| User | Post |
Sandy53215
Posts: 37/948 |
Wow that sucks.:/ I had the same problem with my old compaq. Isnt that weird? Try HyperHacker's way first and if that doesnt work then I would probably try the French disk.(If you could get around knowing whats what.) Hopefully it works for you though. And if all else fails get XP.:/ |
Colin
Posts: 1196/11302 |
It does have 64 MB...
...I'm going to try that this weekend. I was going to install XP onto it a while back until someone told me that it was a bad idea... I thought it was you actually.  |
HyperLamer
Posts: 516/8210 |
If you don't mind it being ugly.
Clean the CD, and if it doesn't work, try another one. If it won't read anything, get one of those CD player cleaning discs (a CD with brushes on it, you put some cleaner on and it cleans everything out) and see if it helps. |
kitty
Posts: 812/2449 |
Colin: If it has 64MB of RAM, believe it or not, it should run XP fine (though it might not install it) as long as you:
1) Turn off all visual styles and effects
2) Turn off all unused/unneeded services
3) Prevent apps from starting up and stealing RAM
You might actually think it's faster than 98 - I thought my P3 500 laptop was faster with XP than 98 by far! |
Colin
Posts: 1172/11302 |
I heard about Lindows... mainly because they sell super-cheap PC's at Walmart with it installed. 
I'd still rather put Windows on it because it's my parents that will be using it. And even though they don't use computers that much, I'd rather have them using an OS that I UNDERSTAND. |
Error
Posts: 28/54 |
You might wan to try..
Linspire (Formerly Lindows)
Mandrake (One of the best newbie distros ever.)
or if you don't mind buying one, SuSE..
I found their ftp install to be impossible.. but apparently if you buy it it's awesome. |
Colin
Posts: 1168/11302 |
I might clean the drive although I just cleaned the insides when I got the new PC. It's certainly worth a shot though. 
Ailure - If there was an easy-to-use distro of Linux, I'd certainly consider it - but I'm not even used to that OS. So in the event of problems... |
kitty
Posts: 793/2449 |
Colin: Yeah, if the disc isn't scratched (read: virtually destroyed) and the foil isn't missing on any of it, it's probably a CD-ROM drive error. This ESPECIALLY happens if you never use it - dust settles in the laser and helps fuck things up.
You could try a can of air but I had to disassemble my parent's drive and clean the laser, as well as the outside AND inside of the lens, with a q-tip and rubbing alcohol (and then canned air making sure no q-tip cotton stuck on it) |
Ailure
Posts: 1301/11162 |
Either it's the CD which needs cleaning (belive it or not, but many problems have been solvedor it's the CD player that is stubborn.
When I did use a restore CD on my old computer it failed at first (probably becuse of my stubborn CD player  ). When I did it again later it worked.
If your brave you could always use Linux on that computer. But Linux can be tricky, and I doubt it is an good idea to install Linux if it's your parents that is going to use that computer.
If possible, you could always test another CD-player. |
Colin
Posts: 1161/11302 |
Blah. Today I told my parents that I was going to reformat and restore the Sh... er, Compaq. They want to use it just for stuff like Word so I figured it wouldn't be much of a problem.
Wrong. I put the System Restore CD in, have it start running... and around 3% in it stops reading the CD.  Try it again, same result. In the end, I have a partially formatted hard drive and no progress.
I *could* try to install the French CD - I figure that I can just change the language back to English after an install, but that CD might be toast as well. Or should I just say "screw it" and download a 98SE ISO?
...Or should I try putting Windows XP on a Celeron 300?  (...Scratch that.) |
