Computer problem...another one...

[makenzie71]

Okay I'm having all kinds of funky problems with my laptop.  It doesn't charge the battery, it doesn't allow my internet cards to function, when I unplug the USB port it goes all apeoh my goodness and I have to restart, it doesn't do anything except play my music and it was a oh my goodness storm to get that to work.

I'm wanting to update the bios...I'm told that will be a good place to start.  However, the 3.5" diskette drive does not write for some reason...it only reads and formats.  So I need to get the info for updating my bios to my flash drive, then I can take it to my desktop and write it to a floppy.  Any other help would be greatly appreciated.

Can I run the utility on my XP machine to write the discs or will that screw with other stuff?

Laptop is a Dell Latitude CPx H500GT, Bios Version A05, Windows 98

[makenzie71]

I tried running it on my desktop and apparently it's built to let you write the disk on a separate pc.

[makenzie71]

Okay now my issue is that the laptop has no built in floppy drive...only a usb floppy drive and it won't boot the drive on start-up to run the utility...any way around this?

[makenzie71]

I just tried burning to a disc and making my cd drive boot first...no go there.

[makenzie71]

Okay so I saved the disk info to the hard drive, rebooted at the dos prompt, and ran it from the hard drive.  Any issues with having done this?  Seems to have worked.

[yamahonkawazuki]

Tbh mak id try a clean xp install. that is if it will run xp, whenever i have probs usually a clean install gets me closer to solving the problem. BUT id copy all media to cd or other media first. just my .02

[makenzie71]

I'm fighting to make 98 work because Then I can play Starfighter 3000

I got it all going, though...now I'm just trying to figure out Firefox and win98...

[yamahonkawazuki]

I'm fighting to make 98 work because Then I can play Starfighter 3000

I got it all going, though...now I'm just trying to figure out Firefox and win98...

ahh yeah starfighter, i miss that. IIRC there is a way to make firefox work with 98, BUT i cannot remember. my memory has been shot to hell recently

[noiseguy]

The boot sequence is set by the Bios. You should be able to change the boot sequence to look at the floppy, CD, USB, first and before the hard drive.

I just changed over one of my laptops to Fedora Linux from Windows Vista. I'm much happier with it overall. If you can handle UNIX I think Linux is a better route than trying to keep a WIn98 machine going with zero support from MS.

[makenzie71]

Starfighter 3000 doesn't work in Linux.

[makenzie71]

Going back to another issue...when I press the status light on my battery the first two lights on the LED strip com up.  The first one blinks a few times and the second stays lit.  Anyone know what this means?

[ohgood]

Starfighter 3000 doesn't work in Linux.

if that game is circa win98, it will likely work in WINE on linux.

if that laptop is circa win98, xp is going to suck on it.

if that laptop is circa xp, linux would ROCK on it.

if that laptop doesn't already have a restore partition, MAKE ONE (i use linux livecd's to do it manually) and IMAGE YOUR FRESH, WORKING, UPDATED DRIVER/SYSTEM onto the backup partition. then a fresh, working updated reinstall is only a reboot away.

and we know how many reboots 98/xp require to stay fresh