computer nerds! i need your help!

[Vendor Defendor]

well, maybe if i want help i shouldnt call you nerds huh? well, something is seriouly wrong with my computer...... dont know where to begin... but its messed up.

so i pretty much decided to just format the whole hard drive and start from new... heres my problem.. how do i do that?

then, after i finally do format my hard drive, i have to reinstall EVERYTHING right? including drivers for my video card and cd burner and all that good stuff right? theres a problem with this... becasue most of that stuff is on floppy disk... my computer refuses to recongnize that there is a Floppy drive there. soo... what do i do??

humm, i think those are just the main problems that i am faced with..... if i can think of anything else, ill be sure to let you know

thanks computer nerds! i mean...

 

[tjthorson]

We need a LOT more info.

What era is this machine (processor, memory, hard drive size, etc)?

What version of windows was it and what is it going to?

Was it already some "upgrade" like from 95 to 98, or was it fresh from when you got it.

What happened? Virus, spyware, hardware failure, that is making you reformat?

How does it not recognize the floppy? It won't read, wont access, in DOS or Windows, or the BIOS, or what????

 

[3mta3]

sounds like you may have a bad floppy drive, you can go out and get another for about $19.

 

[Vendor Defendor]

the machine has a 667mhz Intel Celron processor, it has 256megs of RAM the hard drive is 37gigs, windows 98se (plan on updating to XP after i reformat it though...), what happened? i dont really know, it was working great, i left for vacation, came back, fired it up, it was all screwed up, half the stuff in the task list or whatever you call that menu when you press ctrl, alt delete is. half that stuff was 'not responding'. i run two forms of spyware programs Spybot and Ad-aware. when i got back, i ran a virus scan and it came up with a trojan horse, i deleted it. so this maybe the source of all the problems.

since everything that was screwing up seemed to be involved with Norton Anti-Virus, i uninstalled it, and reinstalled it.. that seemed to solve half the problems.

now, sound and video dosent work.... and it also seems to lock up a lot as it trys to shut down...

someone suggested to me that the best way to completly solve everything, would be to format the machine and reinstall everything...

i have tryed other floppy drives, its just that the mother board or something dosent recongize the drive is there, i have changed out the floppy drive...

i think that answers everyone's questions.... if not, let me know so i can help you help me.

thanks i apperciate this

 

[tjthorson]

Well, if you get that XP CD, you can just boot off that, blow away your harddrive and reset it NTFS with Windows XP. Your system is old enough that most of the hardware will have drivers, if not all of it.

Get XP, configure your PC to boot off CD and blow it away.

Then be sure to install virusscan FIRST, and keep it updated!

Do all the windows updates!

 

[Vendor Defendor]

der, whats NFTS???

 

[striker_29]

Ntfs is an alternative file system (than fat) that allows security, larger partitions, etc. Its available with xp, not 98 se. I would suggest going with xp, and it will probably pick up most of your hardware devices and install the drivers for you.

 

[1badTTA]

Just a hint, before you do anything, get all the drivers you can and burn a cd with them on it. If it is a premade PC then just go to their website and download all the files they have for that model and whatever version of windows. The 2 drivers you won't want to not have are your video card and your network card or modem. If you don't have those you will be running to your bud's house to use his computer so you can get yours connected to the net. Also trying to surf the net with a screen resolution of 640x480 is next to impossible.

NTFS= windows NT File System, doesn't work for win95/98/ME but does for windows NT 3.xx through winXP. It slightly faster and less likely to have errors than FAT16 or 32.

Windows 2000 is also a really good choice if you don't like the flash of winXP. With all the available updates it is just as secure and more stable IMHO than XP

 

[JoeNational]

NTFS stands for New Technlogy File System everything win 2k and up use this partition because it is more secure, like everbody said the go to the pc with the xp cd and boom you can format and intsall all from the cd very easy , xp great os use it on the machine i built at home. xp will find most of the drivers for your hardware automatically.

 

[CHARGED]

You might even want to go and buy another hard drive, since they are cheap enough, and install XP on that, this way you would still have everything saved on the old HD if you need to find out what drivers are needed and you can connect it as a slave and transfer files over later (After you scan them