Reinstall of old pc - any help appreciated

[korrupt]

Hello fellows,

Heres the story: My sister has an old windows 98 Packard Bell OEM Rig but as of now she hasn’t been using it and therefore I took the liberty of borrowing her 10GB hard drive as backup for my system. But since recently she's been willing to use it again so I figured I would fix it. Ok, the system is as follows.

700 MHz PIII processor
10 gig hdd
Windows 98 OS
I'm not sure but I think RAM is 64mb.

As I said it’s a Packard Bell OEM system which naturally came with recovery software and windows disk (1 floppy with recovery soft ware and 2 "master cd's" - these 2 include windows and Word. so here is the problem:

Plugged everything in and as soon as the power cable came into the cpu, the CPU and the monitor became LIVE, it wasn’t a very high voltage but whenever the monitor or the cpu is touched a electric shock is received (about the intensity of an electric fence). The pc didn’t even have to be on.

Secondly, ignoring the first problem, I inserted the floppy and master disk one. The recovery software started running but after about 1 minute a screen came up saying "This computer has no valid information". So first thing I did was check whether the working cd-rom (yes, there is two) was set to master and the malfunctioning one to slave. It wasn’t so I did that first. Once again, software ran for a minute and the same screen came up. Secondly I though the hard drive may have been formatted wrong (I had formatted it using NTFS on my good pc) so I unplugged it, put it in my pc and formatted it using FAT32. Once again, no luck.

After severe frustration (not helped by the 50 electric shocks I received by this time), I changed the boot sequence in BIOS, tried every single combination (there’s about 6) but no luck once again. So then after about 10 restarts and the Boot sequence back to default settings, I figured I would give it one last try. This time something different happened I turned it on and it said "please remove disks or any other media and press ctr-alt-delete to restart". So I though OK, at least its doing something different - I took out master cd 1 and the recovery floppy and hit ctr-alt-del. Computer restarted and the same screen came up (please remove disks or any other media and press ctr-alt-delete to restart). At this point I had used all my knowledge to no avail and here I am.

I would greatly appreciate any help anyone can give me.

It should be noted: OS is second edition 98, malfunctioning cd drive works 80% of time and therefore has not been removed.

Thanks for any replies in advance,

Regards,

Korrupt

 

[korrupt]

Come on guys, please help me out...

thanks

korrupt

 

[N3051M]

I havent dealt with OEM prebuits much, but could it be when it was loading windows on its checking for the hardware etc to match up to its database?

Those shocks dont sound too good.. check the PSU grounding properly, the wall outlet, and the motherboard is not touching the case.. maybe avoid wearing woolen clothing lol..

Go reset BIOS, it couldnt hurt.. try disconnecting the floppy/use another floppy drive (it could have died)

 

[korrupt]

Thanks for your replies,

I'll try these things. Anyone has any other suggestions?

Regards,

Korrupt

 

[ebora]

hmmm

its 1am, my pcs f*$ked ...but what the heck, ill help out lol

1.
this electric shock thing..lol kinda scary mate. What happening is the PC hasnt been grounded, ....normaly it grounds the case (pretty sure), tho it could be ur Power cord from the PC to the Wall socket. Change power cords and see if anything changes. else....ask an electrician? lol

2. My dad's pc is an old IBM, similar to ur sisters PoS. My first thing to do is to ditch the OEM software and install Win98 SE (non-oem) ...OEM is just software that is packaged & configured for a certain system. Thus why Dell/compaq/ibm etc etc all have em

Tho, if u really need to use that OEM software. Remove that 80% working Cdrom....and if u havent already, take out all hardware leavin the bareminimum.

Next, make sure thos cd's are scratch to the **** house; if there old they're probably faulty.

Why did u format it in ur pc as NTFS? I see that u re-formatted in her pc as FAT32, but any reason for the first format(just curiouslol)? Win98 wont read NTFS wat-so-eva if u forgot (there actually is 1 program that i know that does it, but its cheezy).

please remove disks or any other media and press ctr-alt-delete to restart

It means the pc has detected soemthing on the pc (hardware) and is interfearing with it tryin to boot. if all disks etc are removed and that error still comes up (which im assuming it does).....

FORMAT (in ur sis's pc - FAT32) ......apart from that, i have no idea bro
kinda not too helpful, but it is still past 1am lol

 

[korrupt]

Thanks ebora for your reply.

The electricity problem has been fixed, it was the wall socket. I cant use normal win 98 because i dont have it and its a piece of **** pc so not worth buying new. I formatted using NTFS because i used it as a backup drive for my good pc. Also the "Remove disks or other media" error has been fixed, it was the boot sequence that was causing probs, and I couldnt get into the bios config because the keyboard wasnt plugged in (I was sure I had plugged it in!).

Anyways, I did some more research and it seems as though I have to re-tattoo the hard drive, which I havnt got **** all idea how to! Any ideas would be appreciated.

Once again, thanks for your in depth reply Ebora.

Regards,

Korrupt