Further adventures in tech support

vsp · 08-22-2005, 09:18 AM

A friend of mine has an aging Dell Pentium II that's having Windows issues; it abruptly locking up on booting, booting okay in safe mode. I futzed around with disabling parts of system.ini and win.ini until it booted vaguely normally, though there are still some issues. I decided that the best thing to do would be to add a second hard drive as the new primary, put a fresh coat of 98SE on that, put the old drive on as the slave drive and reinstall the apps. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

So I dug up a used 10GB drive, got some mounting rails to screw onto it, and opened the case... only to find nowhere to put a second drive. There's a funky enclosure on the front of the case where the "main" HD screws in, and nowhere that I can find that the second drive can go. (Friend: "Couldn't you just lay it on the bottom of the case?" Me: "No.")

Okay, so the two-drive solution isn't a go. Plan B: Install the new drive and put 98SE on that, as much to verify that the new drive is good as anything else, and worry about copying files over from the old drive later.

I install the drive, boot from the CD-ROM, install 98SE, so far so good. Next up: install the Verizon Online software so that I can get to the web and download the rest of the driver files.

Verizon's installer starts up, coughs and dies with a "You must have at least 800x600 resolution to run this app" message. So... I need video drivers in order to get online to download the video drivers. ARGH!

So I put everything back the way it was, and am now working on digging up Diamond Viper V550 drivers and some way of getting the second drive in the system.

Or I could just nag him into buying a new computer.

08-22-2005, 09:18 AM	#1
vsp Syndrome of a Down Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: West Chester Posts: 1,367	Further adventures in tech support A friend of mine has an aging Dell Pentium II that's having Windows issues; it abruptly locking up on booting, booting okay in safe mode. I futzed around with disabling parts of system.ini and win.ini until it booted vaguely normally, though there are still some issues. I decided that the best thing to do would be to add a second hard drive as the new primary, put a fresh coat of 98SE on that, put the old drive on as the slave drive and reinstall the apps. Seemed like a good idea at the time. So I dug up a used 10GB drive, got some mounting rails to screw onto it, and opened the case... only to find nowhere to put a second drive. There's a funky enclosure on the front of the case where the "main" HD screws in, and nowhere that I can find that the second drive can go. (Friend: "Couldn't you just lay it on the bottom of the case?" Me: "No.") Okay, so the two-drive solution isn't a go. Plan B: Install the new drive and put 98SE on that, as much to verify that the new drive is good as anything else, and worry about copying files over from the old drive later. I install the drive, boot from the CD-ROM, install 98SE, so far so good. Next up: install the Verizon Online software so that I can get to the web and download the rest of the driver files. Verizon's installer starts up, coughs and dies with a "You must have at least 800x600 resolution to run this app" message. So... I need video drivers in order to get online to download the video drivers. ARGH! So I put everything back the way it was, and am now working on digging up Diamond Viper V550 drivers and some way of getting the second drive in the system. Or I could just nag him into buying a new computer.

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