Hi,

I have an old Compaq LTE 5250 running Windows 95. I would like to upgrade to Windows 98SE (or higher)so it can support wireless internet access.

The main problem is that it does not have a CD Drive. Is there anyway short of buying and installing a CD Drive to perform an upgrade?

Any information/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Bob

Bob Mac

C'mon Bob...bite the bullet & buy an optical drive. They're cheap & you'll find that you're gonna need it anyway. You can get a CD burner at newegg for $20:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827182011R

Or OfficeMax has a couple of clearance items for $19. One is a MadDog CD/DVD-ROM drive:

http://www.officemax.com/max/solutions/product/prodBlock.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&expansionOID=-536908013&prodBlockOID=537079873

The other is a 56X CD-ROM drive:

http://www.officemax.com/max/solutions/product/prodBlock.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&expansionOID=-536908013&prodBlockOID=537095770

Or you can get a plain 52X CD-rom at CompUSA for $15 (after rebate):

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=304878&pfp=BROWSE

ASUS A7N8X-X
Athlon XP 1800+
8.5 x 200MHz
1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7
Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB
WinME/WinXP Pro SP1

I second what Jam said. You going to need an optical drive anyway to install your software and the drivers for your wireless NIC.

I believe that's a laptop, so adding a drive may be problematic.

Nevertheless, bite the bullet anyhow and get a better machine??

Otherwise, a few strategies for transferring the files to the hard drive and performing the installation from there, although it may be preferable to perform a clean installation of Win98.

You could slave the hard drive to a desktop model with an adapter, or use a parallel port 'laplink' style cable.

This gets asked repeatedly

Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2 tons.

- Popular Mechanics, 1949

Report Offensive Follow Up For Removal

Most available WiFi cards are 32bit CardBus
PCMCIA, I believe you laptop does not
support CardBus or even USB, therefore you
will need to find an older WiFi card,
though 2/4 mbits was top thruput

jboy,

He didn't say it was a laptop, but I didn't bother to run the model number to find out...I just did that & you're correct, so that changes everything. Also, I just noticed he only has 48MB RAM, so this is probably a futile effort on his part.

ASUS A7N8X-X
Athlon XP 1800+
8.5 x 200MHz
1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7
Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB
WinME/WinXP Pro SP1

Wasn't the 5250 a Pentium 120? If so, you're gonna run pretty slow even if you do manage the upgrade. A newer machine might even be cheaper than trying to get a optical drive for that one...

Thanks for the feedback and the lesson on humility (CD Drives are cheap). It is a laptop and I am unsure if it will support the drive. I thought I might run into problems withe the CardBus as no USB port exists. Looks like I have a little more research to do.

Thanks to all who responded, I apprecitate the advice.

Regards,

Bob Mac

Things are trickier on a laptop, sure - but yeah, that is a low end machine, Win95 was likely the best OS, all things considered.

98 would probably run not *too* badly but the other considerations might make this a poor (or at least a challenging) choice for wireless

Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2 tons.

- Popular Mechanics, 1949

Report Offensive Follow Up For Removal

Bob,

Short of buying an external CD drive, if you can network your computer to one that does have a CD drive, you can probably do it. With only 48MB of RAM, your stuck with Windows 98.

Minimum requirements for Windows 2000:
>Computer/Processor 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU.
>Memory At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM >Hard Disk 2 GB with 650 MB free space.
>Drive CD-ROM or DVD drive.
>Display VGA or higher resolution monitor.
>Keyboard Required.

Minumum requirements for XP:
PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
• 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
• 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*
• Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
• CD-ROM or DVD drive
• Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device

Rule #1 Good computers don't go down.
Rule #2 There is no such thing as a good computer.

Hi

You should be able to cope fine with 98 on your Compaq. I had the same model, and bought a internal CD-ROM drive for it for around £10 of ebay. (This swops were the current floppy drive is)

However, you will need a Windows 98 "Upgrade" disc, otherwise, you would have to back up all your files, remove 95 and then re-install 98. Using the upgrade version it saves all your files and installed programmes.

Most new WLAN cards only support Windows 2000 & XP, although some go as low as Win 3.11. However, there are 16bit versions available if you do a bit of searching.

If you fail with the CD-ROM drive, Windows 98 is/was available in a Floppy Version. A pain installing I know, but it does the install just the same.

Good Luck

the Compaq LTE line was a line of laptops. I have a very similar model, 2 models up in the LTE 5000 series. Windows 98 SE will run on 120mhz with 48mb RAM just fine. i had it on a 100mhz with 32mb RAM once. they use proprietary optical drives, though. you can get them on ebay for less then ten dollars. i use wireless on mine and it works fine. why must people insist on thinking they must have the best??? even 120mhz will be more then capable of typing and accessing the internet, and i have found some old MS-DOS games to be as much fun as modern 3D ones. my two cents.

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

So, Dragon/lonelywolf/Fastnfurious (did I miss any?) - apparently you feel the need to summarize what has already been established?

Great - can't get enough of that, please continue this invaluable service, don't know how we ever managed without you.

Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2 tons.

- Popular Mechanics, 1949

Report Offensive Follow Up For Removal