RIP my old PC.

[Finless]

My old Win 98 PC appears to have given up the ghost.

It won't boot up .... as in power goes on and then nothing happens so I assume that the BIOS(?) chip/widget with the hard coding is knackered. I suspect that the chips etc on the motherboard are soldered in ...... can these be replaced with any success.

I can read the info off the hard drive on another PC BUT it won't boot that PC up (I have changed the disc jumper settings).

I suppose it is not too bad ..... at least I can access all my data files BUT I would like to get the thing up and running so as I can load up all the programs and check where I'm up to (versions) and ..........

[Ian@1904]

I can't assist, but have an aging PC at home so last weekend I purchased an external 250 gb disk from PCWorld and over the weekend a 17" flat panel screen from Tesco. (For about £100 more she could have had a new PC, but we love our old PC)
SWMBO is chuffed to bits and we have prolonged the life of the 7 year old PC (640mhz processor, 8gb disk, 366ish RAM). So chuffed in fact, that is her birthday pressie sorted for next month. I am sure she will forget by then of course.

[Mike Phillipson]

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[Finless]

Originally Posted by Ian@1904

I can't assist, but have an aging PC at home so last weekend I purchased an external 250 gb disk from PCWorld and over the weekend a 17" flat panel screen from Tesco. (For about £100 more she could have had a new PC, but we love our old PC)
SWMBO is chuffed to bits and we have prolonged the life of the 7 year old PC (640mhz processor, 8gb disk, 366ish RAM). So chuffed in fact, that is her birthday pressie sorted for next month. I am sure she will forget by then of course.

You soppy muppet!

Actually, I anthropomorphize(?) and attributes personalities to inanimate objects! Even so, I can't wait to upgrade and get a DVD recorder and ...... well, just out of the steam PC age!

[Conor]

Don't know how you would ressurect your machine.....have lost a laptop to the evil bios fairies in the past

You might be able to buy a cheap PC, possibly with a knackered disk off ebay. In fact its a shame you don't live nearer cos I can get my hands on some old ex commercial kit... desktops from £20. I managed to get a mid spec laptop for £50 and a 17" LCD for £30. Together with a £30 wireless router I'll be on YD too much in the near future.

[Finless]

Originally Posted by Conor

Don't know how you would ressurect your machine.....have lost a laptop to the evil bios fairies in the past

You might be able to buy a cheap PC, possibly with a knackered disk off ebay. In fact its a shame you don't live nearer cos I can get my hands on some old ex commercial kit... desktops from £20. I managed to get a mid spec laptop for £50 and a 17" LCD for £30. Together with a £30 wireless router I'll be on YD too much in the near future.

Thanks for the assist. I have access to some old (W95/98) PCs but the disk won't boot up the one PC I've tried the disk in so the original problem has corrupted some of the system/boot up files on the hard drive as well.

When I installed it as a slave drive on the other PC I ran a file check and found and 'auot corrected' all file errors but although still readable, the disk will still not boot up in the other PC.

[Conor]

My neighbourly sysadmin has suggested that it should start, but you may want to try using a boot disk then run fdisk /mbr to rebuild the master boot record which may have become corrupted.

I think the chace of the BIOS and Disk going at the same time are slim so its probably the disk. How far does it go through startup? If it does the memeory check and recognises the disks, but desn't get to the windows start up dialogues then its the disk.

Good luck mate

[Finless]

Originally Posted by Conor

My neighbourly sysadmin has suggested that it should start, but you may want to try using a boot disk then run fdisk /mbr to rebuild the master boot record which may have become corrupted.

Noted.

I think the chace of the BIOS and Disk going at the same time are slim so its probably the disk. How far does it go through startup? If it does the memeory check and recognises the disks, but desn't get to the windows start up dialogues then its the disk.

Good luck mate

It goes nowhere at all - the lights are on but the PC Fairy is not at home! Absolutely nothing at all.

[Conor]

Do you hear the whirring of the power supply when the button is pressed and then the scartching disks etc but Nada on screen? Do you get that nice staticy sound of the monitor coming on but the image is blank?

I do beleive it may be the bad fairies

[MattS]

Booting a different PC with Windows 98 is not exactly straight forward. Drivers and the like required to boot are hardware dependant. Unless the new hardware is similar to the old, it's going to be a right royal PITA. How far does it get, can you get to safe mode?

There are all sorts of things that may have caused the old PC to die. It might be worth swapping some components around. The BIOS battery can cause boot failure when it wears out - looks like a watch battery and is easily removed by hand. Power supplies and memory are also common failures on old PCs.

It's very unlikely that you will be able to transfer applications from the old disk. You need the original install media.