This was quite the unusual situation to troubleshoot and this computer is definitely cursed in some ways. The BIOS doesn't have any options for configuring IDE devices and it wouldn't surprise me if it is permanently configured to only work with the HDD and CD-ROM on specific channels. That's definitely the exception and not the rule, if this had been *any* other computer nearly that wouldn't have been a problem. Excellent job persevering through the issues! This is definitely the kind of thing that can drive you nuts when dealing with weird old computers!
there's a slim possibility that the bios could be bit rotted I've ran into some Compaq 90's systems that can have this problem and have some of it's bios setting go missing but not so much that it renders the motherboard useless . it's probably due to cheep bios chips, i wouldn't be too surprised by this from a OEM computer in the mid to late 90's, got to make them cheep.
You needed to do what I call 'juju magic' you install all the IDE devices and then restart to let the computer decide all the settings automatically. You can't have too many devices.
I used to do tech support for Compaq in the late '90s, especially the desktop Presario line. I remember this particular model too. I once had a guy who was told by the previous "tech" to reformat and reinstall Windows for no sound. All he had to do was... wait for it... plug in his speakers. The bad thing is that this sort of shenanigans was so common. Compaq, for some reason, decided to have customer make a long distance phone call for tech support for 2 specific Presario models one year. I fielded quite a few angry customers for those Presario models. Needless to say, that tech support line didn't last long.
Wow. That was quite the journey. I was gonna go to bed soon after I started the video but I was hooked and had to finish the whole thing. Really interesting to see the process y'all went through and get into the technical details. And then that ending 😆 Someone manual writer needs to be fired retroactively for their work a couple decades years ago lol
The Compaq recovery software is worse than how Packard Bell did it! PB also had a silly drive label system where the first few sectors had a fingerprint outlining the type of recovery CD/image that should be installed. But at least PB left a generic option in their later recovery media, that would install a generic Packard Bell Win95 with most drivers, minus custom bundles of software that were machine SKU specific.
Oh noo, that sucked. I was thinking about those IDE cables in the back of my mind when I was watching your video. I also restore vintage computers and I have done that too.
I want you to have more computer problems so you can fix more computers. All of that stuff with editing the DOS commands and seeing the old computer stuff was so interesting.
Hello from a fellow nerd struggling with the same issues. I own an RP5000 from HP, but it's basically a Compaq D530 with HP branding and POS features. The board seems fine in the caps dept, but the PSU is this odd, special shape that looks like a TFX, SFX type shape with ATX connectors. It seems like we now know where HP got their bespoke nonsense from.
My step father's sister gave one to me when I was a teen! I used to watch Dragon Ball and InuYasha on it as well as play a load of DOS and early Windows games on it! Virtual Boy Advance too. Man, the memories! Got it for free. It was my 1st computer but replaced it only a couple of years later for my first very own computer, an Acer One, a mini laptop which I mainly used to play emulators on.
The hardware: IT'S ME AUSTIN. IT WAS ME ALL ALONG AUSTIN. I had a problem related to the MFT, where it got totally corrupted because all I did was to expand a partition. I can only restore the files, but not the MFT itself. But, related to the video, it can be total pain that you find out that the solution to a software problem is doing something with hardware, as a software enthusiast. I think I had an issue like this a few times.
I've done that before on an old IBM laptop. I resized the main partition and just could NOT get it to boot anymore. What eventually fixed the problem for me is pulling the SSD out and using a boot fixing program running on windows 11 to replace the old XP bootloader with VISTA's bootloader. Windows XP happily booted after that
@@Biaanca5036 I made quite a mistake, and my issue relates to the MFT. A bootloader is different from the MFT. You can just run "bootrec /rebuildbcd" from a installation/recovery media if the main installation is Windows Vista+ and call it a day. The MFT is a file that has the information about the partition, and, in my case, it was corrupted. I can barely access it normally.
Andrew, the Video Game Beta Man vs a Windows 98 PC, who will win? It wasn't looking good for a moment, but in the end the Internet Man emerged victorious, with no help from any official documentation though. Seriously, how did that happen?
My grand father has a similar computer that i have been thinking on obtaining for myself, so this will be an interesting watch... and also because its this channel lol Edit: Now that i have completely watched the video... oh my god
Oh, that's why I couldn't get QuickRestore to work on my Presario 5170, I was trying to install to a different disk than the 8" 12GB drive it came with.
