my old dell XPS

[mlou]

Hi all
If anyone can help me with saving my Dell that'd be super ..
Here's what's going on, I Got an old P3 running Win98 (yeah I knnow I know), reformatted recently cause was having trouble with the cd drive, it reformatted fine, but will not let me install any new programs, at all. I thought maybe it had a virus so tried to install Norton and it simply won't install anything. It's wiped clean and now I'm thinking maybe the motherboard went bad. How can I know it's a bad HD or something?
As always your help will be very much appreciated

ciao!
~mlou

 

[alidabiri]

when u try to install a program, what kind of msg are you getting? can u be a little more specific?

 

[mailpup]

Also, was your CD drive problem solved by the reformat? Perhaps the whole problem is a bad CD drive. I have an old Dell PIII, 98SE machine whose DVD-ROM drive failed. It had trouble reading DVDs and it would fail to install some games but music CDs ran fine. Replacing it solved the problem.

 

[Tmagic650]

CD ROMs are inexpensive now and fairly easy to replace. Get a new CD/DVD drive and install it... Pay great attention to how the old drive was jumpered (Master, Slave, or CS cable select) and make sure the new CD is jumpered like the old CD. Let us know how this works. If you need help installing the CD let us know

 

[mlou]

Hi all
yes I installed a new CD/DVD. Wired it right, but still unable to install anything.

Error message I'm getting is "PERFORMED AN ILLIEGAL OPERATION AND WINS CANNOT COMPLETE YOUR INSTALL" or sometimes it tells me I'm missing all these different dll files. I just reformatted yet again, no luck with any of the aforementioned issues.

How can I know it's my motherboard or something with the BIOS? I don't mind buying new hw to get it back up.
thanks for your help!
~mlou

 

[alidabiri]

you can start your pc with a 98 boot disk from: www.bootdisk.com
when you boot up, use the option "start with cd-rom support". this will temporarily enable your cd-rom drive. then put an OS cd in the drive, and install what ever u want.

 

[Tmagic650]

I got this error on a Windows Me system recently. As you might imagine, this Gateway was sold in 2000. I ugraded the motherboards bios and reinstalled Windows Me... The CD Rom read fine after doing all that...

 

[alidabiri]

i understand that. you should still boot up with 98 boot disk. so the driver for the cd rom will be installed. then you can stick whatever os cd, and let it configure the drivers.

 

[Tmagic650]

i understand that. you should still boot up with 98 boot disk. so the driver for the cd rom will be installed. then you can stick whatever os cd, and let it configure the drivers.

I would boot from the Win98 Startup floppy, then run FDISK and delete the old Win98 partition and then create and avtivate the new partition. Restart the computer with the startup floppy and complete a FORMAT C. You can then boot off the CD with a Windows 98SE install disk in the CDROM and continue with a clean Win98SE install

 

[mlou]

ok gonna work on it again tonite, thanks for all your suggestions, will let you know what happens.

~mlou