FAT got corrupted/damaged. Installed new 80g hd. Reloaded win98. Getting "PCI serial controller" found as "new hardware" and needs driver message. Using a diff computer, downloaded correct modem driver from Best Products site and x-ferr'ed via floppy to problem machine. When I point win98 to the correct .inf file it says the driver is incorrect for my modem. Humm, now what?

Try to find a better modem driver file.

If windows says it's the wrong driver, it probably is. Double check what you did. By the way, damaged FATs normally do not mean that the hard drive is defective. Formatting that drive can probably save it.

Windows may be looking for the MOBO drivers and not the modem driver. Do you have the MOBO drivers? If you know the MOBO chipset, you may be able to get these from the chipset manufacturer's website.

The FAT issue started immediately after the computer was transported in the back of my truck, so I'm thinking the platten got damaged. It was only a 4gb drive anyway.. I do still have the MOBO installation CD. When the machine is booted-up with the modem removed, there's no error. Would that necessarily rule in/out the MOBO driver/s?? I was getting a similiar message for my eithernet card, but I pulled it for now and its associated messages went away. When I downloaded the driver file from the modem manuf site, it was zipped. After unzipping, I had 3 .inf files, and a folder with abt 10 files. I tried to target all of the 3 .inf files one at a time, but it didn't like any of them. All the files in the folder had the last letter of their extension replaced with an underscore. I.E. " VX_".. A friend tells me the underscore denotes is association with cab files, or something like that. None files in the folder were .inf files. Not sure what they were for. I also downloaded the modem driver file/s from driverguide.com and had the same issue.

Post back info on the modem--model #, chipset info, etc.-- and we'll see if we can find some drivers. Also, what file did you download? I think a file with a .vx_ extension is just a compressed .vxd file. The installation process will decompress it.

Best Data Products. Model# 56FWPCI Chipset# R6785-62 downloaded driver version 212.161.000 File name was HCF_WIN9X.ZIP After unzipping, I have files names: bdp1356.inf bdp1356m.inf bdp1354w.inf The # on the large chip is 11229-14 The # on the small chip is 20410-14 Thx!!