I have a problem with installing Encarta. I bought MS Encarta last year and installed it with no problems. I used it many times after installation. Recently my computer “went” down” and I lost everything. I had to have the motherboard replaced. Since then I have tried to reinstall Encarta and have been unable to do so. When I try to install Encarta and put the CD in the D: drive, the following happens. I get the Setup window, then after pressing “next” and accepting the license agreement, the following message appears “An I/O error occurred while installing a file. This is normally caused by bad installation media or a corrupt installation file”. I can go no further. What is the problem? The Encarta CDs are the original CDs that I bought. Is it something with Encarta? Or a fault somewhere else in the system? It has been suggested that I should re-install Windows 95 but I am frightened that I may lose all the data that I have on my computer as I did when I had to have the motherboard replaced. (more…)

I seem to be running out of memory too easily. I have a multimedia Pentium 133 with 32 meg RAM and Windows95. The specific example is when I have had to reboot or shut down the computer without using the Windows95 sequence. When restarting the computer wants to run Scandisk but runs out of memory half way through this procedure. After starting the system I can run Scandisk manually without any problem. Why won’t it work during the boot-up? (more…)

Recently I upgraded my 486DX4/100 PC with a secondhand Pentium 166 CPU and a TX motherboard with a 586 BIOS chip. The only other change to the system was the change to a Legend PCI video card with a TV tuner in it. Strange things have been happening since the upgrade.

After installation of the motherboard, just about every device had a conflict. These were fixed but other problems with hardware such as floppy drives, the CDROM, etc were loaded twice. Under advice, because of so many problems, which once solved seemed to produce different ones, I reformatted my hard disk and re-installed Win95 and other software.

The problems I now get are: Every time new software is installed and the system reboots, it hangs. The joystick on my AWE64 sound card no longer works - the Control Panel Settings indicates it is not connected but is working properly without any hardware conflicts. (The on-board joystick connector has been disabled.) Some DOS-based software which previously worked, no longer does. The CDROM drive regularly disappears and only returns after a reboot. And my computer has 32mb of RAM but in Windows it only registers it as 16mb (there are two 16mb chips but they are different brands).

I think the cause is probably related to a message I get just after the PC does the memory check- before anything is loaded - “UPDATING ESCD - Fail”.

I have spoken to at least 10 technicians around town and at work re this message without any satisfactory answer. One told me it was a CDROM-related message which it isn’t; some said it sounded familar but didn’t know what it meant; and one said he thought it was to do with the BIOS but couldn’t elaborate.

Even though the motherboard is to be replaced, I would like to understand what is happening and what the cause(s) are. Probably the closest to a reasonable answer I’ve received is that the BIOS is stuffed and needs replacing (although one technician told me it is probably close to impossible to dig up the BIOS which is compatible with the
motherboard).

I would like to understand what is happening - can you enlighten me? (more…)

Ever since I bought my computer I’ve had the problem that the monitor does not come on automatically. When I turn on the computer I have to wait and see if the monitor comes alive. If not, I turn it on and off a few times with its own switch, but that doesn’t work consistently. At worst, I turn the computer off. Because the screen is not on I cant log off, so when I start it again Windows has to go through and check itself - but the monitor always comes on. I asked the place I bought it off but they werent much help. They said it might be something to do with the monitor flipping into standby mode. (more…)

I am running my PC with Windows 95 and Internet Explorer 4.01. The problem I have is that the ‘Dial-up connection’ window keeps popping up every time I leave my PC idle for more than a couple of minutes. How do I stop this window coming up automatically all the time? (more…)