posted on August 7, 2001 08:55:15 AM new
Well I reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled windows 98 without any problems. But.....windows doesn't recognize the modem. Also, it only has a 16 bit color. I assume this is because the monitor isn't installed or recognized either? I don't have discs for any of this hardware. What is a gal to do!?
Thanks!
posted on August 7, 2001 09:29:57 AM new
Go to the web site for the manufacture of the modem and graphics card - you should be able to download the drivers from there.
posted on August 7, 2001 11:29:49 AM new
You're in a bit of hot water, keciaarm. Unfortunately, computer hardware manufacturers seldom put any identifying information directly on the circuit card. However, not all is lost!
First, Windows can (and does) install generic modem and video drivers. The generic drivers will allow you to use it, but they may not give the best performance.
I have a suggestion to you and anyone else who does a complete system install (not upgrade). When installing Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000 - whichever, your installation will likely be FLAWLESS if you do what I am abotu to say. Always remove all circuit cards from the slots, except the video card. That means, remove your modem, sound card, network card, etc. Only THEN make a Windows platform installation. Then, once everything is running well and is set up correctly, only then add your cards back into the system. And then, one one at a time, turning power back on, booting up, letting Windows find the new device, load in the drivers (even generic ones), make sure that no conflicts exist and then shut down the system and power off to do the next card. If you always do it that way, installing any Windows system is a breeze!
One thing that you should try to do is to skip slots. That is, place a card in every other slot on the motherboard. Reason being is that two used slots side-by-side may make Windows do what is called IRQ-swapping, and that can lead to performance problems.
keciaarm, since you have installed Windows 98 and you are still in 16-color mode (that's the generic drivers), you will have to discover what type of card that it is that you have. Try this to identify your video card:
1) Right-click anywhere on your Deasktop where there in no icons or button and scroll down to the bottom to select properties to bring up the Display Properties box.
2) Select the Settings tab.
3) Push the Advanced button on the lower-right.
4) Select the Adapter tab.
There. You should see the make of your video card.
Try that out first. Your modem is a different story. To see what the deal is, go Start Menu>Settings>Control Panel>Modem and click it. Either it will show you what modems it found and identified or it will ask you to search for one. If the latter case, it is very complicated to walk you through what to do. If the former shows a Generic Modem on Comm2, you're in luck. If it shows a Generic Modem on Comm1, you may have to reconfigure your settings in your BIOS -- which makes this also very complicated to describe.
Worst come to worst, reinstall your system by deleting the primary hard drive's partition, rebooting onto floppy disk, then creating a new DOS partition and reformatting the hard drive. You can just reformat the hard drive, but information can be left over from the old system, including some viruses that can survive a hard drive formatting.
I'll try it out and let you know what happens.