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Old laptop

2K views 16 replies 4 participants last post by  crjdriver 
#1 ·
I have inheirited an old Compaq PRESARIO 1200 laptop. The Stickers on the machine indicate that it originally had Win ME on board, but it has been loaded with Win 98, (not even W98SE). But it runs pretty well, no crashes at all (which cannot be said for my new XP running desktop!)

It has built in speakers, but no sounds are to be heard. I am informed that it used to play music using Wmplayer.

So, what should I do to try to restore sound? I have already run it on Driver Headquarter's driver detective, but it says the audio drivers are Ok, or so it seems.

All advice welcome.
 
#3 ·
Yes, sorry, I should have sent a bit more info.

No yellow exclamation marks (those are beside the modem enumerator, whatever that is)

control panel / system / device manager / devices by type/ sound, video and games:

2 icons, one without any descriptors, and one which says VIA PCI Audio controller

/ devices by connection gives us one icon which says unknown device. Properties reveals that the device thinks it is working properly; manufacturer unknown, hardware version unknown. No drivers are loaded.
 
#4 ·
It sounds like you have one or more devices that do not have drivers loaded. I am guessing that this is an amd chip using a via chipset. Have you checked compaq's site for drivers for this model. They "may" have win98 drivers listed.
 
#8 ·
If there are no drivers available for it, you may need to buy a card modem. I ran into this problem a few months ago. I installed win2k on a laptop for a friend; there were no modem drivers available. He had to go and buy a new card modem.
 
#10 ·
I've tried upgrading several W98 laptops to 2K or XP, and in each case, the modem was one piece of equipment that I had to replace with a PCMCIA card...
 
#13 ·
I've run 2K on 128mb, but it's not pretty. :) I would use W98 on that laptop, since it runs decently in that amount of RAM, and certainly better than ME or 2K.
 
#15 ·
1 It costs more money
2 Most likely you have only one additional ram slot.

I would go to crucial's site and input the make and model of laptop. It will show all of the chips that will work in the system along with prices.
 
#16 ·
Well, I discovered that there is indeed just 1 slot, and the maximum amount of RAM that can go in is 320. So, a 256 stick of RAM would be fine, and so far as I can establish it costs well under £100.

Meanwhile, the whole system died after I installed some drivers for the modem in the vain hope of getting that to work. A fresh install of Win 98SE has been a bit tricky, and I'm back to no sound, and the drivers from Compaq (see above) didn't work this time, so i'm silenced. Any ideas as to why W98 won't detect the sound hardware, when the previous OS, which was the older version of W98 worked Ok after installing the drivers?

I had to give up on my plan to install W2K; the CD that came with the computer did not have the proper registration key. In any event, is W2K a huge improvement over W98?
 
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