wifi options

[borgward1]

Friends wife brought Compaq CQ laptop from Switzerland. Vista Home. Comes up in german, her native language. Could get wifi until yesterday after she installed camera software. The computer would not boot correctly, and came up with checksum error message. I finally figured out that it was only shutting down to energy saving mode, not complete shutdown. It seems to do that by default. It booted up correctly after I figured out how to get it to completely shut down. The wifi does not work now. Wifi indicator stays orange, not blue. I get options in German when I click on the wifi icon at bottom right of screen. Can anyone give me english translations of these?

Can I get Vist to switch back and forth between English and German at bootup? How to do?

[FrankyP]

The first thing I would do is go into Control Panel and System Devices and see if wi-fi is still enabled. It could be that wi-fi went out just coincidentally at same time you did other work.

[borgward1]

The control panel is in GERMAN! I speak ENGLISH!, so I do not know what the control panel is saying. My friends wife who speaks GERMAN as a first language, and a little English does not understand computers in any language, so can not translate technical terms for me. The wifi worked before she added camera software and not afterwords. Wifi did not work before I looked at it.

I have heard that Vista can boot to different languages. True or false? (My Linux computer can.) If so, how to do?

[FrankyP]

OK.

Yes, you can tell your computer to boot into English under Vista operating system.

First, you have to find ut how to enter your BIOS setup. My HP does so by pressing the F10 key when I see the HP logo on start up. Your computer may be different. The HP Web site says to try F1 if F10 doesn't work.

When the BIOS setup is open, press the right arrow key to System configuration. The first option you can change is the boot language. Mine says English. You should be able to right arrow to the correct language. Save your changes and exit.

[borgward1]

I know how to get the BIOS to come up in English. What I need to know if I can get Vista to display in English instead of German. Will Vista do that ? Are you saying that if I get the BIOS to come up in English, that Vista will then come up in English instead of German?

[FrankyP]

As a non-professional computer user, that is my understanding. At this point, what do you have to lose? You can always switch the BIOS language back.