wakeydave

my brother has just re-installed windows xp (cos the kids filled the pc up with rubbish!) but he's run into a bit of a problem and i'm not clever enough to sort it!

xp has installed fine and everything works there but when he's tried to re-connect to AOL it can't find his modem?
we can't find his driver disk, is there a way round this?

i've tried everything that i know (which isn't much!)

any help would be greatly appreciated (cos we ain't got much hair left to pull out!!!)

JerryTerzo

Have a look here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;306478

It may help you.

i8gtmf

If you kmow what make the modem is you could try here for the drivers

clicky

wakeydave

unfortunately we don't know the make of his modem but i think i've come up with a solution, i've just got broadband, so as soon as it's activated i can put my old dial up modem in his, cos i've got the driver disk for mine! that'll work won't it?

new problem has cropped up! since we re-installed windows xp not much else seems to want to install (games & stuff)
any ideas?

i thought that i could just install service pack 2 and things might be ok? but i don't know much about pc's (just a bit more than my brother!)

wakeydave

sorry to be a pest but we really need help now, he keeps ringing me up now and i don't know what else to do!

nothing will install at all now (but xp works fine)

a friend says that because the driver for the dvd drive might not have been installed properly (cos we can't find any driver disks!), nothing will install right?
if i need all the drivers for the hardware, where can i get them?

PLEASE HELP!!!

molko

There is a generic dvd device driver built into windows, you wont need to install another.

I cant understand why nothing is installing, are you sure he means that ? How did you install Windows then ?

wakeydave

i re-installed windows for him and everything went ok, but when the kids have tried installing some of their games back onto the pc they keep getting error messages and the installer says something along the lines of "cannot find path...etc"

if i install service pack 2 will it help? i can't think of anything that's stopping things working as they did, all i did was re-install windows!!!

Nick

Did you do a fresh install? Repartition, reformat etc?

judgejules

Modem Issue:

I assume he's got an internal modem card?

Get him to take the case off the computer, take the card out (talk him through this) and read you _all_ the numbers/serials off the larger chips. Get him to look for numbers/serialy on the card itself, ie, drawn on the circuit board.

Post all these up on here, and I'll see what I can find.

Install Issue:

Post up the _exact_ error messages that they're getting, word for word, including punctuation (I know it sounds sill but it helps when we're finding info).

When you did the re-install, did you format the drive, or just reinstall over the top of the old operating system?

Also, what is his current drive config: a: floppy C: - hard drive d: - dvd ?

Ta

Jules

wakeydave

you've lost me a bit with all that tech talk jules but i can tell you that we just reinstalled over the old one (a mate told me it was the best way?)

the error messages are very long and all say that they can't find the thing it needs to complete installation (i'll write it all down when i go back to his)

not sure what you mean by drive config (told you i wasn't clever!)
he's got a floppy, hard drive, cdr/w & dvd drive if that helps?

i don't think the modem problem is an issue anymore because i'm installing my old one in his when my broadband is activated (that'll work won't it?)

will installing service pack 2 help at all?

wakeydave

anybody helping now or have i done everybody's head in being so thick???

bgood

iTrader: (2)

Is he the only user set up on the PC?? In other words when it boots up it shows a welcome screen in XP with the names of all the people that have accounts on the PC, is there just one name or are there others.

What i'm thinking is he may not be set up as an Administrator which would cause problems installing software. If he's not set up as an Administrator you'll need to work out which user is and log into their account then change his status to Administrator in Users & Passwords in Control Panel.

cong

yep agreed last resort is smash the computer and burn it!.............oopps sorry i mean go through the yellow pages and get a computer expert near you

wakeydave

thanx for all the help people!

judgejules

try this dave:

power down the computer
move the modem card to another slot, one higher or lower
boot back into windows xp
xp will be forced to detect new hardware and should (hopefully) find it


install issue:

still waiting for the error message from you.

about the drive config, could you just let me know what drive letters are associated with what, like floppy = a:, hard drive = c:, cd = d:, dvd = e: etc

If we can figure out whats causing this error message, we should be able to provide a solution that will fix it from here on in.

Jules

wakeydave

all sorted now (mate's come in VERY handy!)

cheers anyway fellas!