General Discussion - need some more help

Author

need some more help

lillian40

2002-03-20, 1:22 pm

Ok everyone...I am trying to upgrade a friends computer to Win 98 presently using Win 95. This is my problem. Looking at the specs for the upgrade, he only has 16 megs of Ram his hard drive and an upgrade requires at least 24, also he doesn't seem to have that much space left on the hard drive. When I took the cover off, I notice he had two banks of simms modules. Ok that means that each stick must be 4 meg right. If I am wrong do correct me. Also I notice that two of the sticks seems to be a little bigger than the other two. when I say bigger, I mean they are sitting just a tab bit higher. If I want to give him at least 24 megs of ram, how should I do this, it has two free banks left. Ok also I feel I need to recover some disk space somehow. He brought this computer used, and I don't want to mess it up, but I feel this is some experience I don't want to lose. I feel I can handle it, If I had the right information to go on. It is a Pentium computer made by Compaq. i am gonna do some searching online, but I decided to come here first. I gotta question, I go to "examnotes"

any help will be appreciated.

jombeewoof

2002-03-20, 1:31 pm

if they're simms your prolly right about em being 4 megs (if there is 4 of em) he has a free bank (2 slots) so try finding some 16meg simms (they should be pretty cheap) toss em in and as far as the hard drive how big is it now, does he have all his setup cd's for his programs if so backup all data files (if he even needs em) onto a zip drive or (if you have about a month) floppy
if he don't need the data files jus format the drive or you could just buy a new hard drive (relatively cheap nowadays) and setup the new OS on the new drive (if you can put a new drive in that particular model of compaq) some of em are pretty peculiar
best of luck and you're right that is the best way to get experience

lillian40

2002-03-20, 1:35 pm

he says as far as he is concerned, he needs none of the data on it. If I am gonna format, is it ok to install Windows 98SE upgrade version after I format. What about installing the cd rom and sound card drivers and all that If I have none of the installation disks?

rockman20

2002-03-20, 2:27 pm

I agree with jombeewoof simms should be dirt cheap! Especially 16MB. We have a load of these here at work collecting dust.

Here is what I would do.

1) Get more memory
2) Examine hard drive. Find out how big the drive actually is.
3) Find out what all he wants to run on this machine. If you have 100MB free after the install, and he wants to run some monster programs, I would invest in a different drive. Again, fairly cheap nowdays! (Be careful though because some older machines are very picky about how big of a drive you slap in there!)
4) Check and find out what hardware is on the machine. Sound card, video, etc. You can find this in the Device Manager. Make note of these! If Win98 doesn't automatically detect them, you will have to download drivers off the net. Usually you can find drivers for just about anything!
5) Format drive.
6) If you only have a Win98SE upgrade, you have to have a prior version of Windows installed. So, if you don't have Win95 disks, don't do step 5!

Actually, find that out first! If he doesn't have that, then either he has to find a copy of 98 somewhere or stick with what he has. (I still would suggest more mem just because pricing is cheap and mem is always nice.)

lillian40

2002-03-20, 2:35 pm

he is presently running Windows 95 and wants to upgrade to Windows 98 and already have a WindowsSE upgrade disk. He is taking computer classes and they are using Windows 98. No special use, mostly word processing, maybe make greeting cards, banners etc..nothing special. That is his use of the computer

Johnny5Alive

2002-03-20, 3:45 pm

...that SIMMS always need to be paired off in the RAM slots as well. 2 of the RAM cards you say are a bit different in size, thats fine. You can stick 2x16MB cards in but make sure they are the same otherwise

rockman20

2002-03-20, 4:09 pm

quote:
Originally posted by lillian40
he is presently running Windows 95 and wants to upgrade to Windows 98 and already have a WindowsSE upgrade disk.

So he has a 98 disk and then the SE upgrade disk? Then that should work out fine. Here is what you will want to do when you load the machine. (If the hard drive allows it)

Fdisk the drive and make sure there is only one partition. (If the drive is big enough, you could make 2 partitions and use the second one to create an image and maybe use for virtual memory......we can talk about this later if you want!)

Once the drive is clean, boot from a floppy that has CD Rom support. Once you have a DOS prompt you will want to create a Windows\Options\CABS directory on your root drive. Then copy everything that is in the WIN98 directory on the CD rom into your CABS directory on the hard drive. Once all files are copied, run the install from c:\windows\options\cabs

(If anyone knows an easier way, let me know! This is how I've always done it!)

