important newbie question

S

saper

n00b
Joined
Sep 23, 2004
Messages
29
hello, i just bought a computer today an ran into big problems

the computer is a

p4 3.2ghz
1024 ddr ram
36gig WD 10k rpm SATA
250gig WD 7200 rpm SATA
asus p5800 motherboard
16x dvd rom

i payed an extra 60$ for complete installation and he told me all i had to do was put it my lan card, my radeon 9800pro and install windows..

so i put my vid card in and my lan card start booting up.. get through the bios, i get a flash screen of win98 then i get an error saying that they cant find the CRrom drivers and then some command line...when i put a cd in, and do D:, /dir... tells me file not found, 0 file found, 238mb free.. i have tried many cd and booting without a cd

i tried to play arround in the bios has best has i could but changed primary slave to CD instead of auto now i cant boot at all... everytime it says primary cdrom or something like that not compatible, press f1 to resume.. when i try to press f1 it doesnt do anything...

anybody got some idea whats going on?

any help would greatly appreciated
 
Just so you know, I stopped reading at "Windows 98"

Windows 98 was horrible at driver recognition and hardware support, not to mention just plain unstable.

Get XP on that box and try again.

Why would you spring for top of the line hardware and then put a 7 year old OS on it?
 
hello thanks for the reply,

i do get the flashscreen but when i go to C: in dos and do a /dir it only tells me there is 3 files found.. no win98 dir.. so it might be just a flashscreen im not sure :\
 
take out the floppy disk

My guess is your looking at a ramdrive and not the actual C:
 
Did u try booting off the windows 98 install floppy? Is the radeon even compatable with windows 98? and as someone else said...why would u spring for the top of the line hardware, and then put an os that does not care how much hardware resources u have, but has hardcoded resource allocatons (yes, that means u will still get out of resource errors even tho u have a gig of ram).
 
aight thanks again guys.

i bought the computer with no OS in it.. i was gonna install window ME and then XP.. i was kinda supprised too when i saw the win98 flashscreen.. but it never went farther then that.. just after the flashscreen i get the error in DOS

i didnt order a floppy drive with my new computer (was that a mistake?) because i barely ever used it with my old one

i wish i could give a better description of the error, but since i changed the setting in IDE primary (i think) from AUTO to CDROM to try to fix it i cant even get it to the error point anymore.. boots off and tells me the cdrom ATAPI? isnt compatible and tells me press f1 to resume, but it doesnt do anything :\ cant load in bios anymore

again, im very new to computers.. i was hoping to just pop in my vid/lan card instal ME and xp and be ready to go... but oh well

EDIT: first error is exaclty this "Primary Master drive Atapi incompatible"


thanks again
 
You only install one OS, that's ONE and only ONE (unless you're dual booting, which I'm quite confident you are not). Do not install Windows Me...ever...on any computer. Just install XP and you're good to go.
 
Go to the 'egg, buy a power splitter and OEM Windows XP Home, total cost ~$100, and you're good to go.
 
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