Trying to resurrect Packard Bell C-110 Multimedia

"Doc" wrote in message
...
I see I asked this once before. Here's the specific issue that came
up:

"It starts the process of loading but gets to a certain point and
gives the message "unable to load Wincalc" and asks if I want to
continue anyway, however it doesn't offer a button to cotinue, only
one to exit. "


I recall I tried this several times and always ran into the same
issue.



here is a screen shot

http://toastytech.com/guis/pbnav35.html

My first machine was also a Packard Bell P-1 75 mhz with 8 megs of ram and
an 850 meg HD.

My girlfriend gave it to me after she outgrew it...
I was with her when she bought it new. It was $1600 and I thought she had
gone completely bonkers.

I used it quite heavily for a good many years and upgraded it considerably.

I put in a 200mhz over-drive cpu...128 megs of RAM
and a 20 gig HD plus a pci_USB card after I upgraded to to win98.
also setup a dual doot with RedHat Linux.

When I retired the machine...I put it back as close to original as I
could...

but the Packard Bell navigator was never re-installed. As a matter of
fact...my gf dumped it as soon as she got the machine.


Just out of curiosty...I did install it once...
but the original cd was very odd. If you run "setup" from the root directory
of the CD...
it will install both win95 and the PB Navigator...
the the install was very dodgy and took many reboots...
many hours...and there was many files "not found"

Here is whay I'd do:

Navigate over to the win95 folder and run setup from there.

that should give you a generic win95 installation.

Once Win95 is installed...then try to add the PB Navigator if desired

I'd put the entire win95 CD's contents in a folder on the
hard drive of the intended system (if convenient, then boot
to DOS floppy) or make a CD now. If the install still
stalls you might try disabling things in the bios until
after the install is finished, and pulling out any extra
cards installed (which shouldn't be necessary, but I'm
pretty much guessing at this point as it's been far too long
since I'd had to deal with Win95 install issues, what few
times I'd done it in past years it had worked).
I remember with my 133 using the 170369 cd there were some typo file
extension problems we fixed using the command prompt. I wish I could find
those old notes...I rememeber it was always annoying ending up at that y-
prompt ( could not simply re-boot...always had to power off and on to finish
the install)
mc

"mc" wrote in message
news:Hv4nj.888$ar6.25@trnddc07...
I'd put the entire win95 CD's contents in a folder on the
hard drive of the intended system (if convenient, then boot
to DOS floppy) or make a CD now. If the install still
stalls you might try disabling things in the bios until
after the install is finished, and pulling out any extra
cards installed (which shouldn't be necessary, but I'm
pretty much guessing at this point as it's been far too long
since I'd had to deal with Win95 install issues, what few
times I'd done it in past years it had worked).
I remember with my 133 using the 170369 cd there were some typo file
extension problems we fixed using the command prompt. I wish I could find
those old notes...I rememeber it was always annoying ending up at that y-
prompt ( could not simply re-boot...always had to power off and on to
finish
the install)
mc




Holy smokes...I thought this thread died out a long time ago.
I wonder if the OP ever got the thing going???

Hope so, as an after thought I think the bad file extensions were fni where
they should have been inf.....which we changed during/after the install
process...
mc

"mc" wrote in message
news:V_rnj.6717$v86.5961@trnddc08...
Hope so, as an after thought I think the bad file extensions were fni
where
they should have been inf.....which we changed during/after the install
process...
mc




The CD that came with my old Packard Bell did not have that problem...
but it had it's problems all right.

It did contain a generic win95 folder on the cd...
and if one ran "setup" from within that folder...you ended up with a
standard win95 install.


However...if you ran "setup" from the root directory of the cd...it also
installed the Packard Bell Navigator...
but in such a way that it literally took hours to complete...
and there were dozens of errors that you could click past...but was very
annoying.

I think the first thing the setup program did was to copy the entire CD to
the HD...
then continue the setup from there.

I did it just as a matter of curiosity.


Anyway...the PB I had was from my girlfriend...she just gave it to me when
she upgraded.

It served me very well for many years and was really a good machine.

Some time later I was also give an older Packard Bell...a 486 with a "sound
card" cdrom with win3.1


It was that machine which made me see why so many people did not like
packard bell...
it was terrible!


I tried to install win95 on it from a cd...but after about 8 hours it was
only halfway done.

I ended up installing win95 from floppies in maybe 90 minutes or so G

Yes...that was a terrible waste of time....

but I later tried my first install of Linux on that thing !