Grrrr, Win98 won't load critical drivers

[TimPoet]

Specs:
Duron 750
Aopen AK73 Pro(A) mobo
com21 cable modem
Dlink DFE-530TX+ NIC
WD 40G HDD

A client of mine had a power surge after an outage that killed her HDD and floppy drive, eventually her dvd rom drive died while I was working on it.
Replaced HDD and loaded Win98 OS on it.
I want to get internet access on that system but Win98 can't locate the drivers for the Com21 modem or the NIC card.
It did load the 4 in 1's and the SoundBlaster Live drivers just fine.
I've come to hate AMD and Via.
Can anyone point me in the right direction? I need the internet access so I can download other drivers for her periphereals.
TIA

Btw, I flashed the bios, turned off ACPI and reformatted four times.

[andyms18a]

its a good bet that a power surge big enuff to take out the hdd floppy and dvd will have damaged the nec and modem as well and posabley the motherboard

[TimPoet]

That's a thought. The nic and cable modem were not hers. They are mine. The NIC I replaced since I don't have a driver cd for hers and the cable modem is my setup, she uses dial up.

Could mobo damage cause drivers to not be locateable? Do I need to do something to the setup in Network thingy in control panel to get the nic drivers locateable?

[mike breck]

TP,

Is Win98 detecting the NIC at startup as new hardware?

If you have the NIC drivers on floppy disk, you should be able choose "Search for the best driver" and then point Win98 to the floppy drive.

If Win98n doesn't detect the NIC, then you'll have to install it manually. Control Panel>Network. Click Add>Adapter>Have disk and state the path a:\win98 (or whatever floppy folder the Win98 drivers exist in) and click OK.

If the modem is USB, then you might be better getting specific drivers from the manufacturer's website.

[TimPoet]

Wunderbar, Mike!
I got the NIC drivers loaded.

But I still can't get the USB drivers for my Com21 modem to load. I have the cd rom with the drivers on it, but Add New Hardware wiz keeps saying, 'Windows cannot locate drivers for this device'.

[andyms18a]

has win98 corectley found the usb controlar on the mother board

[TimPoet]

I'm not sure what you mean. I am like a newbie regarding this kind of stuff.

[TwoRails]

Originally posted by TimPoet
... I have the cd rom with the drivers on it, but Add New Hardware wiz keeps saying, 'Windows cannot locate drivers for this device'. Hi TimPoet,

99 of a 100 times, that indicates you're not in the correct directory, or sub-directory. You may have to go thru every directory on the CD until it (the correct driver(s) / inf) is found.

HTH

TwoRails

[andyms18a]

Originally posted by TimPoet
I'm not sure what you mean. I am like a newbie regarding this kind of stuff.
open device manager and look for the usb controlar and rout hub is it set up corectley allso douse the driver disk have a setup program you can run

[TimPoet]

Originally posted by TwoRails
99 of a 100 times, that indicates you're not in the correct directory, or sub-directory. You may have to go thru every directory on the CD until it (the correct driver(s) / inf) is found. It should be in D:/win98 on the cd for the Com21 drivers. That's where my cable modem tech support pointed me to and that's what I selected to no avail.
Originally posted by andyms18a
open device manager and look for the usb controlar and rout hub is it set up corectley allso douse the driver disk have a setup program you can run There is no usb controller or rout hub in dev mgr (I don't have a router). I bet the lack of usb controller is significant, huh?

The driver disk does have a disk setup program but the dvd rom won't automatically open it up to present the menu on this new HDD. It does present the menu for setup on my other system so the disk is fine. That's wierd, isn't it?

[andyms18a]

if you dont have a usb controler or usb rout hub then windows dont know you have usb on the motheboard is this win98fe or win98se
ps the rout hub is each usb slot you have at the bottem of device manager look for universal serial bus controllers if it ant thair then windows will never find a driver for your usb devices

[TimPoet]

Okay, I dug around in Dev Mgr and under Universal Composite Device I found USB Composite Device that has these two drivers: usbhub.sys and ntkern.vxd.
While I don't see a rout hub, perhaps you mean root hub, I have 2 of those which have the same drivers as above.

[andyms18a]

ok you have the usb support so look in my computer find the cdrom with the drivers on and right click the drive do you have a option to auto run if so dubble click it if not click open and look for the setup file shode be setup.exe or somthing and dubble click it to run setup

[TwoRails]

Just curious, but did you poke around in the other directories on the CD?

[mike breck]

The driver disk does have a disk setup program but the dvd rom won't automatically open it up to present the menu on this new HDD. It does present the menu for setup on my other system so the disk is fine. That's wierd, isn't it?

Check the properties of the DVD-Rom in Device Manager. It may be that Auto Insert Notification is turned off.

The other way of doing it, is to open the driver CD in Windows Explorer, find setup.exe, and double-click on it. That should get the driver installation program running.