How do I save and update drivers for pc with no disk prior to reformatting?

Lady_K

Yes I thought so too, they offered my daughter the boss's old laptop when she had hers stolen for £300 that was a pentium4 with no cd rewriter even never mind dvd. The shop is very expensive, no reason to be either they are no different to any other

culpepper

This is why I learnt to do my own pc work.
I wouldnt buy a second hand half of a pc from them for £150,I would take my 'broken' pc home and have a go myself,what is there to lose?
Try the puppy linux cd if you can download on your windows 98 pc. burn it to a cd and boot the 'broken' computer from it.
If you still get all the crashes, then they are probably right and the motherboard is dud,if it runs fine with no problems then maybe its something else.
You can always boot the windows 98 pc from it and watch it whizz if the XP computer is truly broken.

Lady_K

I'm going to collect it maybe tomorrow or wednesday I've got to pay them for looking at it I'm not sure how much yet I hope its not too much. He did say he had tested it anyway and that it is the main board. I don't know how he tested it though

jje_2

Your ideal replacement would be base unit ( thats no keyboard mouse or moniter )
with win xp or vista home premium installed .

jje

jje_2

Your ideal replacement would be base unit ( thats no keyboard mouse or moniter )
with win xp or vista home premium installed .

Although another way would be a laptop .
I just bought Samsung R60 plus 1.44 ghz dual core 1gb ram 80 gb hard drive dvdrw
price £350 only £50 dearer than a second user/refurbished model .

jje

Lord_Gardener

culpepper wrote: »

if you cant afford to go for a new windows disc,how about downloading puppy linux? I have teen puppy linux installed on a 3gb spare drive and it manages to recognise all my hardware without asking for any drivers at all.
You can run it from the CD without even installing it and it can find the network quite easily. I also have another puppy linux on a 880mb harddrive which has less features but still can get online and works from CD too if you dont want to install.
Quite handy to have as a spare operating system. It can see the windows drives without having to tell it anything special.
Excellent to revive a tired old windows 95 or 98 machine.
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/Operating-Systems/Linux-Distributions/TeenPup-31563.shtml

If I download teen puppy, do you just burn the file to cd or do you have to extract it?

culpepper

Lordgardener it should be an iso file which is a disc image. You can just burn it with nero using 'burn image'. I think there is a free iso burner too which would do it if you dont have nero or another prog that can do it.
Just burn the iso image to CD,stick it in the CD drive ,boot the computer to the bios and choose boot from CD if you dont already have that as an option and then it will boot right into the linux OS.
It sets up a virtual ram when booting from CD so it whirrs away for a little while then asks a couple of very easy questions to determine which mouse,keyboard etc then voila.It found my LCD monitor and my network card first time. I was online almost at once.
You can install it to your hard drive or to a usb drive(even a usb flash drive) if your pc will boot from the usb.

heres the thread with the free versions of software incase you need a burning program
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=287042&highlight=free+iso+cd+burner

BritBrat

Sorry to here the bad news Lady,

Have a look around the papers or even freecycle, they give basic PC's away if you only need it for internet access and word processing any old PC will do so long as it works.

I am sure if you kept an eye on Freecycle you will be able to pick up enough free PC parts to fit your needs.

I would add, try and stick with XP or you may find some of your hardware may not work with VISTA.

Or if you want to get something newer do as others have said and buy a bare bone system and use your current monitor, keyboard etc.

EXAMPLES

What part of the country do you live?

Lady_K

Those bare bones systems they don't say anything about vista or winxp do you have to buy your own to go with it?

BritBrat

I would think you would need a operating system to go with them and some other parts.

Have a look at freecycle they normally have loads of free computers going spare.

http://www.freecycle.org/

Another way would be go to your local recycling center on a Saturday and keep an eye open for PCs and take them off the owners before they dump them.

Or even ask the attendants to keep some for you, you may have to buy them a drink if they are allowed to do it.

Has to be better than filling up land fills.