Bad Problem With packard Bell 6200

[Jim624]

I just got the above mentioned computer from a friend. When I got it home and booted it up it would not go past the Logo screen. I am trying to reformat it but have not had any luck. I can;t even get a boot disk to work in it, I can download the bootdisk for Win95 but in order to install it on a disk I need a Win95 or 98 machine. Is there a Restore CD or floppy that came with this computer ?? if so, do you know where I can get it. The Serial # is N068054022 it's a Packmate6200. Any help would be greatly appreciated. This Computer is going to be for my daughter for her school work. My friend told me that this computer worked very good and has not been used in several years.

 

[Byteman]

jim624 Does your friend still have any disks for this computer?
To make the bootdisk on another computer, you should only need to download the file to the desktop, double click it, it will tell you when to insert a floppy disk and then copy the files to it, that makes the bootdisk.
As per your other thread: I searched all over for support info for your PB- there is not much.

http://forums.techguy.org/t113433/s.html

A symptom of bad RAM chips is hanging at the logo screen.
The CMOS battery may also be bad, or very undercharged.
You can try clearing the CMOS, too- just take the battery out for a few minutes, put it back in, when you restart, go into BIOS by pressing the key it tells you like F2, DEL, etc, and just SAVE and EXIT as it tells you, press the key it tells you to reboot.
If you do not have the silver colored round, removable type CR2032 battery, just leave the computer off and plugged in for awhile, it might recharge.
Have you tried holding down the CTRL key at bootup? This may get you a menu to select "Command Prompt" from which, you should be able to type at the A:\format c:
and then hit Enter...that will format the hard drive.
If you can get a prompt, but the format command does not work, type at A:\fdisk
and hit Enter.
Then, if you know what to do, continue, delete the C: partiton and any others you find. This will result in ALL data gone, and so will formatting the drive...so be prepared to have missing drivers when you are done....things like sound, video, modem, may not work afterward....since you have no drivers disk, or Restore CD, you will have to identify each device and hunt for drivers. The PB sites that are archived still have drivers, for some systems, though they produced no hits for your Packmate model....they should be available at other sites....this may take us awhile to get them.
What you should also download to a floppy disk on another pc is the Belarc Advisor, which will ID most of the systems parts like sound, video for you, in a page which you can print or at least copy to a floppy for reference or manually write down. You will need the hardware information to get drivers loaded for devices.

www.belarc.com

You want the Free Download link at top. Put it on desktop, install, it will put up a page with lots of information, includeing the Windows Product Key, which you might need when you run setup....unless you have another Product Key for win95CDROM. Good luck

 

[Jim624]

OK...I got the boot disk and reformatted, and now when I put the PB MAster Disk in the cdrom and type Startup.exe it says "Not Ready reading Drive E" What do I do now. Does it want the Windows 95 Disk only ?? I pretty sure Windows 95 is included on the master disk. I am about worn out with this computer. I sure hope my daughter appreciates it !!! LOL If ya'll can help me out and get me up and runnin on this PB I'll have my wife make you a cheese cake !!! LOL

Jim

 

[Byteman]

jim---Why are you typing "Startup.exe"? The normal command to type is simply setup and hit the Enter key.
But, sounds like you still are having CD drive problems, with the message about drive- try different drive letters, change to them from the A:\ by typing just the drive letter and a colon.
thus, A:\D: and hit Enter, try other letters....\ you need to be able to see the directory of files on the CD.....like this:
A:\D:
D:\dir /p The p is for pause, to see files one page at a time....

you should see a list of files, when the CD is in the it's drive, of course. When you see the list....look for a file name that will start the setup....this is what the special floppy disk is for, to give you a menu and to start the Restore process.


Can you find the make and model of CD drive- it's on the label of the drive


Here is the result of a quick Google search on the matter of restoring and problems with Packard Bells. Believe me, it can be fairly difficult to get this working...read through the pages.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...n+on+Packard+Bell+computer&btnG=Google+Search