A Word of Wisdom from DavidP

The Book of David

Chapter 1

And it came to pass that DavidP went up to his computer, and he connected the old scanner, which is by name called the Visioneer OneTouch, to the old computer.
And it came to pass that DavidP searched round about for the scanner software, but could not find it. So DavidP found a newer version of the scanner software, which is deemed version 7.0, for USB scanners only, and installed it on his old computer.
Then DavidP rebooted the computer, and a loud voice boomed from the computers screen, "Error: 24634df35 243624 b un", and it was deemed the Blue Screen of Death.
And it came to pass that DavidP fought with the computer, and wrestled with it, but to no avail.
And so DavidP formatted the computer's hard drive.

Chapter 2

And it came to pass that DavidP brought forth the Holy Windows 98 CD. And he read from the instruction manual:
"Thou shalt install Windows 98 on drive C. And the drive of installing shall be C. Not B, for it comes before C, and not D, for it comes after C, but C and C only."
And it came to pass that DavidP booted to DOS using a boot disk.
And so David inserted the Holy CD into the CD-ROM, but to no avail. The CD-ROM would not work. And it came to pass that a loud voice boomed from above, "Invalid drive specification."
And DavidP wrestled once again with the computer, throwing it to and fro, and searching for a way to enter the sacred BIOS of the computer.
And it came to pass that no entry to the BIOS could be found, and so DavidP was filled with ire.

Chapter 3

And it came to pass that DavidP brought forth diskettes of innumeral numbers. And three of these diskettes were labelled, "MSDOS 6.12."
And DavidP brought forth MSDOS and placed it into the diskette drive, and installed MSDOS onto the computer.
And it came to pass that DavidP brought forth Windows 1.0, but passed it by in favor of a better version of Windows.
And so DavidP once again inserted the Windows CD, which was labeled Windows 98, in hopes that it would work because MSDOS was now installed, but to no avail.
And it came to pass that DavidP found a program, which by name is called FDisk, and tried various things, but again to no avail.
And so David tossed the computer to and fro, angry with its incompitence.
Amen.

Amen...;)

-Pendragon


-man, that sucks.

okay...nobody i guess understood how to reply to this thread...

I need help here...

I had to format my HD to get the computer working again, but now the CDROM wont work at all, so i cant reinstall Windows.

I installed DOS 6.12, but that didnt have CDROM drivers on it...so finally i found some CDROM driver disks, but they didnt fix it either.

I decided to install Windows 1.0, but that didnt fix it, considering it cant even run its own programs.

I could ghost if I knew how, but i dont know how to do a low-level ghost.

And I cant figure out how to get into BIOS at all...i have tried everything. I even printed out the specs of the motherboard, but it didnt say how to on that.

What can i do?!??!?

Well, considering you probably don't have a recovery disk or anything like that... I'd check with the mobo manufaturer for advice on getting into BIOS (on every computer we've ever owned, you just press delete when booting up, but that could be a coincidence).... Past that... um.... see if MS offers versions of XP on floppy? :)

thats a good 1000 floppy disks considering XP takes up a gig of space...

the manufactuer is Compaq. Thats where i got the motherboard specs. It is a Compaq Desktop Pro 590.

First off, it'd only be a shade under 700 disks, so that's doable, right? Besides, I was kidding.

Have you tried to e-mail Compaq about it yet?

i only have about 350 disks...

Find a friend with win98. Go to friend and create startup disk. Insert startup disk in computer a: drive. Turn on computer. Select option to start computer with CDROM support. Insert OS cd. Go to CD directory. Type setup /? and hit enter. Use what ever switches you like... i.e. setup /is to setup and not run scandisk (from WINME option list).

already did that...didnt work.

Really. What didn't work about it. Could you gain access to the CDROM in dos?

So you have a computer that had a valid OS and the CDROM worked. You decided to start over and formatted your hard-drive and used fdisk to set C: to your primary active partion. You put in a win98 startup 3.5 diskette and chose the option to start your computer with CDROM support and the computer started but the CDROM still didn't work?

Correct so far?

no...i cant access the cdrom at all for some reason...

not using a boot disk...not after installing drivers...i even tried unconnecting the cdrom, booting, turning off, then reconnecting the cdrom and booting again...

if i could get into BIOS i might be able to enable the cdrom somehow, but i cant get into BIOS

My coworker said to try F10 on a compac (for bios entry). He wants to know what model you have, too.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - SEARCH RESULTS

Compaq FAQ: How to get into BIOS/CMOS (FAQ2920)
To get into CMOS/BIOS/Computer setup/Diagnostics/ (these are all the same), Hit F10 when the computer beeps 2x on boot. If that does not work, then disconnect the keyboard from the computer and boot the system. You will get an error offering 2 choices of F1 or F10. Plug the keyboard back in (you will no harm the system) and then hit F10.



Created: 4/19/99 2:11:34 PM
Modified: 7/28/99 9:48:34 AM
Author: John P

(Note: Wow, I can't believe that something powered by ask jeeves could have been worth anything)

>So you have a computer that had a valid OS and the CDROM worked

True

>You decided to start over

False. I had to start over because of severe errors I had started to get because of some scanner stuff....i wont go into it...just know that i formatted the HD...

>You put in a win98 startup 3.5 diskette and chose the option to start your computer with CDROM support and the computer started but the CDROM still didn't work?

I put in the startup disk and nothing happened. absolutely nothing. I have also tried a Win95 startup disk, same result.

>My coworker said to try F10 on a compac

I will try it.

>He wants to know what model you have, too.

Compaq Desktop Pro 590

it has:
1 GB hd
32 MB of RAM
120 MHz processor