Reformatting A Packard Bell

[blondedivemaste]

I did a clean install and reformat on my friends Packard Bell Club 91c and out of all the clean installs and reformats I have done (approx 100) this has been the most troublesome I have ever encountered.

For one thing they give you a recovery disk with no drivers on it!! Then if you go to their website you must click on the UK if you want an english version of the website. Then there is not actual product listing.

So now in my quest to find drivers for this piece of crap I have spent hours searching for video drivers and sound drivers. The video card is an Intel 810L Direct AGP with an Intel i810L chipset (Pentium 3600) and I haven't started my quest for the sound card.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If anyone knows of a Packard Bell North American website could you please post it.

Thanks
Susan

 

[Pitzaguy]

You can get your driver here, but may need to join first.

http://www2.driverguide.com/uploads/uploads7/1099.html

 

[Styxx]

That Master CD has the drivers! Plus a lot more but PB got sued, then run out of the USA because they won't tell their cuystomers the truth. Insert the CD in the drive; Open My Computer; Right-click the CD-ROM icon; Point to Explore. Look through the folders in the left Explorer pane; It should show the contents on the right; the drivers or their Setup programs will be there so you can drag n drop to the HDD and run or run from the CDROM.

There is no PB North America site anymore. Win98 FE and above should have all your mainboard drivers the rest you get from the card/capability chip maker's website(s). Sometimes you have to look at the mainboard and get the makers name and the numbers off the chip.


This site will do what you want too.

http://www.motherboards.org/

Write me at [email protected]

Enjoy.

 

[blondedivemaste]

Hi there thanks for your help. I have explored both the cd's endlessly and cannot find the drivers. I have tried to update them through device manager and have gone through each file, file by file to see if device manager can update the driver. Does Packard Bell have a special format that they put the drivers in?

My Hewlet Packard and E Machine and even my old IBM are very simple and have the drivers in a seperate file on their recovery cd. I don't understand why Packard Bell has made it so difficult to install their drivers. Are they trying to make you use their recovery cd forever????

Thanks for your help.......

Susan

 

[Styxx]

http://www.packardbell.co.uk/support/node201.asp

Yea, on the Diskimage stuff, some of it is in a format omly the Master CD program is able to extract.

On my old 486 PB Master CD there's Drivers and Software folder, DOS folder and even DOS 6.2 to upgrade to. It ran Win3.11. I don't know how old the computer in question is but this one's from '94.

If you absolutely can not find frivers on that CD, surprising, you may have to view those chips on the mainboard, get names and numbers, then go to the chip maker's website. I know you will not be able to point a update driver wizard from Windows ZDevice Manager like you said, a losing battle, to that CD because many of the drivers have Setup programs the Master CD starts up and runs in the Restore process. I bet they're there. A clean install of Win98 FE or SE should have most the drivers except maybe the modem. You would probably have to replace that. http://www.pricewatch.com has some inexpensive replacements.

Yes, PB wanted you to use the Master CD system exclusively and their expensive after warrantee tech support because they alone sold the proprietary hardware and the master CD would only work with the original or factory authorized replacement parts installed. Sort of like Compaq and HP are now, wink.

Compaq was like that and still are to some extent but their tech support is somewhat better so they could stay in business. PB had terrible tech support you could never get through to the last several years.

Good luck, that motherboard.org site has links to most parts and drivers.

Itel probably has drivers for that vid card on their website. You could also put that computer on-line and go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and down at the bottom of the Update page it may offer you Intel drivers for the Video. It did on my Emachine and it has that 810 chipset.

 

[Styxx]

http://www.packardbell.co.uk/support/node201.asp

You didn't look hard enough. I hope this helps! You still got to find out which chips you want to get drivers for, Exactly.

More good forums:

http://www.zdnet.com/community