Back to ME

[Slamman]

I restored two drives I obtained with Windows ME on my restore discs, for my PC and then put these both on an HP Vectra I got over the weekend.

 

They both boot up within SAFE mode, but freeze in normal boot... I played with the graphics cards and drivers, but not working still.

 

One of these drives is a 6.4GB Fujitsu that appears to just stop reading (I can feel it's head stop dead but the discs spinning)

 

The other disc was bought and it is used I think, but sold as good, working.

I am about to give up on this HP computer and use the drives elsewhere, but any ideas why this would be?

[Jim]

I restored two drives I obtained with Windows ME on my restore discs, for my PC and then put these both on an HP Vectra I got over the weekend.

 

They both boot up within SAFE mode, but freeze in normal boot... I played with the graphics cards and drivers, but not working still.

 

One of these drives is a 6.4GB Fujitsu that appears to just stop reading (I can feel it's head stop dead but the discs spinning)

 

The other disc was bought and it is used I think, but sold as good, working.

I am about to give up on this HP computer and use the drives elsewhere, but any ideas why this would be?

It's old, that's pretty much it. The installations of the OS are old enough, and contain so much, that they no longer boot. A good reformat would fix this. If you have any files you consider valuable on the drives, back them up while in safe mode.

[Slamman]

That's not it, if you mean the drives, perhaps, but I read the expectancy on HDD is 5 years, and many go well beyond that in practice.

Cost is making some good inroads, but I intend to use all used parts I come across. The best find was 4 sticks of good RAM I can use, people were discarding, as well as two CD burning drives.

On top of that, the PSUs can come in handy. This is why I save discarded PCs, the parts are worth something still. A AGP card in one of these machines is an ATI all in Wonder WITH the cable needed to split signals! I paid money for one of these prior.

I also picked up a nice USB 2.0 PCI card with this throw away.

 

The board is from an HP computer but the numbers indicate it's a FIC board made for them.

FIC also made eMachine boards. It can support up to 500Mhz or perhaps over.

It had only 400Mhz installed.

That seems woeful, but it's enough for simple MAME game software, as well as Mpeg2 vid.

I found switching to a Dell P2 mobo with another restored ME drive proved the same boot in normal mode...a sole blinking cursor in the upper corner. I changed the video card and USB 2.0

I then changed things in SAFE mode and booted normally. It almost seems the USB card was at fault in this case.

I dismantled the HP but am going to store the mobo for future reference. I tried too many times to bother with it again, for now.

Appreciate all input, thanks guys

BILL