Greetings all
Mods, I apologize if this should be split into two OPs - however the issues are co-related and I think that each question might shed light on the other.
I am helping a friend out with some technical computer difficulties. He has an archaic windows box that, when I first encountered it, was running Win 95.
I managed after much difficulty, to upgrade it to 98 SE about a month ago, but that itself caused some issues - namely in that 98 didn’t recognize any of the plethora of old SVGA video card drivers I’d brought along, and consequently defaulted to a generic VGA driver that only supported 2 or 16 colors. But it worked, and I told him to leave well enough alone, and let me research it and try to either
a) find the manufacturer of this ancient video card and thus procure a working driver
or
b) find him a cheap video card that will work with his system and budget.
However, before that came to pass, another friend came over who knew enough about computers to REALLY screw it up :smack: and did something (not sure what) in CMOS to totally screw up the video output.
Evidently the screen immediately went blank, and attempts to restart and enter CMOS directly were to no avail.
So -
I was called in to repair the situation. Yet I find myself baffled. I need to restore CMOS to its original configuration without any onscreen guidance whatsoever.
It seems that I need a method of resetting CMOS directly from the motherboard. I know that there are generally some jumper settings that will allow me to do this, but I have no manufacturer identifier on the MB, and nothing to indicate which jumper configuration would fix this.
My other thought (and this is grasping at straws) is that the CMOS battery, if it is removed and reinserted, might restore everything back to the factory defaults, as this motherbaord almost certainly utilizes ROM and not a flash type memory for BIOS, CMOS, etc. However, I’m not 100% sure, and I’m worried that this might cause issues in and of itself.
Also, assuming I can restore CMOS and get video again - thoughts on the video driver issue would be appreciated. Again, I don’t know the manufacturer of the vid card or the MB, and assume no $$$ for new parts.
Yes, the answer is to trash this box and get a new one. However, the friend in question has absolutely no discretionary income and can’t afford jack.
Any comments or ideas would be greatly appreciated, and thank you in advance for your help.
KTM