Screen brightness stuck on low and System recovery/Networking drivers fail after restart

[k3du53]

I noticed that my Dell Vostro 1400 was operating slower than normal, so I closed all my programs and restarted the laptop. When it completely booted, it appeared normal, until I started to log in to my user. When I moved the mouse to my user, the screen brightness immediately went to the lowest, and the button hotkey to turn it up doesn't work. Upon logging in, I was greeted with a blocky theme (forgive me, forget the name of it), instead of the smooth Windows 7 theme that has more color. Another problem I found, is that the networking drivers are disabled, and system recovery fails. (Vol. Shadow copy not working (0x81000202) when trying to use System Restore).

I'm utterly tired and tapping away on a phone right now, mad at the fact that school starts next week and my laptop is practically useless as of now.

Things I have tried:
- Safe mode with networking, set Volume Shadow Copy to automatic, turns out I never did a system backup
- Using Windows troubleshooter and repair tool

That's about it, I don't have a repair disc or a budget to get something to fix.

 

[hang-the-9]

You can't just enable the network drivers in Device Manager, or delete them and have Windows detect them again?

You can try to unplug the system from wall power, remove the battery, hold in the power button for about 30 seconds and try again, also go into the BIOS and reset it to defaults.

Without having any restore media or a Windows disk you are not going to get far. That's almost a 10 year old laptop, sounds like there is an issue with the motherboard. If you can't repair Windows, you will need to find your restore disks or use the system restore from the hard-drive if the laptop came with one, or find a generic MS Windows 7 OEM disk and install Windows clean. You'll have to backup your files first, sounds like your USB posts work at least so you can do that.

If a clean Windows setup does not help, you can just replace the laptop, a used faster one is not much more than a $100, I have sold plenty of early Core i5 laptops for about $120, so you can easily find a better system pretty cheap.