Cannot Install Service Packs

[cherber]

Good morning everyone.
I am having a problem with one of my machines about installing service packs for W2K. I have a fresh intall of W2K on a brand new hard drive. No service packs installed. When I try to install certain software (i.e. adobe acrobat 6) it says I need service pack 3 or above. When I install the service pack (any service pack), my machine will not boot back up...it gives me the blue screen of death. I then have to boot into safe mode and uninstall the service pack and I am back up and running. This has happened to two different hard drives. All other components are the same. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance for any comments....
Good day!
Cheri

[Alfons]

Good morning everyone.
I am having a problem with one of my machines about installing service packs for W2K. I have a fresh intall of W2K on a brand new hard drive. No service packs installed. When I try to install certain software (i.e. adobe acrobat 6) it says I need service pack 3 or above. When I install the service pack (any service pack), my machine will not boot back up...it gives me the blue screen of death. I then have to boot into safe mode and uninstall the service pack and I am back up and running. This has happened to two different hard drives. All other components are the same. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance for any comments....
Good day!
Cheri
Just off-hand, I'd say that you have a hardware compatibility problem. I've seen this happen with W2K on a number of different "older" style Motherboards. I suspect that it's a driver/device compatibility problem in one of the W2K SP updates but I haven't checked it out further than that - each of these boards worked with W98 or XP. Also, I haven't tried any BIOS updates, so I can't tell you if that would be a good avenue for you to pursue, but changing the MB to something more "modern" should work.

[cherber]

Do you know if it is hard to update a bios? the matsonic page says to download the exe file and decompress it on a floppy then boot to the floppy. Is that all there is to it?

[Murf]

Updating a BIOS can be really easy or it can be disastrous and make the motherboard inoperatable.

1st you need to determine if in fact you ned to update the BIOS.

Since it appears you know the brand and model number of the motherboard, go there and find the latest BIOS they have. Read the remarks about it and see if it addresses W2K or any issues that you have.

Your BIOS date will show up on the initial boot screen, generally at the bottom of the screen, check it's date against the lates date of the BIOS up grade the motherboard site has.

The file you download generally will be a *.EXE or a *.ZIP file you then uncompress these to a floppy.

For an example lets say you are going to flash a bios, you will need two files to do this.

1. A Flash Utility
2. The BIOS file itself

Using matsonic for the example. You download the following two files from their web page: EXAMPLE ONLY

1. Award Flash Utiltiy 814c
2. BIOS file itself 070102.zip

You know extract the BIOS File itself to a clean floppy and also put the Flash Utility on the same floppy.

Now you have to do this in DOS, so you reboot the computer I recommend using a Windows 98 bootdisk, select NO CDROM support, this will get you to the A:/> prompt.

Now take the boot disk out insert the floppy you just made with the bios files, then at the A:\> prompt type the following using the example above:

awdf2m 070102.bin

Then follow the prompts and HIGHLY recommend saving the existing BIOS when asked.

[cherber]

Updating a BIOS can be really easy or it can be disastrous and make the motherboard inoperatable.

1st you need to determine if in fact you ned to update the BIOS.

Since it appears you know the brand and model number of the motherboard, go there and find the latest BIOS they have. Read the remarks about it and see if it addresses W2K or any issues that you have.

Your BIOS date will show up on the initial boot screen, generally at the bottom of the screen, check it's date against the lates date of the BIOS up grade the motherboard site has.

The file you download generally will be a *.EXE or a *.ZIP file you then uncompress these to a floppy.

For an example lets say you are going to flash a bios, you will need two files to do this.

1. A Flash Utility
2. The BIOS file itself

Using matsonic for the example. You download the following two files from their web page: EXAMPLE ONLY

1. Award Flash Utiltiy 814c
2. BIOS file itself 070102.zip

You know extract the BIOS File itself to a clean floppy and also put the Flash Utility on the same floppy.

Now you have to do this in DOS, so you reboot the computer I recommend using a Windows 98 bootdisk, select NO CDROM support, this will get you to the A:/> prompt.

Now take the boot disk out insert the floppy you just made with the bios files, then at the A:\> prompt type the following using the example above:

awdf2m 070102.bin

Then follow the prompts and HIGHLY recommend saving the existing BIOS when asked.


Thanks very much for your help! I will follow your advise. :thumb: