Greetings jinn,

First did you fdisk to delete and recreate your partitions before formatting and installing 98? You really need to fdisk in order to wipe the registry and what not clean of WinME.

You need to install your chipset. What happens is that when you switched to 98 windows couldn't recongnize any of the PCI devices. The first thing you must install after switching an OS is the chipset. You need to pop in your resource cd and select your system, win98, system, and drivers in the corasponding boxes. Then click on the chipset, select unzip when the window pops up. It will tell you that it unziped so many files, then a window will pop up eplaining how to install the chipset. Scroll to the bottom of the window and click install now. It may ask you to "save to disk or run fom current location" choose run from current location. A security warning might also pop up, just click ok if it does. Then it will ask you to restart, do so and you should see a bunch of things install. Thats it. But you may need to download the ultra ata drivers from dell downloads. That is really easy and it will explain itself when you go to install it.

You really should install all your drivers in this manner...
Chipset, ultra ata, video, audio, then modem. If you didn't or think you messed up somewhere I would clean install the whole thing. Most of your drivers should be on the resouce cd, anything else should be on the cd's dell sent with the system.

If you have any problems with any of the drivers let us know and we can walk you through it.

Greetings,

The only reason I said to fdisk was because that is what I was told be Dell and some others. I did when I switched from ME to 98, and have had none of the problems I had with ME. Again, I don't know if fdisk was absolutley nessacary, but I did it with great results.

By the way, since your on the boards alot, have you been having problems viewing edited posts? The thread seems to start loading then stops. It seems alot of people are having problems.

Later
Ron

Volcano11,
For some reason my last post won't show up even though I can click on it, I get a timed out. So I'll try to rewrite it.
First I want to say, you weren't there when I started to type my post that was about 10 mins behind you. The items in Device Manager that I need are--PCI Serial Controller--PCI System Management Bus--Unknown Device.

RDB77,
Thank you so much. I didn't do an fdisk because I thought that would only be to change partition sizes. And I wanted to keep the same size. Is the MBR different for 98? Also, in my haste to dl the bare minimum of programs, I didn't even put the Dell Resource CD in. I will put that in tonight. Do you think I should also fdisk and reformat again though? Thanks so much for your help and making it easy to understand for the PC Illiterate.

Volcano11,
You weren't there when I started typing in my last post.
My exact devices are--PCI Serial Controller-- PCI System Management Bus-- and Unknown Device. I'm just more worried about the 2 PCI things right now. Thanks.



Message Edited on 07/25/01 05:30PM by jinn

jinn,

First you need to tell us exactly what devices you need to install, then we can be more helpful. Second, you do not need to run fdisk prior to formatting, unless you need to change how your drive is partitioned. Formatting your disk will wipe out everything, without doing an fdisk. Post back with more information and we can help you find the drivers. For some devices the locations of the drivers are obscure.

Steve

I think what you need to do is first install the intel chipset drivers (this should take care of the first 2 devices. I'm not familiar with the 4100 (it seems I have every other model but that one), so I'm not sure what the other device is. If the chipset drivers don't take care of it, post back and someone more familiar with the 4100 may be able to help.

Steve

No problem

I was told by Dell and other sources that an fdisk was needed because of switching from ME to 98. You may not have to but I doubt it hurts. That is your decision. I did the same thing going from ME to 98 and things have never been better.

As far as staring all over again and reformatting, yes I would. I say this because since you didn't install the chipset first before you did anything else. This is intel's and Dell's recomendation. It really doesn't take that long, and it's always best to start as clean as possible. Go ahead and do everything up to the chipset, meanwhile post back with your sound card, video card, and modem type in case we need trouble shoot a piticular driver. From experience I can tell you that SB Live cards can be jittery.

Enjoy
Ron

By the way, don't edit any posts unless you have too. DellTalk is having problems in which anyone who tries to view an edited post can't read it (aka it doesn't load).

Ron,

There seems to be a lot of problems with the fucntionality of Dell Talk. Sometimes I have trouble with posts that have been edited by the original poster, they will not load or will only partially load. There is a discussion of these problems over on the User Comments section of the Dell Talk. The problem seems to be intermittant.

Steve