If I have a problem with an old computer (Windows 98), which section...

90s_Jeff

90s_Jeff

New Member
would I post the question in? Hello, all. It's my first post here. I hate to make my first post asking for help, but I really have nowhere else to go. Yahoo Answers used to get me good results, but now I can't even get them to tell me whether I have a mini- mid- or full-tower case (which is not my current problem, btw).

My question is not related to a specific part, just the computer in general. I'd stop beating around the bush and tell you what the issue is, except it's a very long story. Just for kicks, though, this is part of it: If the computer was able to use a CD-ROM to clean install a retail version of Windows 98, why did it work fine then (a few hours ago), but... when I tried to read a CD within Windows, it tells me "The device is not ready"? Same with the floppy drive. The strange thing is that this is the same OEM computer that had Windows 98 SE on it when I got it back in 1999. This is only one of the many problems that I've faced after wiping the hard drive clean and re-installing the OS.
 
I didn't... but since I can't use the CD, floppy, or USB flash drive, I'm probably screwed on that front. I tried from within MS-DOS mode too (as in "restart in MS-DOS mode"), but for the floppy I got "Error reading drive A". For the CD I got "Invalid drive specification".
 
Hardware devices such as CD-ROM drives and especially floppy disk drives work perfecty with Windows 98.If it does not work to you then you have done something wrong.
Other hardware devices such as graphic cards,sound and network in 99% cases DO require the driver to be installed manually in order for them to work.

Do this:

1. Format the entire HDD with Active Kill Disk (use the DOS version and boot it form the CD-ROM disk)...

2. Install Windows 98 OS and ONLY Windows 98 OS...

3. See if the floppy disk and CD-ROM disk now work.They should...

4. Install all other drivers now in this order:

-chipset
-graphic
-sound
-network

A) You can install the drivers directly from the CD-ROM disk if you have it
B) If not,put the drivers on that computer using Linux Ubuntu CD-ROM disk by using simple COPY and PASTE commands.I would put them on the desktop.I think that the path location is:

C:\WINDOWS\Desktop

Now turn off Ubuntu and go back to the Windows 98 OS and install the drivers in the order I wrote above...

5. Once you have installed the drivers,you may also want to install USB drivers:

A) You can install the USB drivers directly from the CD-ROM disk if you have it
B) If not,put the USB drivers on that computer using Linux Ubuntu CD-ROM disk by using simple COPY and PASTE commands.I would put them on the desktop.I think that the path location is:

C:\WINDOWS\Desktop

Now turn off Ubuntu and go back to the Windows 98 OS and install the USB drivers...

6. Restart your computer for 3 times to make sure that everything is working the way it should...

7. The end...

NOTE 1: Be sure that your computer hardware devices work correctly because if they don't then no drivers will help you there.

NOTE 2: If you cannot find USB drivers for Windows 98 first edition or second edition,let me know and I will send them to you.



Cheers!
 
I was going to try another CD drive to see if simple hardware failure was the cause, but apparently HP used a really small case (plastic on the outside makes it look bigger), and it's an utter nightmare to work with. I've been trying so hard to remove the little audio power cable, even with tweezers, but I just can't.

I may try what you suggest S.T.A.R.S. At this point, though, I'm really starting to think "Maybe the damn thing was just old and decrepit." and maybe I should just build a new one with parts from eBay.

The sound card does have a question mark in device manager. Windows "doesn't know what's wrong" with it. The drives didn't have the question marks though.

I have another question though. Why do I get the "It is now safe to turn off your computer" message when I try to shut it down now? I never got that before formatting the hard drive.
 
Dont need your sound cable just to test another drive. Take the side off and set the other drive on a box or something. Plug the power and IDE cable on the new drive and boot up and see if it works.

As far as the (It is now safe to turn off your computer), is this a old AT computer and not a ATX?
 
Nope, it's an ATX. It has the exact same hardware that it had when I got it from Circuit City back in 1999. It shut down normally before.
 
Can you post the contents of your autoexec.bat and config.sys? I don't know why the floppy drive would have stopped working, but I can recall having similar issues with CD drive because I screwed up some startup settings.

Also, what were you doing before it stopped working? I understood from you OP that you installed Win 98 and everything was working just fine, and then it simply stopped?
 
It might actually be easier to copy and paste the "whole story" of my situation. I typed it all out a few days ago to help me retrace my steps. But for now, I can say this:

1. I had checked my autoexec.bat and it was blank.

2. Though I had to stack quite a few boxes and stretch a few cables, I managed to test another optical drive. The one I tested was a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive that I had bought brand new for my WinXP machine (which had *completely bombed*, so I had savaged this drive before throwing away that PC).

Anyway, the DVD drive that I tested worked beautifully, which means, apparently, the old CD drive went bad extremely recently. It also means, I can assume, that the floppy is messed up.

Funny story about the floppy drive... It might have messed up a long time ago and I wouldn't have ever noticed it. You see, for the majority of my lifetime, I had no use for floppy drives, thought they were extremely outdated and wished that OEM manufacturers would get rid of the old things. Now that I need one... well you see where I'm going with this.

Now, the logical thing to do from here would usually be to replace both drives. However, HP decided that its target consumers (computer novices, I guess) would never need to open the case. So they took a small case, screwed the drives in on both sides and covered one side with steel and plastic. Not to mention, the power supply is big enough to make it harder to move in there. In other words, I cannot remove any of the drives in the computer.

