UNSOLVED
something is missing from OS
Good afternoon,
I have a Dimension XPS H233, first I was trying to see if I could upgrade it, the only thi g I did at the time wsa just to look at he space,of HD, RAM and motherboard processor to see if the system could handle it, now the person that I did that favor for, brought it back saying that ever since I touched it she has been unable to do anything, anyway the cd rom is not working at all, and when you start the system it gives you the choices to satrt up the system but it also recommends you to go into the command prompt and run scanreg, it says there is a registry/configuratiion error, I choose that but then it gives me bad command or file name, and can not do naything, if I choose safe mode it sytays at the windows logo screen, I have gone ahead and boot up with the floppy. but when I choose with cd rom support, it seems to start fine, but then it stops and the cursor just keeps blinking, if I choose without cd rom support it goes fine, but I have checked the system for win98 on it and it's not there, so I can not even reinstall the OS, I went ahead and open the case check for the cables and still nothing not even the CMOS was recognizingmthe cd rom drive, I went ahead and replaced the cd rom, the problem I don't have drivers for it or the setup installation, I went to driverguide but it was only a driver an INF, and it did not seem to help, now I can see the cd rom, the CMOS sees it, but I still can not start he bootable disk with cd rom support or even just to go to the command prompt it does not see the cd rom drive there, I have tried restoring the registry, from the dos prompt and also booting from the floppy without avail, I have run out of ideas as to what else to do with this system, there is information this person needs from there ,
Do you have any ideas or suggestions as to waht else I should try or if you know of any other place where I could get the drivers fr the cd rom, is a sony cdu4821.
Thanks for your support and cooperation
Sincerely
MAriae
do you think if I copy the msconfig and autoexec,bat from another win98 computer into this one, could that help me , I am running out of options, and there is no place I can find the driver setup for the sony cdrom cdu4821, I wnet into driver guide.com but what they had in there did not help.
Thanks for your support and cooperation.
Sincerely
Mariae
vpresley83
2 Intern
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307 Posts
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Posted May 18th, 2004 01:00
Hi
If you can, get a different CDROM and install it, do that. Flea market, swapmeet, etc. Dont think the msconfig and autoexec.bat files are the problem, they are basic and hard to bugger. Probably get a registry error still. Problem seems to be registry related. A computer that old, has to have a small HD. You could always pickup a hard drive cheap and reformat, and install an OS. Win 98 only uses about 200 meg on the HD. Then slave the old drive to it for file recovery. This is a tuffy. I always have spare's of most parts for just this occasion. I would make the owner cover the costs if possible. Nothing is for free these days. Im not sure you caused the problem at this point.
Vince
Message Edited by vpresley83 on 05-17-2004 10:41 PM
vpresley83
2 Intern
•
307 Posts
213
0
Posted May 16th, 2004 05:00
Hi
One of the things I do when doing computer favors for people, is first save the registry, by running regedit, from the start, run menu in windows, has saved me more than once. The second thing I do, is after working on someones computer, I reboot at least 3 times to verify no problems. The third thing is show them this when I give them back the computer. Sounds like the CDROM died, it happens on older computers, then the owner buggered it up and blamed it on you. Win 98 should recognize the CDROM, you shouldn't need drivers unless your using win 95. Did you do a google search for the driver ? If you can, put the HD in another computer as a slave and burn the files to a CD-R. Everyone has a CD-RW right ? Then reformat and reinstall the OS. Someone has an os disk somewhere. Any Dell drivers should still be available from dell support. As you learned you have to be careful when helping people out. NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED !
Vince
Dell Dimension XPS-T 600 Now, PL 1.4 Ghz
768 meg RAM
Nvidia PNY Ti-4200 64 Meg
West Dig 80 Gig HD
Rest is stock
Dell 4300 Was P4 1.6 Now P4 2.4
Radeon 8500 64 Meg
512 Meg Ram
The Rest Stock Dell
Inspiron 4000 320 Meg RAM, rest is stock
Power Edge 4200, Dual PII-333
512 Meg RAM
Matrox Gloria XL 16 Meg PCI Video Card