A warning that this is long and complicated and not likely to be of general
interest or use to most List members.
My friend has a pretty dead Gateway laptop that she has asked me to see if I
can revive. When I turn it on the HD light blinks but there is no video. When
I connect an external monitor, it will start up (show the Win98 welcome screen)
and then stop with a blank screen. After reinstalling Win98 I can get it to
run but only if I boot from the Gateway recovery disk and then exit and start
Windows in safe mode. BTW, I was able to boot off of the CD to install Win98.
Running this way, I get some video driver errors but if I ignore them I can
keep it running at a very crude level. I kept getting a message telling me
that the system is running with 16 colors and that I should change that in the
desktop properties dialogue. That's the only option available, however, when I
go to properties. When running, the video is extremely degraded; icons and
text are recognizable, but barely. Again oddly, when the Win98 welcome screen
comes up it is in "normal" video, obviously some other resolution and color
selection.
At any rate, once I figured out how to get it running I decided I would try to
copy the files from the HD to my external USB drive. Amazingly, when I booted
up after attaching the drive I could see it in Explorer but not access it
because the USB drivers weren't installed. I tried to install them from the
Win98 CD but the removable CD drive doesn't work in this convoluted mode of
operation.
So here, finally, is the question. I think if I can install generic USB
drivers off of a diskette (Windows does see and access the removable diskette
drive) I may be able to get the system to access the USB drive and then copy
the data from the laptop HD. Can anyone help figure out how to do that? Are
there generic drivers that will work with W98, etc?
Another issue, perhaps, is that my USB drive is 2.0 but I think Win98 only
supports USB 1.0. Assuming that to be correct, if I can get the drivers loaded
is it likely that my external drive will just run at 1.0 speed even though it
is ver. 2.0 compatible?
I realize the easiest solution is to throw the laptop way and start from
scratch but it is important to my friend to recover the data. Among other
things, her needs are very basic and Win98 may be enough for her. On top of
that, she's broke and can't afford to buy new HW or SW. I have an old system
I'm going to give her if I can get the data on it have a old licensed OS I can
let her use. If I can't get this working, she will just not have a computer at
home (use of her machine at work is restricted).
As always, TIA for any help anyone can give me with this mess.
Harry
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