Packard Bell

[catgate]

My local garage man gets his monthly accounts done by his father in law. This worthy chap has just aquired (from a relative) a not too old second hand Packard Bell running a 400k celery and with a 8.gig HD. and I am not sure how much RAM, I never checked (silly me). This was supposed to make things easier than using the old fashioned paper method used heretofor. The accounts are assembled and processed on an M$ Excel *.xls. Apparently he had just finished doing last months entries when the whole thing suddenly decided to stop being co-operative (as they do). He had previously just managed to copy the .xls on to a floppy and also, for some reason, onto a CD. After hitting keys etc in vain they came to me (poor benighted souls) for assistance. Now in the past I messed with a friends P.B. machine that had done something similar, on the non co-operative front, and that eventually went back to from whence it came and was 'traded in'. This was a different story, because no matter what, it could not be traded in. I did all the usual stuff like scandisk (thorough), clean out all the temp files, defrag. etc., but all to no avail. So after a little discussion it was decided to format the hard drive and reinstall PB's version of Windows, to be followed by reinstallation of Office2000. The formating was no problem, but for some reason when the start-up floppy was used to create the RAM drive and provide a driver for the Cd drive there was no curser on the screen, so neither mouse not arrow keys could navigate to the on screen buttons to "press" for the installation of Windows from the PB installation CDs. No matter, we would re format C: and try installing normal Win98se followed by Office 2000. Win 98se went on like a dream but, when we tried to put Office on, it just threw us a blue screen and died on us. During the regular re booting etc the boot up screen with POST etc on it kept coming up (as it would) but it always had on it the PB logo, which indicated to me that this was lodged somewhere in the BIOS. This gave me the dejavu with my friend PB machine of a few years ago. The only fault other than a deliberate PB policy of "Keep Off the Grass" would seem to be a BIOS bug. This may have accounted for the cursor prob.

Now the decision has been made to kick the whole damned mess into touch and resurect an even older, but "non PB" machine, and go from there, but I am intrigued to know what is so peculiar about PB (or is it me?). Any suggestions would be more than gratefully received, providing of course they were polite!!!

[madboy33]

Little bit confused here

Why would you want to make a "Ram Drive"

Also you do not need CD-drivers

I am a little confused

Did you do a full format and install windows 98 or did you use PB's restore disc function?

[Agent Smith]

Hi catgate, as madboy says, you should not need to create a ramdrive or install cd drivers to run an install. A machine of this age should be able to boot and install straight from the windows (either 98 or 2k) cd.

However, the real reason for me posting here, is to add this comment. Your symptoms, sound to me like a failing hard disc. I have had the pleasure of replacing rather a lot of drives over the last two years (we were supplied with 400 machines with the now infamous Fujitsu Hard Discs) and your problem seems to exactly match what happens when a controller on the hard disc fails. This is why scan disc finds no error, because the fault is not on the drive platters, but electronic.

A simple test for you to perform, would be to simply unplug the hard disc, and see if the boot will now go past the post screen. I have a sneaky feeling it will.

Mr. M.

[catgate]

Little bit confused here

Yes so am I. It is a rather tangled tale.

Why would you want to make a "Ram Drive"

I personally did not want a RAM drive, but the rescue disc, which is made during the installation of Win xx, and which I have had to use for re-installation in the past, before the onset of being able to boot from a CD, makes one, and puts into it, amongst other things, a CD driver, so that Windows can be installed from a CD. Having, in the past, been plagued with the unstable Win 95 and Win98, my "format and reinstal" routine has always followed this route. What is more, only after reading the above answers have I remembered that modern computers will boot from CD drive and should not need the rescue disc to provide the CD driver (old age again! :blush: ). However the rescue disc was still needed in order to check the partitioning and do the formating.

Did you do a full format and install windows 98 or did you use PB's restore disc function?

I did both. I tried, unsuccessfully, to restore from the PB discs. I then did a format and tried to reinstall, again unsuccessfully, from the PB discs (this was when the cursor would not appear). I followed this with another format and an install, apparently successfully, of Win 98 SE (I have not had to do a reinstall on my own machine since I went up to SE). The problem with the Win set up was that it went belly up when I tried to install Office 2000 prem. over it.

The suggestion of Mr. Invincible Mouse is attractive, and some of the symptoms could be attributable to a duff HD, but the non appearance of the cursor during the first stages of firing up the PB installation from the cd makes me doubt that it is all HD trouble. As far as trying anything else is concerned, the machine has gone out of my hands and I do not want to see another PB machine again. Nevertheless I would dearly like to know what the problem was "just in case".

And I suppose I'm curious (some say peculiar)!

What am I doing sat up at this time of morning,typing into a computer, you ask. Well the ulcer on my ankle is giving me hell and I just can not get to sleep for it. :angry: