Windows 98 guru required!!

davemc

I really need help on this one.....reinstalled everything on an old packard bell club 40 system....reformat, everything.... The sound through windows media player when playing either mp3's or a cd is woefully distorted and I decided to do a search within google to possibly obtain a solution...one suggestion on another thread was to go into device manager ...hard drive...type 47....then settings and if the DMA box was unticked..to tick it...this I did and now it will not boot!!..it just hangs...in safe mode the tick box isn't there!!...how the hell do I reverse what I did!!!!!?????...quickly!!!...incidently cd's play perfectly through the cd player software!!.....

KdjaCL

Remove the sound card and reinstall (the soundcard not WIN).

What is the soundcard?
I member with Win98 having lots of sound issues because of drivers and codecs needed lots of updates to fix.


kdjac

davemc

Sound is onboard!!!.....any other suggestions??

KdjaCL

oops should have been more clear.

Go to Device Manager and REMOVE the soundcard (not physically remove)
It will uninstall then reboot and it will reinstall.

I would be 99% sure its a driver issue or codec.

kdjac

davemc

Kdjac.....thanks for the suggestions and I agree with you regarding the sound driver/codec issue but I feel that by ticking that box 'DMA' ..I.ve done something quite different to the system.....but within safe mode I've removed the sound drivers but it still will not boot up nomally!....any ideas?

KdjaCL

What hard drive is in the PC?
And why did you enable DMA?

http://www.puremotion.com/editstudio/manual/turningondma/win98me.htm

You should be able to disable it again.

kdjac

kmb

maybe you should try putting it on another ide cable i.e.diconnect cdrom and use its cable just for one boot ,surely the bios should redetect it and solve the ticked dma?

davemc

Kdjac......it's a western digital 6gig I think.....I ticked the DMA box because it was suggested by somebody to resolve the sound issue......you live and learn!!....sometimes the hard way though!

Kmb.....i changed the cables around and yup it worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!......now the question is if I change it back will it still not boot on the primary ide???......i'll find out and let you know......

BKtje

The reason he suggested it is because it improves transfer speed (if the feature is part of your hard drive) which would probably increase sound quality. However i don't think that was your problem but more what KDJAC said about codecs/drivers in win98se being ****e

Seriously consider going W2K.

astrofool

well, it sounds like a very old pc seeing as mp3's get distorted (not enough processing power ?) meaning win2k would be a no go.

Go into safe mode, go to control panel and remove the hard disk, reboot and let windows pick it up again, and don't click dma this time (the board/hard drive probably don't support it). Also try for a bios update, pacbell's had a load of quirks with ide drivers that bios updates usually fixed to a degree. Some of the quirks are just downright weird.

Typedef

Boot in safe mode.

From there you can remove the spurious entry, since safe mode won't start certain services and drivers, it should not try to start the driver for your sound card and presto, you can remove the entry and reboot.

Money : Paid in installments if you please.

davemc

Well..well...well....the latest is that changing over the cables ide pri to ide secondary did the trick but when I switched back it still refused to boot soooo I switched back again and left it that way....

Astrofool.......I thought the same but it's deffinately not enough processing power.....windows 98...128megs of ram..etc...300mhz cyrix chip....as I said a CD plays just fine but an mp3 on the HD will not play.....I've located the drivers through the Packard Bell website for the onboard sound and we see how that goes!!.....I've never seen this problem before but I do think that this is a software issue.....failing that a 2nd hand pci soundcard for a few euro could be picked up which I feel would absolutely resolve the issue......Astrofool I think removing the HD from within Device manager is a good idea...i'll try that and report back......

Typedef.......there wasn't really any spurious entry to be removed..it was just that I stupidly ticked the DMA box without properly researching what exactly it was....(bigger fool me!)....and then discovered that I couldn't reverse what I had done!!........even from within Safe mode.....





:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

joto

just a thought.
In bios does it auto detect pri. & sec. IDE master/slave etc... When you've connected everything up go to bios (press del) & look at first on list - Standard cmos. see what's listed on IDE master/slave.
If you don't know exact HD details you can auto detect them. this should be done everytime u move things on ide cables.
Seems when u enabled DMA for HD you got a mem. conflict. Can be resolved means checking what it's conflicting with.

davemc

Just to let the folks whom offered advice on sorting out the comp. know that the sound drivers were downloaded from the Packard Bell site and now all is well......eventhough 98 installed sound drivers for the onboard sound they weren't perfect.....many thanks to all who assisted.....regards...Dave.