Perhaps in layman's terms, but in computer terminology 86Box does not create "virtual machines", it's an emulator. There is a difference. Virtualization is a process wherein a hypervisor creates two (potentially equal) environments (or virtual machines) on one physical machine, where both operating systems can use the hardware natively. Emulation is where one machine uses a software program, generally on top of its operating system, to pretend to be another machine. Sometimes certain parts of a virtual machine will be emulated (for example, usually a virtual machine doesn't just take over your GPU as your host needs it and it can't be operated in two contexts at once, but your virtual machine will connect to an emulated GPU, usually generic and weak). But generally, if the guest has control over one or more cores of your physical CPU, it's considered virtualized rather than emulated.
I had that exact computer. First thing you have to disable all the startup programs that run everything. The motherboard sound card one is the hardest to turn off because it isn't labeled. In order to use a Creative Soundblaster card instead I had to go all over the net to find out which program it was. I found an Eastern European forum where one guy listed the steps to disable it. 'Step 1: Curse Compaq for being so awful.'
This is such a dead on representation of what it's like to troubleshoot with Windows 98 or any 90's PC hardware. You can spend hours, days, weeks tackling some really specific issue only to find out you were using driver version 2.5 when you should've been using 2.4... duh! Bless Shelby for helping you out with this one, I really liked the idea of testing it in the PC emulator then writing the image to a real disk.
I recommend subscribing to www.youtube.com/@TechTangents because they are amazing at this sort of stuff and make interesting videos and streams
This was quite the unusual situation to troubleshoot and this computer is definitely cursed in some ways. The BIOS doesn't have any options for configuring IDE devices and it wouldn't surprise me if it is permanently configured to only work with the HDD and CD-ROM on specific channels. That's definitely the exception and not the rule, if this had been *any* other computer nearly that wouldn't have been a problem.
Excellent job persevering through the issues! This is definitely the kind of thing that can drive you nuts when dealing with weird old computers!
there's a slim possibility that the bios could be bit rotted I've ran into some Compaq 90's systems that can have this problem and have some of it's bios setting go missing but not so much that it renders the motherboard useless .
it's probably due to cheep bios chips, i wouldn't be too surprised by this from a OEM computer in the mid to late 90's, got to make them cheep.
You needed to do what I call 'juju magic' you install all the IDE devices and then restart to let the computer decide all the settings automatically. You can't have too many devices.
Worked on these heaps of junk! They aren't fun to get the factory software working! Cool video mate!
slave and master issues abounded on old pc's, and jumpers to change them! great video! hilarious
I used to do tech support for Compaq in the late '90s, especially the desktop Presario line. I remember this particular model too.
I once had a guy who was told by the previous "tech" to reformat and reinstall Windows for no sound. All he had to do was... wait for it... plug in his speakers. The bad thing is that this sort of shenanigans was so common.
Compaq, for some reason, decided to have customer make a long distance phone call for tech support for 2 specific Presario models one year. I fielded quite a few angry customers for those Presario models. Needless to say, that tech support line didn't last long.
Well you've taught yourself and many others a lesson not to forget
Master and slave are not to be messed with
Wow. That was quite the journey. I was gonna go to bed soon after I started the video but I was hooked and had to finish the whole thing. Really interesting to see the process y'all went through and get into the technical details. And then that ending 😆 Someone manual writer needs to be fired retroactively for their work a couple decades years ago lol
Love how this dude has growth as a content creator, keep the good work dude
AHHH YOUR HAIR IS AWESOME
AAAHH THANK YOU
The Compaq recovery software is worse than how Packard Bell did it! PB also had a silly drive label system where the first few sectors had a fingerprint outlining the type of recovery CD/image that should be installed. But at least PB left a generic option in their later recovery media, that would install a generic Packard Bell Win95 with most drivers, minus custom bundles of software that were machine SKU specific.
Not gonna lie, I was not expecting that ending. Wild shit.
The horrors of Compaq
I would like to find more of their computers at some point though, they're interesting.
Oh noo, that sucked. I was thinking about those IDE cables in the back of my mind when I was watching your video. I also restore vintage computers and I have done that too.
Windows Restoration sounds like the opposite of Joel's Windows Destruction
I want you to have more computer problems so you can fix more computers. All of that stuff with editing the DOS commands and seeing the old computer stuff was so interesting.
