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Dead PC

E

Enigmo

Member
The other day my brother asked me to have a look at his computer for him. I asked him what the problem was and he was very vague and didn't have a clue what he'd done to it. Win ME wouldn't boot at all so I decided to format the HD and re-install it. Only the problem is that it won't install - I can't read the CD the installation files are on and they won't transfer to the HD. Whenever I type dir or copy the whole thing goes haywire and spits out reams and reams of meaningless characters. These characters fill the screen and would keep going on and on forever if I didn't turn the computer off.

Has anyone got any idea what could be wrong with it? Or can anyone suggest any good DOS hardware diagnostic software that I could run from a floppy?

I don't think this really has a bearing on the problem, but it's an AMD 233 with 32mb RAM, a 4 gig HD (now completely empty) and ....er I think that's everything that might be relevant.

Hope someone can help.
 
Yep, it was one of those ones which detects which CD drive you have and then installs the relevant drivers. I made it using Win ME if that's any help.
 
Oh right, I see, it's all coming back to me now. Thanks for the info, I'll try it that way instead and see what happens. 🙂
 
I think so, but the drive is empty so it's not really a fair test. I'll try copying something from a floppy and see if I can get a listing.
 
Hi,

Just me again. I managed to copy all the Windows setup files to the hard drive except one. I'm not sure why it had problems with just this one file but there you go. When I tried to run setup I just got a screen full of random characters and I had to reboot before I could try anything else. Setup will not run from the CD either. Any more ideas are very welcome. Thanks 🙂 How would I know if the CD drive is faulty by the way? It produces dir listing in the usual way.
 
It could easily be a scratched CD. My Win98 CD developed a scratch that prevented it from copying a few files, too.

Here's another possibility, judging from things I've heard/seen. WinME is a real bear for systems. The situation could very well be that your system can't run WinME. I've seen many *horror* stories of people who tried to upgrade to ME from Win95 and 98, and end up with a useless computer because ME just plain wouldn't work. Even clean installations have those results. If I were you, I would try to install Win98 first. If that fails, then you may have a CD-ROM problem, but I don't think that will be the case. After Win98 has installed, go ahead and try another upgrade. If it works, congratulations. If it fails, sell the software or buy a newer system that may be more accepting of WinME.
 
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