Win 95 on Packard Bell

[Edday]

I have an old Packard Bell and had to reformat it. I went to fdisk and deleted everything there , restarted and reformated. Put in the original restoration floppy and CD , on the last boot up it said there were errors like nimem.sys and a couple of others . I redone everything again and installed win 95 with another win 95 start up floppy and another win 95 cd . Everything installed great except the sound. I have searched the restoration disk for the driver and couldn't find it there . I downloaded a driver and tried to install it but I guess I am missing something because I didn't get it installed. If I put the restoration floppy in and try to install from the restoration CD I lose the CD rom . What else can I try?? The sound card is Sound Blaster Pro .

[glc]

That sound card is actually an Aztech, which is SB Pro compatible. This is a known issue with the old Packard Bells, trying to find the right driver is a royal pain. Try driverguide.com.

[GaryRouth]

. . . and some of those Aztechs were "combo" cards: with both the sound card and the modem on the same card [you can check this easily by looking at the back of your computer: if both the sound connectors and the modem connectors are on the same card, you've got the combo. If you can get an FCC # or a model # from the card, the site glc mentioned is about your best bet. They have a generic login available (then if you like the site, you can change to a more personalized one, and help support them, which [last time I visited] is optional). The generic login: first box: "drivers", and second box: "all".

Best of luck - that's ten years now for that oldie = someone's been taking good care of it.
. . . Gary

[Edday]

It is an Aztech combo card FCC # 138-mmsn843. Here is another number that was in bigger white numbers 2710101 . It didn't say model # . These numbers were on the other side on the bar code .AZSC54321529 and another number 030096 . Thanks

[Edday]

I have found the drivers for the sound and modem . I haven't tried to install yet. What is the best way to install ?? I have seen something about install in DOS. I don't know the steps to do that. Thanks

[glc]

What is the file? Zip? Exe? There should be a readme in there somewhere.

[Edday]

This is the one I got for the modem but looks like it will install the sound also.
This is the read me file for zip 138-mmsn843 modem

This file can be downloades directly from the packard bell site.It is complete setup file for the aztec labs srs 3d sound card.to get the modem working you must first install the drivers using the setup file.after you will have a folder called voyetra.in dos mode run the hwset.exe file usually the modem must be set to com 4 interrupt 3 to work as com ports 1,2,3 will be assighned to other functions.to do this firt type in cd c:\
then cd c:\voyetra\utility\hwset/mr this sets the card to default values.then type in hwset/comp:4 followed by hwset/compi:3 lastly type hwset/ms this saves the settings now restart windows run add remove new hardware windows should find the comport for a 19200 modem and all of the sound card functions.the original file can be found at packardbell support as srs 3d 16b sound card drivers.also during the file install you will be asked for disk 3 simply keep refering it to the a: drive where disk three is located.any questions you can e-mail me at cameronloc at aol.com.

The driver I got for the sound doesn't have a read-me file in it. The zip for it is 2316fd95.

[Edday]

I have found the drivers on the restore cd and installed them . Now it tells me that its not setup. Do I have to install some kind of setup software to make it work? It is listed it the device manager but with an explanation mark .

[GaryRouth]

When you installed the drivers from the Packard Bell Restore disk, did you choose to reinstall just the sound drivers from a menu? Or another method?

In the meantime - something to check:
1) If you didn't uninstall the older sound/modem drivers before installing the latest, start the computer in Safe Mode. [tap the F8 key while the computer is starting, immediately after the "POST beep" (this is when the motherboard self test is complete, and Windows is about to load)]
2) Go to Add/Remove Programs - and remove any software items for the sound or modem [Start/Settings/Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs]
3) Go to Device Manager - and remove all sound devices and modems. [Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Device Manager] To remove a device, simply click on it to select it, then click the "Remove" button.
4) On Reboot, reinstall both drivers from either the Restore disk, or from the zip file you mentioned finding at driversguide. That driversguide might be a pretty good match, since it matches the FCC ID # = can't get much more exact than that. It looks like that downloadable file extracts with a "setup" executable (.exe) - and then you need to find the folder Voyetra and run a hardware setup program called "hwset" -in DOS mode -from there. You can get to Dos Mode by choosing "Reboot to DOS Mode" from your Start/Shutdown menus (from the Start button).

See if that does it. Those are fairly cranky ISA cards if I recall, and take a lot of effort to get just right.
. . . Gary

[Edday]

I tried that and it didn't work. When I tried to run the hwset it said could not find.I have put it away for a while and will get back to it later. May be I can find out more about it later. Thanks for all your help. You have put me in the right direction of things i didn't know before.