My goodness, I have a habit of typing a lot... In my next reply, I could look at config.sys, and I'll post my step-by-step of creating my problems. Retracing my steps, in other words. Basically though, I had moved the video card to a different PCI slot. Then apparently I accidentally shook the computer while it was starting up, because the hard drive gave me "Error reading drive C" on startup. Before that, everything was working fine. So anyway, I wiped out the hard drive (disappointed at the loss of my saved games), installed Windows 98 again (from a CD), started up Windows normally, and that's when I noticed that the drives had gone bad, sound didn't work, and it had a strange shut down.
 
Nothing is in Config.sys either. Now this is what I typed retracing my steps. It is the full story, albeit in sentence fragments.

1. Last used computer several years ago. It was working fine.

2. Had opened it up a few years ago to see if I could borrow the floppy drive. It was on a carpeted floor while I worked on it. Probably a stupid idea. Floppy cable was too short to fit in new computer's case, I so didn't use it. Plugged the floppy drive back in. Left the side of the case off because the screw is missing and it's hard to get the case to stay back on.

3. Brought the old computer to new house. A few years later, I set it up.

4. Turned it on, no image on the screen. Tried using the Windows key + Enter to shut down computer via the Start menu, didn't work. Hard drive light stayed going for several minutes, still no response (PC was very cluttered, apparently.) Used the power button to turn off computer.

5. Made sure that the monitor was plugged in correctly and tried again. Same result.

6. Switched monitor plug from video card to motherboard embedded video, got the computer to start up. It worked, but it only showed 16 colors and 640x480. I was so unsatisfied with it that I shut down the computer and messed with the video card, tried plugging it into a different slot. Same result as before. The card was shot, I was simply in denial.

7. Finally gave up. I decided to call it a day. I was going to have to wait and buy a new video card later. So, the plan was to safely shut down the computer and wait until then. While the computer was starting up, I switched the monitor plug from the faulty video card back to the embedded video and saw Windows 98 starting up again. It always took a while to start up, everything was normal so far. While I waited, I took the time to put the side of the case back on. Apparently, I must have shaken the computer when I did that.

8. After taking a ridiculous amount of time on the "Windows is starting up" screen, it went back to a command prompt and said "Error reading drive C, Abort Retry Fail". I had screwed up the hard drive.

9. Since, apparently, Windows 98 CDs don't have nearly the amount of hard drive features as Windows Vista DVDs do (like formatting, partitions, etc.) and they don't let you install to a hard drive unless it's blank, I had to figure out how to format the hard drive. Luckily, I remembered the DOS command fdisk. Ah, good old MS-DOS. What the hell would I have done without you?

10. After wiping the hard drive clean, I boot to a Windows 98 CD. I start installing the operating system from the CD and it looks like I'm finally in the clear.

11. I boot into Windows for the first time, letting Plug & Play do all of the work. It was an HP computer, so I sure as hell didn't have any drivers.

12. It is here where I find out that the sound doesn't work anymore. According to Device Manager, there is some kind of issue with the sound card now (which is probably embedded too, come to think of it). I figure it must be a driver issue.

13. Since it is physically impossible to put a floppy drive into my current (Windows Vista) computer without buying an external USB floppy drive (and burning a CD for such small files would be impractical), I decided to use my USB flash drive. I decided to test it beforehand by putting a text file onto it and plugging it into my Win98 computer. Turns out, I would need a driver for that.

14. I download the manufacturer's driver for the flash drive, as well as other drivers, and burn them to a CD. I put the CD into the computer, but the drive doesn't start reading the disc. I go into Windows Explorer and click on the CD drive. "The device is not ready." Very odd. I tried several CD-ROMs , but got the same answer.

15. I hadn't put any floppy disks into the drive for as long as I owned the computer. I prayed that it worked. I grabbed a non-blank floppy disk and put it into the drive to test it. I got the exact same thing as with the CD-ROM drive. No sound (though the drive's LED had lit up on startup), just the same error message.

16. I turned off the computer, unplugged and replugged the power and data cables to the drives, to no avail.

So I went from having a computer with no decent graphical power to having a computer with...

* no decent graphics
* no sound
* no CD-ROM drive
* no floppy drive
* no USB storage
* improper shut down sequence (which I'll get to in a minute)

In essence, I had added and multiplied my problems instead of fixing them. You can imagine the shame I felt. "I'm a failure as a computer technician," I thought. "My one area of expertise in life and I still screwed it up."

When I click the shut down button, it doesn't turn the computer off. It goes to an old-school screen that says "It is now safe to turn off your computer." I have no idea why that would happen. I'm using the exact same ATX power supply as before. In fact, I'm using 100% the same hardware as before.

All I want is an authentic Windows 98 computer (no virtual machines and no DOSbox) so that I can play all of my old games the way that they're meant to be played.

Update: I believe that I've figured out what happened with my drives. I believe that the floppy was probably already bad, the the CD drive decided to die right after I got back into Windows. Strange coincidence, but perhaps everything decided to die at the same time. The video card had probably already gone bad (which makes it the 3rd Voodoo/nVidia card to die on me; never had that problem with ATi Radeon). The sound card might be a driver issue, but I'm not sure.

In any case, I'm starting to believe that the solution to my problems is to just build myself a "new old computer" from parts on the internet. After all, with the way that my computer case is built, replacing parts is pretty much impossible without bringing out some serious power tools. It seems that you have to know what you're looking for if you want to buy old parts (more so than new ones). At least I've already got a DVD/CD-RW drive, a monitor, joystick, sound card (different one, still in box), and a keyboard and mouse. It's a start.
 
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