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More help with windows 98.....

S

speedy2

Golden Member
Ok.

Dell XPS R400

The same one that needed a PSU. Got the replacement PSU. Boots up. But, will only work in safe mode. I tried and tried until I figured out it was the DVD Rom drive. Unhooked the drive. There is a CD rom drive too, but it works without removing. So, everything is good without the DVD drive plugged in. So, I try a known working DVD drive. Same thing happens. No normal mode. Just a Cursor blinking at the top of the screen. But, when I'm in normal mode the CD drive doesn't even show up. Nor does any sign that there was a DVD drive. Also, before I can get into safe mode once the drive is disconnected, I HAVE to go intot he BIOS and select "yes" for "Reset Configuration Data." Otherwise, I will get the black screen even with the drive disconnected.
 
Have you replaced the CMOS battery? That's a pretty old PC and if the CMOS battery is failing, it can definitely cause configuration and boot issues.
 
CMOS battery is brand new. Replaced it even before I replaced the PSU. I also tested it again after having this issue.
 
Looks like nothing I try works. There isn't even a Cd/DVD drive area in the device manager. Would the IDE Controller or something be bad? I have a bunch of known good drives and everyone I stick in here NOTHING happens.
 
Working on old PCs is fun (not). I spent a couple of hours with some '486 and '386 PCs last weekend, trying to get them running for some old games. There's lots of things to go wrong.
 
Yeah. Wouldn't doubt if there's no hope for it. There is not even a Secondary IDE Controller in the Device Manager. And, in the BIOS, nothing shows up in the Secondary either.
 
In that case, go back to the link I posted and reinstall ALL the Motherboard
chipset and the IDE/EIDE drivers. Something is missing or a bad install.
Also check in the BIOS and be sure the CD drive option and the IDE channel it
is on are Enabled.
 
Yeah did that with the BIOS already. That was the first thing I checked. I'll have to get the chipset drivers over there and try that.
 
Well some of her Windows 98 games are on DVD. So I guess they were, but geeze, I don't remember it being so common. Even CD Burners were not common around here. If you could burn your own music CD's back then you had a million people asking you for CD's lol.
 
Brutus04 said:
Were DVDs even around at the same time as Win98? Damn...
Click to expand...
I bought my first A/V DVD player in 1997. I don't recall when I bought my first PC DVD reader (it was an Hitachi GD-2000), but I think it was in late 1997.

http://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/E/1997/970303B.html

GD-2000 features:

"6. Windows compatibility

The drive is fully compatible with the Windows 95 and Windows 3.1 operating system environments."
 
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I have done that for hours. haha. Oh well. I'm gonna go back through and do everything one more time. The lady said to just bring it. At least I have it running now with the new PSU. So much for resurrecting a dinosaur. Thanks for all the help guys.
 
Only other ideas I can give you at this point are:

Check the IDE cable to the CD-DVD drive .. I have seen many bad ones

Try a PCI IDE controller card and see if you can see the CD-DVD drive
If so, then it is either a driver issue or a bad on board IDE controller on the motherboard
 
bruceb said:
Only other ideas I can give you at this point are:

Check the IDE cable to the CD-DVD drive .. I have seen many bad ones

Try a PCI IDE controller card and see if you can see the CD-DVD drive
If so, then it is either a driver issue or a bad on board IDE controller on the motherboard
Click to expand...

What he said!

What about jumpers?
I had a pre-built win 98 box from toshiba that ran CD and DVD drives but they only worked on that mobo with a single cable, as master and slave. IIRC I tried using both on separate cables and one or the other didn't fly. Both ports on the board would see the drives together but not single.
 
Remove the CD drive and test with the DVD drive. Interactions are funny. It could actually be the CD drive that is on the blink, causing the failure when the DVD drive is also attached.

Are both the CD and DVD drives original equipment? If the DVD drive was added, it could also be an interoperability issue with the firmwares/controllers between these two drives.

Does the system stop booting after the OS begins to load or before it? If the latter, then its a hardware (or firmware) issue.

Try using Cable Select for both drives. Some of these older systems couldn't cope with drives that were explicitly set to master/slave. Alternatively, if you were already using Cable Select, then try setting the drives explicitly to Master/Slave.
 
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