donnar

I did a doosey and have been trying all day to fix this. My hubby inherited an old Toshiba laptop from work a few yrs ago, it had Win2000 on it. I wanted XP on it, so installed my own legit copy onto this old laptop. It has worked slowly, but ok. Now I am setting this computer up as a kids computer for fisher price games etc.

I thought to myself "I bet it would run so much better with Win98 on it!" I took out my old Win98 cd, and booted with it to install 98. Of course, it formatted the hard drive to wipe out the other OS (XP). There was nothing on it of value, so I went ahead with it.

Once 98 finished, the laptop booted up with a tiny screen, 640x480 pixels, and only 2 or 16 colours. Before with XP, I had a full screen, and up to 256 colours. Also, using my ethernet cable, I can't connect to the internet, now it is telling me that I need to insert the PCMCIA card, but I never took it out, it worked on the internet with XP yesterday.

I could go back to XP PRo, but really want an OS that takes less resources.

SPecs:

Toshiba Satellite Pro 4200 SEries laptop
FAT32 file system
drive c: 11.2GB capacity
128 MB ram

Any help would be appreciated.

simpswr

You just need to load the drivers for that laptop . . you can find them on the manufacturers support site. Load the chipset driver first, then the others in any order.

XP likely had all the drivers on the install cd . . win98 does not

donnar

thanks for your help, I found the drivers. I'm trying to load the new bios, following the instructions exactly, but am having trouble. i will go to the laptop area for help. Thanks again!

donnar

My hubby inherited an old Toshiba laptop from work a few yrs ago, it had Win2000 on it. I wanted XP on it, so installed my own legit copy onto this old laptop. It has worked slowly, but ok. Now I am setting this computer up as a kids computer for fisher price games etc.

I thought to myself "I bet it would run so much better with Win98 on it!" I took out my old Win98 cd, and booted with it to install 98. Of course, it formatted the hard drive to wipe out the other OS (XP). There was nothing on it of value, so I went ahead with it.

Once 98 finished, the laptop booted up with a tiny screen, 640x480 pixels, and only 2 or 16 colours. Before with XP, I had a full screen, and up to 256 colours. Also, using my ethernet cable, I can't connect to the internet, now it is telling me that I need to insert the PCMCIA card, but I never took it out, it worked on the internet with XP yesterday.

I could go back to XP PRo, but really want an OS that takes less resources. It really does boot up so quickly with 98!

SPecs:

Toshiba Satellite Pro 4200 SEries laptop
FAT32 file system
drive c: 11.2GB capacity
128 MB ram

Any help would be appreciated.

I did find the drivers here http://209.167.114.38/support/Download/ln_byModel.asp, and extracted the Bios file to a floppy. The instructions were to hold f12 while booting the laptop, and follow the instructions. The screen tells me to insert the disc with the bios file and press any key, but nothing happens. The drive spins and nothing. Also, I can't read cd's in the cd drive, so I think I need a cd drive driver to even read from it, so I can put other drivers on the laptop!

Maybe I shoudl jsut go back to xp?

BCCOMP

HI Donnar,
A BIOS upgrade is not recomended unless you have a certain issue in most cases.
Be very carefull as to what you are doing with the BIOS Upgrade. If flashed incorrectly you will end up with a boat anchor instead of a laptop.

Can you give us the exact model number of this laptop?

Edit: No need to start another thread. If need be we can move it to the appropreiate forum.

Thanks,
Bill

belfasteddie

128 mb of Ram is way to small for Xp. Thats why it takes forever to Boot. 1 gig of Ram is considered the minimum these days. Your comp takes a max of 320 mb and even with that amount would still take a long time.
One way to get XP to boot faster would be to install it and then strip it out, i.e. remove everything not required. The first thing would be Fonts.
If you Google ,"stripped down XP", you will find a lot of ways of doing the strip down.

donnar

thank you!

donnar

Ok, thanks Bill,

It is a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4260 (model no. PS426C-3N152).

BCCOMP

Hi Donnar,
I finally found the drivers you need. This is a Canadian Model:
http://209.167.114.38/support/downlo...rs/drivers.asp
Product: Notebook
Family: Satelite Pro
Model: 4260 XDVD
Part Number: PS426C-3N152
Filter by Operating System: Select Win98

They do show a BIOS update with instructions, but they DO NOT state what the Update is for. They do state in the intructions you may have to press F2 instead F12. Seeing I do not know what this update pertains to I am not sure I can advise you. The only thing I can state is seeing this update is from 2001, I would check what version you have already. Is it version 2.7?
If it were me I would leave the BIOS update alone.
You can always flash the BIOS down the road if need be.

Bill

PS- I have merged your post from the Laptop forum to this post.

donnar

thanks for the info and the merge..... i will see what i can do with those drivers! much appreciated..

BCCOMP

Let us know how you make out.
Thanks,
Bill

donnar

When I put the driver cd into the cd drive, it doesn't "autoplay." And when I select a device in device manager and "update driver", i search on the d: drive, and it doesn't find anything to udpate the device with. There is no "setup" on the cd, so I can't seem to get the drivers from the cd onto my Win98 install. Must be the drive needs a driver first! I wonder if I can get a driver onto a floppy?

simpswr

Are the drivers in the form of a .exe file? If so, double click them to install