That was a wild ride
Hello from a fellow nerd struggling with the same issues. I own an RP5000 from HP, but it's basically a Compaq D530 with HP branding and POS features.
The board seems fine in the caps dept, but the PSU is this odd, special shape that looks like a TFX, SFX type shape with ATX connectors.
It seems like we now know where HP got their bespoke nonsense from.
My step father's sister gave one to me when I was a teen! I used to watch Dragon Ball and InuYasha on it as well as play a load of DOS and early Windows games on it! Virtual Boy Advance too. Man, the memories! Got it for free. It was my 1st computer but replaced it only a couple of years later for my first very own computer, an Acer One, a mini laptop which I mainly used to play emulators on.
The hardware: IT'S ME AUSTIN. IT WAS ME ALL ALONG AUSTIN.
I had a problem related to the MFT, where it got totally corrupted because all I did was to expand a partition. I can only restore the files, but not the MFT itself.
But, related to the video, it can be total pain that you find out that the solution to a software problem is doing something with hardware, as a software enthusiast. I think I had an issue like this a few times.
I've done that before on an old IBM laptop.
I resized the main partition and just could NOT get it to boot anymore.
What eventually fixed the problem for me is pulling the SSD out and using a boot fixing program running on windows 11 to replace the old XP bootloader with VISTA's bootloader.
Windows XP happily booted after that
@@Biaanca5036 I made quite a mistake, and my issue relates to the MFT.
A bootloader is different from the MFT. You can just run "bootrec /rebuildbcd" from a installation/recovery media if the main installation is Windows Vista+ and call it a day. The MFT is a file that has the information about the partition, and, in my case, it was corrupted. I can barely access it normally.
It's the time you spent with your friends that counts.
Quantum Bigfoot!!
Andrew, the Video Game Beta Man vs a Windows 98 PC, who will win?
It wasn't looking good for a moment, but in the end the Internet Man emerged victorious, with no help from any official documentation though. Seriously, how did that happen?
My grand father has a similar computer that i have been thinking on obtaining for myself, so this will be an interesting watch... and also because its this channel lol
Edit: Now that i have completely watched the video... oh my god
holy shit this is so relatable the last part its happened to me so much accidently swapping things
Oh, that's why I couldn't get QuickRestore to work on my Presario 5170, I was trying to install to a different disk than the 8" 12GB drive it came with.
Perhaps in layman's terms, but in computer terminology 86Box does not create "virtual machines", it's an emulator. There is a difference. Virtualization is a process wherein a hypervisor creates two (potentially equal) environments (or virtual machines) on one physical machine, where both operating systems can use the hardware natively. Emulation is where one machine uses a software program, generally on top of its operating system, to pretend to be another machine. Sometimes certain parts of a virtual machine will be emulated (for example, usually a virtual machine doesn't just take over your GPU as your host needs it and it can't be operated in two contexts at once, but your virtual machine will connect to an emulated GPU, usually generic and weak). But generally, if the guest has control over one or more cores of your physical CPU, it's considered virtualized rather than emulated.
I had that exact computer. First thing you have to disable all the startup programs that run everything. The motherboard sound card one is the hardest to turn off because it isn't labeled. In order to use a Creative Soundblaster card instead I had to go all over the net to find out which program it was. I found an Eastern European forum where one guy listed the steps to disable it. 'Step 1: Curse Compaq for being so awful.'
YOO SHELBY AND ANDREW ? IN ONE VIDEO ? THIS IS CRACK FOR MY AUTISTIC SOOUL
Cool, a Andrew64 video!
Nice beard
This is such a dead on representation of what it's like to troubleshoot with Windows 98 or any 90's PC hardware.
You can spend hours, days, weeks tackling some really specific issue only to find out you were using driver version 2.5 when you should've been using 2.4... duh!
Bless Shelby for helping you out with this one, I really liked the idea of testing it in the PC emulator then writing the image to a real disk.
Lol. I have one I haven't touched yet. I remember how bad Compaq was😂
Oh god, a Quantum Bigfoot. I wouldnt even wanted to use it in my 486, so shitty it was. Access times worse than on my old Connor drive.
lol I had this exact computer but it was slot 1 running a celeron 333mhz
Do you have a brother that sings? Goes by the name Livingston? You look like him with glasses.
45th
69th viewer!