adjust the lid position constantly.

If the Dell is still under warranty, he can call Dell tech support and they will completely walk him through reformatting his computer. I have reformatted with Dell's assistance numerous times, ending up with a 'just like new zippy' computer. I bought the extended warranty on my Dell which covered up to 5 years on the hardware, and now no longer have to pay for any warranty, but have life time coverage for tech support. The extended warranty was not very cheap, but since my computer is 7 1/2 years old now, and I've not 'had' to spend a cent on it, I feel the warranty cost was well worth it. I did recently have a local computer repair person install a new drive, and reformat the computer, and he got all the updates and installed all necessary programs. He only charged $50, so I thought that was well worth it for me to not have to spend a lot of time getting all the updates and everything, since my ISP speed is not very fast. I would not feel very comfortable with trying to attempt to reformat without tech support walking me through everything.

Let's take this one at a time. Do you still have the Audigy sound card installed? If so, when you look in device manager do you see it listed without an exclamation mark? If so, the second device is the onboard audio. I would disable that in the BIOS (assuming Dell gives that option) or disable it in Device Manager. If the Audigy doesn't show up, I would re-install it with the latest, greatest driver downloaded from Creative. If you are no longer using the sound card and just want to use the onboard audio, follow the steps below to find the driver and choose audio. As for the network card, go to Dell Support. Choose "support for home users" then "drivers and downloads" and either plug in your system tag or search by model. Then choose "Network" and the driver is the "Intel Driver Pro 10/100" (third on the list).

Well I just realized I posted this in the wrong place it should have been under Computer Help, another pilot error or worst yet a Senior Moment....Shirl36