I reloaded win 95 last night and can only get 16 color. My kids need 256 to play their games. I don't know the make of the video card/adapter, but I have 3 yellow boxes with exclamation marks in the device manager that can't find the drivers needed (creative labs sound blaster, mpu-401 compatible and ms windows sound system compatible0. Appreciate any help offered...

first of all, the ones with the errors are audio devices. do you have sound? if not, double click on each icon to bring up properties and see what the issue is. anyway, as far as video, you probably need to reinstall the drivers. in the device manager, click on the + sign to the right of 'display adapters'. this should tell you what the video card is. then go to driverguide.com, login using the name and password at the bottom of my response, and search for your device. if it says something generic like 'vga-compatible display adapter' or something to that effect, you may need to open the system and and pull the video card out to manually see what the video card is. is it integrated or a card??
by the way, you can upgrade that memory to increase system speed. pentium 1 or pentium 2? if P2, it will take PC100 DIMM, if P1, it will take 72-pin SIMM. you can upgrade that.

user name: 'driver2'
password: 'all'

Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours.

This is a common occurance after formatting - you need to ID your hardware, either wby the 'eyeball' method, or else install Everest, which does an admirable job

It does seem like the sound card is being identified - as suggested by our 17 year old friend, check out the explanation for the device's problem in Device Manager

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- Popular Mechanics, 1949

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If you've just loaded windows the display adapter in Device Manager will say "Standard VGA" or similar. You need to know what display adapter you have.

Download and run Everest Home Edition (freeware). This program will tell you much about your hardware. Find the display adapter listed and post back with that info. It may be onboard (to the motherboard) or a seperate card.

It's a good day when you learn something

I have no sound, to include no little speaker on the task bar.

The + gave me a generic device, how can I tell if the card is integrated or not?

is there any other way to id the device(s) without using everest? The computer I'm trying to fix is not internet capable and the everest download is too large for a 3.5 floppy.

You'll have to use the "eyeball" method described by jboy then.

Open the system. If the sound card is a seperate card in a slot, pull it and get all the info you can off of it.

If it's just a "jack panel" in a slot with cables going to the motherboard, or connections are to an ATX "Group" of connectors attached to the motherboard, then it's onboard sound. Then you need the motherboard make and model, and sometimes the revision level.

It's a good day when you learn something

I pulled the motherboard out - unfortunately there are numbers all over it. Anything in particular I should look for? There's one that starts with "mo"...I don't suppose that stands for motherboard....

I guess post back as much as you can. It'll be inscribed on the board itself and not on the chips soldered to the board. There may be jumper setting charts there--we don't need those. We'll probably recognize the relevent info if it's there.

the two numbers that stand out are are on white and yellow areas on the board's edge. they are AA 659823-505 and MO 3156343

Google doesn't turn anything up on that but the AA indicates it's an Intel motherboard. I couldn't find any way to use the AA number to find available downloads.

Intel boards were often used in brand name systems like Gateway, Dell and Micron. By chance did the motherboard come from one of those? If so you'd need to go to their site for the downloads.

Otherwise, since you've got he board out and all the cards are removed, are the sound and video outputs attached directly to the motherboard? If so post back what is written on some of the chips and we can probably ID the controller chips.

If the sound and/or video was on one of the added cards, post back info on what is written on the cards.

I ran pc config and got a bunch of data, does this help:

videocard: VESA-VGA 32 bit bus
VGA Chipset: S3 Virge (325)

This should work:

Driverguide

You can still use drivers and all for user and password or sign up for your own account.

That's the video. It won't do anything for the sound.

That's a rather large download. You mentioned earlier about being restriced to a floppy disk. Here's another download:

http://members.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=76810

Thanks...I was able to download that one, but I'm not quite sure how to install it properly. Should I delete the devices with the exclamation point and then try to install the driver as new hardware?

If you downloaded the first one, there is a 'setup.exe' file that you'd run that should install it. I didn't check to see how the second one is installed

I've also sent you a file that might work. It's a smaller one that I modified from the first site. I've included instructions for installing it.

Thanks for all the help...where did you say the installation instructions are?

The installation instructions for the one I sent are with the email.

The first driverguide download had a setup.exe file that is supposed to install the drivers. It also has an .inf file that can be used to install in the same way as the file I sent.

I'm not sure about the second driverguide download.

sorry to be a pest, but what email? Did you send an email somewhere other than this posting? Thanks

I sent it to the address you listed in your initial post. If that's not correct then post another and I'll send it again. Or if it was correct and you didn't get it, I'll send it again.

My bad, the address is .com, not .net:

mkamorski@kc.rr.com. Thanks

OK, I resent it.

Dragon306,

Now that I'm up and running again (thanks to all the help I received from this post!), how do I go about upgrading the memory? I noticed there's a bunch of 72 pin SIMM available cheap, but I'm not sure what to buy. Thanks.

The motherboard may take either simms or dimms. You need to figure out which you have. This link shows the various types.

Most pentium I motherboards couldn't cache more than 64 meg of RAM so you probably wouldn't want more than that. The chipsets on P-II and above could cache more. I usually put 128 meg in those. With 95 you're probably not going to be running any games needing more than that.

If the PC has dimm memory it may not be able to use the newer memory. The new stuff has higher capacity memory chips that the old PCs can't read right. So you may put in a 128 meg stick and the PC will only see 16 or 32 meg. It's going to depend on how old the motherboard is and how new the memory is.

With simms that shouldn't be a problem. Common sizes for them are 4, 8, 16 and 32 meg. There are also 64 meg sticks. That's the only size you may have trouble with. Simms types are fast page (parity and non-parity) and EDO. EDO is a litte better but you probably wouldn't see the difference. EDO must be installed in pairs. With fast page you usually need to install in pairs.

Dimm typically comes in SDRAM and EDO. Most of what you buy now is SDRAM. If your motherboard has dimm slots it'll take either type.

does it take SIMM or DIMM memory? if it is celeron, pentium 2 or above it will take DIMM. how fast is the CPU? DIMMs (PC100 and PC133) go for fairly cheap noadays, SIMMs are dirt cheap. which does it take?

Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours.

In response to your reply about not being able to download everst because of the computer not having the ability to go on the net, there is a way of bypassing that. There is a small freeware called The File Splitter, it is found here http://www.dekabyte.com/filesplitter/TheFileSplitter131.exe download it to the computer you are using with internet access, then execute the program. Then download everest with the computer with internet access, do not execute it, keep it as an exe, then have the file splitter split everest.exe. It will split it into 4 pieces, 3 pieces will be everest, and 1 piece will be the file which puts the pieces together. It will take 4 floppys. Then put all four floppys on your computer without internet access ( I usually put mine in My Documents Folder). Then all you have to do is to double click on the file piece which puts the pieces together, when finished, you should have everest on the computer as an exe, then all you have to do is execute.