OK guys, this one has tried my patience. I have reformatted my Compaq Pressario 5800 US many times running an Intel Celeron 800 mghz processor, 384 mb sdram. No probs, usual driver config headaches. Friends computer - clone, Via Chipset, Athlon XP, 256 mb-wife deleted and reinstalled 95 ver 98SE or tried, everything was messed up. Problem 1: Reformatted x 3 for it to take the reformat and partition, still couldn't divide the extended into d, e, and f. Had to settle for Primary of C and Extended one big logical drive of d. Problem 2: Bad windows install, acting like a not so stable installation, reinstalled 98SE but it installed to directory 000, instead of windows, so I formated C a third time. Reinstalled SE clean. Had yellows on sound and internet connection sharing only. Took the main board disc and installed the sound card (onboard) and drivers and got the sound icon on the bottom right and it was in multimedia as installed and the sound card was showing as installed. Problem 3: ON restart no video (display), did this on every sound card from the main board disc I installed then uninstalled as on restart no video each time. Went into Device manager to change IRQ settings and found no available IRQs. Problem: Noticed USB had been disabled in bios, as the uncle configured system prior and this was using irq 11 I am sure. I have to wonder if he disabled USB and assigned 11 as the irq for the sound card. Problem 5: On installing the emulators as I have the 600 roms, it tells me it needs 256 colors, well it only gave me an option I think of 2 and some other 2 digit number I think, no choice for anything higher other than a 2 digit number, i.e., no 256 colors. Problem 5: On trying to install the Realtek adapter, it installed same, but would not load the drivers for the onboard lan. Computer crashed. O. K. guys I know sound drivers a handful, took me a few days with mine, first time, but how do u solve the IRQ steering probls with network cards, here network cards are the works, they hog whatever address they want. Also gave on bootup the error that the dynamic link library was not loaded or could not be found, this was after windows install x 3 or 4 with two separate discs used to make sure it was not cds. Please any help appreciated for this semi sort of newby with an in-depth problem.

I suggest you start over. Something went wrong early! If you really formatted the drive, the install should not have gone to c:\windows.000

That's why I reformated C. I partitioned and formated in fdisk using large disc support using c at 10 gigs set as primary, extended of 30 gigs with a logical of 3 using all the remainder 30 gigs. The wife tried to install 95 over 98SE, they had a C partition only. I wanted to have a ghost image on a separate drive, so made a d drive and formated c and d. By start over, where would I start, thanks.

I have repartitioned and formated and ghosted out several times my Compaq Presario 5008US and have had 98, ME, XP Pro all on same, sometimes with a dual boot XP and 98 or XP and me, and just about every operating system ghosted out on g logical, as I have c main, d, e, f, and g as logicals in the extended. Al ghost images are burned to CD and on G. I was reading something inthe forum where irq steering had to be disabled or enabled in bios, which is it, and also plug n play plays a role in this. Any help appreciated, thanks.