Ian Newman wrote:
>
> Greetings from Holland
> I have a friend here that bought a Packard Bell 333 a while back which
> he thought was great but he now hates the way Packard Bell takes over
> the puter with screens everywhere. I believe this is his whinge. He has
> reformatted several times but as he cant find the drivers for his
> hardware anywhere else but on the boot CD provided, he has to install
> their drivers everytime. ie: he has a Yamaha s/card but the yamaha site
> doesnt list it at all & when I asked him to tell me the properties of
> the display adapter it wouldn't show the memory size, etc. As
> sound/video cards are not expensive will they fit in these brand cases
> if he replaces them or can we retrieve the drivers off the Boot CD
> without installing any other manufacturers details?? Thanks Ian


   Packard Bell, Compaq, and Aptiva are hard to do an easy clean Windows
9X install because of their proprietary drivers, especially for modems,
video card, and sound cards. Yet it can be done with some detective
work. You can also eliminate the Packard Bell Navigator menu interface
which is a poor excuse for a GUI compared to the clean look of the
Windows Desktop.

   When I blow one of these out and do a clean install I typically look
first in the Device Mangler (sic) and notice what it has identified for
the interface cards (write that down). Then I format the drive and
install Windows from a hard drive directory (I copy the Windows folder
from the CD to the hard drive at the DOS level and run the install from
there).

  Wait until after the Windows 9X install is finished to see what was
left out or misidentified. Usually it will just be a couple of cards
that don't get detected properly. Then it is time to open the case and
pull those cards. Write down all identifying marks on the embedded
chips, white labels, etc.. and then replace the cards. Now go to the Net
and look at various places for drivers. I usually start out by looking
in http://www.deja.com to see if other people are looking for the
drivers. Click on the thread hyperlinks on a promising question...it may
contain answers to where the drivers exist. Failing that you can examine
the websites of the manufacturer and also http://www.windrivers.com.
Usually you will find the driver and can fix it in Windows.

HTH,


Russell Smith
Region 14 ESC Abilene, Texas
http://camalott.com/~rssmith
mailto:[log in to unmask]

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