My turn for help

[E7mack96]

OK, I have an Compaq 5888 PC at work. Athlon 700 chip, 256 mb ram, Win 98 2nd edition. No recovery disks of any kind (bought used 2 yrs ago) It has worked fine.



I did the seemingly daily windows update. It downloaded fine ( DSL ) . upon restart, no windows at all. The thing starts booting, then hangs with a black screen.



You can boot to safe mode, but I still cannot find out what is wrong here. No drivers load, as I cannot use the cdrom from safe mode, or I would just install new OS.



Can anyone give some advice here?

 

[Philip]

Lets try an easy way first.



Boot into safe mode. Run a scandisk on it. Start>programs>accessories>system tools> scandisk.



That compaq is set to boot from cd first. If you drop a windows disk it it will boot from it. If you have a 98 disk. Boot from it and run a reload of windows. It should save your files. I would do this as the last resort. There are other things we can try first.

 

[E7mack96]

this Compaq WILL NOT boot from Cd rom. I have tried!, I have selected boot from cd in the bios, and it will not. I have booted to safe mode, i have ran scandisk, and ran it again with the optional surface scan. both are OK.



I have tried to boot to win 98 disk, and a win ME disk. NO CDROM support!!



A drive, maybe. I'd have to dig out an old 3. 5 floppy drive and try that.



Now for some more ideas!

 

[Philip]

Sounds like that cd-rom is bad if you can't boot from it. Oh well.



Run a system file check and replace any bad files from a floopy disk. That would be my next try. From the run box. Type in sfc note any files it says are bad. Extract them on another computer and put on a floopy. Replace files on bad computer from the A drive. Save old files to a file on the desk top.

 

[E7mack96]

Maybe I should clarify here: The CD-rom is actually a DVD-rom drive that is also a CD-rom drive. I am guessing since it doesn't load the driver for it, that is why it doen't work.

 

[Philip]

Ok that explains why it won't boot from cd. I have seen a couple of DVD drives I couldn't boot from a cd on.



How did the system file check come out?

 

[AKAMAC]

If your system is ME you can do a "system restore" from safe mode.

 

[E7mack96]

The system is win 98. SFC showed no problems, still would not boot to cdrom or windows.



Here is what i have done to fix so far:



1. fdisk the hard drive for a clean install



2. format disk



3. install win ME (had this software already)



4. cdrom now works fine.



5. now the nic does not work. no driver. can't get online.



Compaq's driver file did nothing for it. I tried the win98 and the win Me versions. In device mgr, says no driver installed so it must be a proprietary card. Guess I'll have to go and buy a nic card/driver.

 

[Philip]

Pull the card out. On it some where is a FCC number. Go to this website and cross out the mfg.



http://www.fcc.gov/oet/fccid/help.html



Then you should be able to find drivers then

 

[E7mack96]

thanks for the tip on the FCC id.



the card in the computer is not Win Me compatable based on data at Diamond. They have no drivers for Win Me.



So, i'm off to buy a new NIC.



Thanks again for the tip.



E7

 

[Philip]

That is a good site to book mark. It has saved me a few times on older hardware.

 

[E7mack96]

Well, I bought a Belkin 10/100 NIC for 9. 99 and installed it at 5am this morning, drivers automatically installed, and now the pc is working good.



now for next dilemma: I had Norton antivirus 2002 on this system. OE install. No disk. How can I get a virus program installed again WITHOUT paying again. just for the record, I had renewed the annual Rx about 2weeks prior to the Win 98 crash.



Thanks,



E7

 

[Philip]

The only thing I can think of is contacting Norton and ask for a disk. They might want proof you are payed up. If you copyed your invioce when you renewed online. The number should be on it.