Gateway

[peairs01]

I'm trying to help a friend with her pc, she doesn't have
the money to pay gateway to fix it for their ridiculous
diagnostic and labor fees.

It originally started with her not being able to get
cable internet because her USB port was not working or not being recognized. Gateway said there was a software conflict and they wanted to reformat her hard drive and reinstall windows 98. I told her I would check it out for her.

These are a list of the problems:
USB port not being recognized
not in device manager
enabled in BIOS

I tried putting a NIC into both of the spare PCI slots
and when I rebooted after each time, Windows did not detect the new hardware.

I even took her 56K modem out of its slot and tried the card there and Windows did not recognize it.

The PC stays in 16 color will not let you change it to 256 gives a Display error about the adapter being wrong.

she has very little software loaded on this PC, I don't understand what could be the problem.

HELP with either of these would be great.
I'm thinking of reinstalling Windows for her to see if that fixes any thing if I go that route, do I want a clean
or dirty install.

sorry so long, but I know you guys are smart and can help me out.

thanks,
alex

 

[yoyoyo]

First of all cable internet does not plug into the USB, it plugs into a NIC card.

If Windows does not detect the card, try this

Control Panel->Add New Hardware
(when the option comes up, try to auto search first, but if that doesn't work then look at the list yourself)

As for not being able to get above 16 color, I think you have the wrong driver installed for the adapter. Check to see in the device manager if the proper driver is installed.

 

[peairs01]

I know that the cable does not need the USB it can just use the NIC, but my friend works for the cable company and he said he's never had a PC not detect the card on its own.

still need help

but the more I think about the more I'm looking into a reinstall.

 

[ngagne]

YoYoYo:

There are some cable modems that use a USB ports instead of a NIC. Nate Gagne
nathan.gagne@verizon.net

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