What this will do is install the OS from the C drive. This way if he ever loads anything that needs the Win98 CD, it won't ask for it. It automatically looks in your CABS directory. Keep in mind, the CAB files take up space and if the drive is small let him live with the inconvenience of having to insert the 98 disk if the system ever needs any files.

goalie13

2002-03-20, 5:01 pm

If you fdisk that Compaq HDD, DO NOT delete the "non dos" partition. That is the place that Compaq puts the setup info. If you delete this patition you will have erased your CMOS settings. This portion is the F10 setup to get into the BIOS and change the settings.You can delete the other partitions and format but don't delete the "non dos" partition.

lillian40

2002-03-20, 5:57 pm

thanks all for the information and the advice. He has Windows 95 already on the hard drive. He purchased a upgrade of Windows 98 SE hoping to upgrade his computer to 98.
But this is the information I found out from Compaq. Ok this is a Prolinea 590. I has a 420mb hard drive

It has 16 megs of ram .I think it can max about was 196megs or something. I was told that since a upgrade would take up all of the hdd space that I could

quote:
. Probably the best way to try to get to win98 is upgrade the win95 that's already on the drive. To do this you can run setup of win98 from within win95

My question is how do I do this? I didn;t realize there was a way to update to Win98 from within Win95
What do you guys think?
thanks

rockman20

2002-03-20, 7:59 pm

Thanks to jombeewoof for reminding us about that elusive non dos partition! Sure confuses someone until they delete it and find no more F10 for BIOS setup.

As for the response that you got, I believe that they are talking about running the install that is on the Win98SE upgrade disk.

However, with that small of a drive, I wouldn't bother with 98. Just personal opinion though!

Good Luck!

lillian40

2002-03-20, 8:05 pm

that's what I think also...I figured it was probably a way around this, until I found really how small the drive is.
thanks for all the info though everyone!

Shrink

2002-03-20, 8:24 pm

I am a little confused about whether the SE upgrade is to upgrade from 98 or from 95. If it is the SE upgrade I'm familiar with, it assumes you already have 98 installed, and you can't do a clean install with it. If it is an upgrade disk from 95 to 98, then you'll have to reinstall 95 before upgrading. I would definitely recommend getting a new HD....his is too small to be of any practical value with the size of todays programs.

And, if I were going to upgrade his memory, I wouldn't stop at 24 MB, I'd put whatever is close to the maximum that the motherboard can handle.

It doesn't sound like a computer that is even worth saving to be honest, but it can give you some great learning and practice experience. That is exactly how I got started....putting together old machines that weren't worth much, and then trying out all kinds of configurations, upgrades, changes, etc.

Have fun!!

lillian40

2002-03-20, 10:47 pm

the computer already has windows 95 on it. It runs good to do stuff like Word Processing, Spreadsheets, maybe email etc. He was only wanting to upgrade it to Windows 98, cause he had got hold of a Windows 98 SE Upgrade disk that included the manual. But since his hdd is so small, I think he will just have to settle of 95 unless he is willing to put a bigger hard drive in.

Supertech

2002-03-20, 11:04 pm

That's called the upsell, lill.
Don't convince users to hang on to their old technology. Go for the upgrade. It's only money. and it's not yours! Software, today, doesn't care if your have enough memory or disk space. Do yourself a favor, as a tech who's gonna have to work on it; get a bigger harddrive. Get him to cough up for more memory while you're at it. When you reach the point of diminishing returns, upgrade the processor & motherboard. it never ends.

lillian40

2002-03-20, 11:09 pm

you got a good point

I am gonna try to convince him and try to find out how much he can upgrade and go for it

thanks

rockman20

2002-03-21, 8:00 am

And if you want a lot of fun, build his own! For about a grand he can have a really nice machine. Here's a quick spec sheet on what I was going to build.

Pentium 4 board with built in NIC and Sound and DDRAM slots
Pentium 4 1.6 GHz processor
512MB of DDRAM
40 GB 7200 RPM drive
Floppy Drive
CD/RW (I forget the spin rates)
Video card with 64MB of DDRAM, TV out, etc.
Case with 350 Watt power supply
Cable Modem
Windows 2000 Professional

Keep in mind that you can build whatever you want. DDRAM is more expensive then SDRAM. Could drop the processor down some, the video card down, drop the cable modem, etc, etc. It doesn't take much green to build a decent machine and the thing that I like best about doing it that way is you don't get all the preloaded software. They sometimes cram so much junk on these store machines it's unreal!

Shrink

2002-03-21, 8:40 am

Good suggestion Rockman20. I have built about 10 machines like that in the past 2 months and the only thing I would change is, I'd go with AMD CPU's rather than Pentium. The specs show that the new XP processors outperform pentiums....and they're cheaper!

JoniF

2002-03-21, 9:11 am

What I would do in this case is add an extra hard drive. I would keep the small drive as a boot drive with just the OS and add a bigger drive to load aps on.Or I would get two new hard drives and do the same thing. This way if the boot drive has a problem you do not use any apps. I do this with all of my home machines plus I also use Norton Ghost to image the boot drive. This has saved me many headaches in the long run. I have different images of different OS' I can load at anytime if I choose to use a different one.

Wilbur

2002-03-21, 9:42 am

IF and that is a big if. You want to use the current machine then get a bigger HD and slap in some more RAM. Then what I have always done is once you fdisk and format to windows 98 create a file at the root of C called win98 copy your cab files to there and install from there. ( this eliminates problems if you are stuck and have to blow away windows, Been there done that ) Also you can use the win98 upgrade cd but you will have to create a file on the harddrive the upgrade looks for (can't remember it right now) but you can just create a blank file with the correct name. Just remember the part about the non dos partition. you can download a copy of the setup files for it from Compaq but you have to install it before you create the dos partition.
hope this helps

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