Need some computer help please!

[Rattlebrain 10+ year member]

Ok here the story. My dad was given a old computer. He wants me to see if I can get it going. Its running Windows 98 //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif . It is a custom built job, so its not any particular brand per say. Well, I cant even get it to start in safe mode. It gets to a point and tells me it cannot load mmsound.drv and to reinstall windows. I do not have any disk to reinstall. The only thing I have is a restore disk with Windows XP for an old E-machine i had that died on me. The restore disk states that the cd will only work with an e-machine pc. Any help or suggestions? We dont want to put any money in on this thing. He just wants to use it to do invoices on. MAYBE surf a little.

Thanks!!

Jay

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[psych0ticnemes1 5,000+ posts]

go into bios and tell it to boot from cd... and try that emachine disk anyways.... can't hurt.... if it does, delete all partitioned space then install windows in the unpartitioned space...

you can boot up from the windows 98 boot disk and run fdisk, delete all partitions, then format the hard drive so that you can install an operating system if you happen to come across one

 

[Rattlebrain 10+ year member]

go into bios and tell it to boot from cd... and try that emachine disk anyways.... can't hurt.... if it does, delete all partitioned space then install windows in the unpartitioned space...
you can boot up from the windows 98 boot disk and run fdisk, delete all partitions, then format the hard drive so that you can install an operating system if you happen to come across one

I'll give it a shot. Thanks... Like you said, "Cant hurt"

 

[DaveVT 10+ year member]

download win98 off bittorrent or some other p2p client and burn it. You can also try to borrow it or buy it off ebay for next to nothing. I think I have have a copy of it around here somewhere. Pay for shipping and you can have it.

 

[Rattlebrain 10+ year member]

CRAP More trouble, I went to open the CD drive and the belt is broke. I guess I'll do some scrounging.

 

[Rattlebrain 10+ year member]

download win98 off bittorrent or some other p2p client and burn it. You can also try to borrow it or buy it off ebay for next to nothing. I think I have have a copy of it around here somewhere. Pay for shipping and you can have it.

I may get back with you on the disk, but for now I am just going to see if the drive in another pc I have out here will work. If not Fu It. Didnt cost us anything and dont want to spend much of anything on it either. If I can get it going, Great, if not, we aint out much. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[Raven 10+ year member]

Put LINUX on it!

 

[Rattlebrain 10+ year member]

Thanks for the tip, but this thing has major issues. I gave up on it for today. I am going to have to rob parts out of about 3 different computers to get one going. I'm not sure it will even work then.

Thanks for the help though!!!

 

[playa1 10+ year member]

the emachines disk will do nothing, just like any other system restore disk made by the manufactuere, the files to be restored are on a seperate partition of the hard disk that they supply you with. So it looks liek you have 2 hard disks but you really only have one and the second hard disk is just for the files so you can use the recovery disk to recover. This will do nothing for you.

If you have a broadband connection i might be able to help you out and let you download windows xp with sp2 from me.

Mike

 

[Raven 10+ year member]

If the machine is THAT old, there's no way it's going to handle any new software by Microsoft. A distro of Linux tailored to

 

[Rattlebrain 10+ year member]

the emachines disk will do nothing, just like any other system restore disk made by the manufactuere, the files to be restored are on a seperate partition of the hard disk that they supply you with. So it looks liek you have 2 hard disks but you really only have one and the second hard disk is just for the files so you can use the recovery disk to recover. This will do nothing for you.
If you have a broadband connection i might be able to help you out and let you download windows xp with sp2 from me.

Mike

I definitely appreciate your help. Ive got more issues with the durn thang than just the operating system right now. Going to have to change out some parts first and the see if I can get anything accomplished from there. Not going to mess with it any more today though. Tired of F'n with it.

 

[playa1 10+ year member]

ok no prob, if it is an old comp might as well put linux on it, learn how to use linux, i wish i had another comp so i could do this.

Mike