My friends computer just up and died. It says there is no operating system on it. It was acting strange before hand. She had windows 98 on it. It was a really old computer...I think either 433 or 700mhz.
Other people in her house have a wireless network, but she could never get on with windows 98. She does not have enough money to buy a new computer.
My question is, if I reformat the hardrive and reinstall an OS, will it buy the computer more life and stabalize it? Or is the computer just dead?
AND...Does anyone have any idea where the cheapest windows 2000 is? Windows 2000 will work with the Linksys G wireless router, and it will give her free internet.
Thank you
Thank goodness when her computer was acting up, I had her back up everything onto both a disc and onto the back up partition on my Hard Drive. She had a TON of important stuff on her comp.
EDIT: I do have Mandrake 10.x on three discs. I have never installed that before. Do you think it would work? I wonder if they have drives for Linksys wireless routers....? hmmmm
[ December 23, 2004, 11:57 AM: Message edited by: lem ]
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
The switch to Win2000 may not work. If this computer was struggling with Win98, the chances of it working well with the larger OS are not 100%. I think not too bad, but no guarantee that it'll work.
It'll be important, first, to make sure you have drivers to run the various parts of the system.
If you decide to purchase Win2000 I suggest just googling on it by name. I found sites advertising prices as low as $33.
You have to be careful, though. Some of the sales are for OEM packages. If I recall correctly, around the time of Win2K's release, they'd figured out how to test to see if the system you're installing on is valid for that version of the OS. So, you try to install a Dell version of Win2K on a Hewlett Packard machine and it'd stop you.
To be certain, you have to buy the full license or an upgrade (from 98 to 2000), not the OEM one. Those are probably going to cost more, from what I saw in checking on Google.
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
By the way, you have nothing to lose in at least trying to wipe the system and reinstall. Go for minimal additional software to start with and check the harddrive thoroughly (reformatting it will give you a sense of the bad sectors anyway).
I've had several computers go through this. I've usually ended up buying new hard drives and sticking with the original OS.
Tried to make a Linux machine once, but the driver problem (or lack of drivers) stumped me.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Bob, can you give me a call or go on AIM?
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
If her computer is a Compaq, give up now and run away. Old Compaq's are almost impossible to troubleshoot. You can't even rearrange PCI devices without screwing over the entire system.
You might try out linux using Knoppix; it doesn't write to the hard drive at all. It'll be a little slow because the machine's low on memory (and it needs to load all its info in use into memory), but it'll run. If you like it, you can always install directly to the disk from the in memory install, with the configurations exactly as you have them.
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
Uh Oh,
It is a Compaq! I will reformat and try putting back on 98. If that works, I may try going to 98 SE, I just heard that linksys has a driver for 98 SE.
Thanks for the advice; I will keep you posted on what happens.
Posted by TheTick (Member # 2883) on :
Yeah, 98se is usually the minimum for 802.11g wireless stuffs.
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
I sent an email.. One of them returned. I hope you got the other.
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
Well,
I tried to reformat it, but it said there was no disc. I took off the casing and turned on the computer (I thought maybe the hardrive was loose), and it sounded like a marble was bouncing in the harddrive.
I think something internally came loose, and the hardrive is busted.
I no longer think it is a software issue. Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Well, the good news is that hard drives are really cheap these days.
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
I wonder if it will fit in a computer as old as hers. I will look.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Okay, ya need 64Megabyte RandomAccessMemory to run Windows2000.
Now for a BuyItNow price of $70to$120, you can get a 128Megabye RAM computer, which is more than the Windows2000 minimum. And 128Megabyte RAM is sufficient to run XP when Microsoft quits supporting 2000; my advice is stick with 2000 until it can't be used.
If ya wanna bid, ya can probably get a lower price. Most sellers are sittin' on a computer "too slow" to use -- unless they're heavy into gaming or CGIing, they bought a new one to "drive a Hummer" -- and too good to throw away. They mostly wanna get rid of their old computer without feeling guilty about just trashing it.
Frankly, it ain't worth the time (running around finding components) and the monetary risk (in buying components to swap out in hopes of fixing the problem) to troubleshoot a broken computer when good used computers are so cheap. You can always check out EBay and newspaper classifieds for a seller close enough so you can just drive over to pick the thing up, and to check if it works as well as promised before forking out your cash.
[ December 24, 2004, 02:44 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
aspectre...
That's great advice.
Also, if one has a few more bucks, one can purchase a brand new machine from the various warring manufacturers for under $600.
So, that would tend to keep the prices on perfectly serviceable USED machines low. Buying them saves the landfills from being clogged with stuff that NEVER biodegrades and potentially poisons the environment for millennia!
Yippee!!!
Posted by WheatPuppet (Member # 5142) on :
Well, the reason it said there was no OS installed was because the drive wasn't respnding.
I was servicing the computer of my girlfriend's parents. I reformatted the hard drive, installed Windows, and then installed more RAM. After I installed the RAM, the computer inexplicably forgot about the hard drive. It took me two hours to remember that I had to unplug the hard drive in order to install more RAM since the cables were in the way. Boy did I feel dumb.
Anyway, I did learn that the computer's response to doing such a silly thing as that is to display a black screen with the white text "Could not find Operating System".
Anyway, I think getting a cheap new machine might suit your problem better than replacing the hard drive. A lot of newer software is heavy enough that it has trouble operating on older machines, and this might come up as an issue in the near future.
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