Computer (broadband) help needed.

Hi

I've just been given a Gateway Solo 5300 laptop.

It's far from state of the art - PIII 650MHz, Win98, 64MB RAM, and a 6GB HDD.

But then neither's my desktop - PIII 450, XP Pro, 192MB, and 160GB{only works as 8GB due to having to clone original drive onto it and not got around to/not knowing how to, sort it }

Anyhow. I'm trying to set it up for broadband. I've got an NTL MOdem connected to my desktop using a USB.

I'm not looking to network or have both connected yet, (basically as I know nothing about it), so I tried just installing the software onto the laptop with the view to using one or the other (desktop/laptop) at a time. However the software starts installing, then does a restart, then asks for me to connect the MOdem to the laptop....

Click next and "An installation problem has been detected"
USB Cable MOdem 351000

TCP/IP has not been bound to the above adapter. You must bind TCP/IP to the above adapter before continuing. Click Fix to correct.

This then pops up instructions on how to Fix, and opens the network properties.

The instructions are to select the network adaptor.
Click properties
Select the bindings tab
Ensure that tcp/ip check box is checked.

so....... on the network box, I click on USB Cable MOdem 351000, click properties, and go to the bindings tab. However, there's no TCP/IP check box to check

Any ideas?

And as always, idiot/MO proof as possible please

MO

 

Not sure about your modem problem but as for the hard disk... you will find with such an old motherbaord it is not able to see more than an 8GB drive. To get all 160GB you will need to get an IDE card to go in a PCI slot. This is a card which goes in the PCI slot and gives you more IDE connections but as it is nice and new it will see all 160GB.

 

the mobo that runs a p3 450 shld be fine with your 160 gig drive - i suspect as you've cloned it, you still have the remainder available, but not partitioned. partition magic (for example) will allow you to resolve that.

ref tcp/ip - probably just not installed on your pc, stick in the win98 cd, and you will be able to add it through the control panel. from memory, i think its an option on the add/remove software; there's an option to add/remove windows components.

 

I really doubt it, but it is of course worth partitioning it first to find out. 30% chance it might work I think.

 

Well, seems to besorted. I unchecked the TCP/IP check box in the properties of the "Dial-up adapter", and then a checkbox turned up under the MOdems properties.

The harddrive is a SATA one through an adapter card. I couldn't get XP to install on it, from what I remember, something like "No mass storage device detected".
So I used the cloning thing which worked fine apart from now showing the new HDD as being only the same size as the cloned one. I think I'll need to learn about partitioning to sort it? Oh, and it now takes about 5+mins to start up and will freeze for about 30seconds a time on occasion

 

I've not got any of the cds for the laptop, and my cds for the desktop are bundles with loads of packard bell crap.

here's the original hardrive thread from a while back.

http://zerogain.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5422

 

Ahh when you install XP (dunno about 98 sorry) you need to tell it you have a 'SCSI or RAID controller' when it runs setup by pressing F6. Watch the bottom of the screen and it will promt you for a moment. It will then ask you to insert the drivers for the adapter card on a floppy disk and should work fine from there on the adapter cards count as a RAID controller. The XP set-up I think should also have the option to Format/Partition the drive as long as you are not doing an 'update' from a older OS install.

 

I think you might need MOre RAM type thing. 256? Best ask someone who knows!

 

64 Meg is the minimum for XP with 128 Meg recommended

 

p3 is not such old technology. depending on the manufacturer, there shld be bios updates available to flash larger hard drive support.
i was able to install an 80 gig hard drive on a p2 machine by flashing the mobo bios. before that, the max was 8 gig.

 

I've had no trouble running a 300G drive on a P3 (server for squeezebox). Running Win XP, had to download some patch thingy to get it to recognise a drive of that size and its worker happily ever since. Mind you, its not SATA, which may or may not present a different set of issues to deal with.

Regards,

Stuart.

 

I dunno guys a 450 is an old machine even if its a P3, depends if the mobo is of the same age. I have 2 P2 450-ish machines and neither would go beyond 80GB even with the bios flash.

Still its kind of pointless debating it, we are not going to find out!

The old P2's are not that useless either though, my dad recently got a Compaq 350 to go right up too 1Ghz with a change of chip and although the motherboard does not support the chip, using one of those 'slockit' to set the bus speed and I think with a change of a single voltage regulator on the motherboard it could go even higher! Extreme overclocking hehe..

 

oops! I forgot to add the link to the original HDD thread in my above post.

I did that, but still had problems (mentioned on the original thread). The furthest I got with installing XP onto the SATA drive was as mentioned in the last posts on that thread, where it would get to "two minutes left" of the installation, then nothing.

That's why I ended up going down the clone route.

 

Well sticking to the original problem (reading up on a few things regarding the HDD prob's), I've got the laptop working fine for internet access now. However, at the very end of installation it asks to click "finish". However, when clicking that the machine froze completely and I had to pull the plug. Upon starting up again I get the message...

If I put the cd back in, the screen asking me to click finish comes back, but if I click finish, things just freeze up again

If I click Cancel then it simply goes away and everything runs fine.

I don't seem to have problems with my connection, so I just need to know how to get this error message to stop popping up.

Ideas?