Solve the riddle of the pc that gibbed!!

[Frosty]

Ok my house m8 had some old p3 450 with 100mhz sdram, 14 gb HD with win98....you know the sort of old rubbishy pc...well we wanted to do a quick lanage but he didn't have the driver to his old network card so i proposed he used any old one in the win98 cabs.....what was the worst that could happen right? well he started choosing some D-Link one....blah blah blah....then BAM!!! some weird window's error screen like ive never seen before comes up...not your average bsod...it was all black with simple white writing saying "windows protection error" so i thought fudge it, restart ....then i hear the blood curdling noise of the system speaker of all things that started screeching at me.....but how can hardware die from some dodgey network card driver michieviousness i thought....i mean damn this...it was soo bad the monitor wasn't even turning on!!!!! like wtf!!!!! ahhhh....so i plomp that rubbish cheap network card out and hope every thing would be fine...no effect.....i then systematically begin to troubleshot each bit of hardware on his pc to find out what broke.....one problem the system speaker only makes one sort of beeping error noise!!1 not a different beeping error noise for no graphics card.....or no ram for example... just beeeeeeeeppppp- beeeeeeep- and so on.

I take out his graphics card (an old tnt) And plop it into my pc, works fine.
I take out his HD and put it into mine, works fine.
I take out his ram, works fine.

But yet it still does not work... soo i conclude that his cpu and motherboard must have some how died from him/us...ok ok it was me tampering with some NETWORK CARD DRIVERS.

BUT LETS NOT LET LOGIC LEAVE US HERE.....HOW THE FUDGE CAN TAMPERING WITH NETWORK DRIVERS ON A SEPERATE NETWORK PCI CARD POSSIBLE KILL HARDWARE LET ALONE CPU AND MOTHERBOARD!!!!! WHAT LIES IS THIS!

So im hoping theres something ive missed along the way...something glaring obvious that you wonderfull people of hexus can provide me with that will get this old lump of a pc to work.

Regards,
Adam

Ps: i love you all but am i going insane..............*starts trashing the uni computer lab in a fit of computer enduced rage"......h..e....l........p m......e......

[Steve]

Tried clearing the cmos yet?

[Kumagoro]

Was the card a d link one in the first place or did you use any old driver from the list?

[StormPC]

It's impossible for me to respond to your post without appearing rude, so I will not try. I will be honest with you instead.

What gave you the idea to attempt to work on a computer that doesn't belong to you when you know so little about them?

First off, my 7 year old niece knows that device drivers need to be written for a specific device and OS in order to function properly. Here's an idea, why not look at the card to find out the make and model and go online to download the correct driver? Virtually every driver ever written is online somewhere. The internet is not just for pornography anymore.

Loading an incorrect device driver could kill hardware in extremely unlucky cases, but the likelihood is that the hardware (if it indeed failed) died of old age. The machine you described is not a computer but a relic. To me, in order for a machine to qualify as a computer it has to have market value. That "computer" has none. It's not old enough to be a keepsake and too old to have any value in the computer world although it may be worth something as scrap metal or as a paperweight .

My advice is to sell it and have someone build a computer for you. For a couple hundred BSPs you could build a system that will actually be worth hooking up to via LAN.

[-mb-]

Ignore StormPC, you should still be able to have great LAN games with such a PC...
UT
Starcraft
Tiberian Sun
etc.

I think you were unlucky, and it was just a coincidence.
Replace the PC with something like:
Sempron 2400+
512MB DDR333
Radeon 9550 128Mb
80Gb HDD
etc.

[StormPC]

-mb-....funny. "Ignore StormPC" and then proceed to tell him to do the same thing I just suggested. You were just more nurturing in your approach.

Interesting observation: Everything you told him to buy is just one step below the system in your sig.

[-mb-]

-mb-....funny. "Ignore StormPC" and then proceed to tell him to do the same thing I just suggested. You were just more nurturing in your approach.

Interesting observation: Everything you told him to buy is just one step below the system in your sig.

Well that just shows what a nice patient person I am.
Anyway, you were wrong to suggest that the driver is remotely likely to have caused the failure, or that installing a "wrong" or "generic" driver is a major problem. You were also wrong to suggest that that PC would not have had life in it if it still worked.

And what is the garbage about "one step below my sig"?

Sempron rather than P4
R360 rather than R300
512MB rather than 1024MB
80GB rather than 120GB

Hardly much of a conspiracy there! Anyway, my stuff is over a year old! You can't "compare" my system and what I sugggested.

[Kumagoro]

I think its more dubious to suggest a sempron which isnt the 3100+ better off getting a barton.

[BEANFro Elite]

i don't know much about drivers but um...try bootin' that ol' lump o' metal up without the network card in...

Oh and frosty, empty out your hotmail account so that i can send you my all conqouring and propaganda guide to networking...

[StormPC]

I think its more dubious to suggest a sempron which isnt the 3100+ better off getting a barton.

That's for sure.

Anyone who suggests a none S754 Sempron is highly suspect.

[Frosty]

mb thx for constructive suggestions, kezz you hit the nail on the head it was the cmos but ironically m8 wants better cpu and mobo now anyway even though his little bi*atch of a pc works now, Andrew bro for some reason my hotmail account now has 250mbs of inbox space :S im not asking questions and StormPc i am now forthwith going to refer to you as Slappy McSlappins in light of my innerchild.

Thx for all help.

Adam

[LayZeh]

You lot care too much,

Dell, £399 with a TFT monitor, you can't get better than Dell lol.