Packard Bell 8900/9500 Series

When upgrading to Win 95 on the above machine, system sticks at Setting Up hardware screen or just constantly re-boots. Go into windows in Safe Mode (i.e. press F8 at Starting Windows 95 and choose 3 for safe mode). Go to System Properties and Device Manager. Go to the bottom icon - System Devices, click on the plus to open it up then remove any reference to PnP BIOS and PnP enumerator. (usually about 3 lines) . Then re-boot the machine.

No Sound When Upgrading to Win 95

If you get problems with no sound in DOS after upgrading to Win95, try the following -

Go to DOS and change to the soundcard Directory (ie C:\SOUND16A or C:\Sound144). Then change into the UTILITY directory. Type in VOLSET /D to test the sound, if the settings are all zero then no sound. To set the volumes to the Max, then type VOLSET /X:16 /V:16 /F:16 May be necessary to add this line to the end of the Autoexec.bat to get it working every time.

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On PB machines that have the Grollier CD, there may be an error message along the lines of 'picture not is appropriat format'.

Use file manager to access the NGMEPB.ini file (or there abouts) in the NGMEPB directory. Look out for the lines with BBOX and LOGO on them. These should be set to BBOX=0 and LOGO=0.

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Driver comes on 1 disk. You run the INSTALL program from A:\ (you must be out of Windows) and it installs the drivers for you. PROBLEM - It says you have the wrong chip and exits! I've found a roundabout Fix.

• Create a directory on Hard drive called (e.g.) CIRRUS
• Copy file 2428-143.DAT from A:\ to C:\CIRRUS
• Rename this file to (e.g.) FRED.EXE
• Make sure you are in the C:\CIRRUS directory and run FRED.EXE
• It's a self-extracting ARJ archive, so it will say "Continue Extraction?" Type Y and ENTER.
• It now extracts approx 3Mb of drivers into the CIRRUS directory.
• There are two files now in the CIRRUS directory - OEM5428.INF and OEM542X.INF. Rename OEM542X.INF to OEMSETUP.INF.
• Go into Windows and run Windows Setup.
• Change System Settings
• Select Display and choose "Other Display"
• Change the A:\ to C:\CIRRUS and click OK
• You will now get a list of drivers. You can pick one and load it.

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If you can't create all the disk images on a 3.11 system, some of them have an incorrect setting in the INI file.

Edit the file C:\DISKIMAG\DISKIMAG.INI

There is a list of disk sets, numbered from 1 upwards. Later in the file is a line which reads PROGRAMS=x. This probably doesn't match the number of disk sets. Change it and you should be able to create the extra sets.

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Old Packard Bells (Win 3.11). When you try to reinstall the CD Driver, it says "Program too big to fit in memory"

Reason: The Disk Image is for a 720k disk, not a 1.44. The Diskimage program asks for a HD disk, so the disk produced is corrupt.

Solution : (Only works if Windows is still running!) Go to File Manager, go to Diskimag directory. Double click on DISKIMAG.INI file to edit it. Look for the following line:

[CDDRIVER]
Disk1=C:\DISKIMAG\CDDRIVER\ATACR.IMG,Disk 1/1,-1
Complete1=1

Firstly, the "Complete" line indicates the set has been made. Delete that line. Secondly, change the -1 at the end of the line to -0.

Save the file and rerun Diskimage. Redo the CD Disk, and it will ask for a Double Density disk this time.

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If you get a message"VSGLX16.386 cannot locate 16-bit sound hardware" when starting Windows 3.11, it is NOT a software error. It is caused by (surprise surprise), VSGLX16.386 being positively unable to locate the 16-bit sound hardware.

To prove it, exit Windows, type CD\SOUND16A\UTILITY and Enter. Type DIAGNOSE and press Enter. You should get an immediate message saying Soundcard Not Found. (Normally, this brings up a screen that allows you to play sample sound files - a good way of finding out if the speakers are plugged in properly!).

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This affects games such as Dungeon Keeper, and Speedster, on some Packard Bell machines with some PB 1015 / 14xx monitors. The fault lies with the ability of some tubes to switch refresh rates fast enough between different graphics modes.

The intro will play fine, but the game itself looks like someone switched display area to 1024x768 - you get three blurry screens and a lot of horizontal lines.

To solve this,

• Right-Click My Computer, Click Properties, then Performance, and Graphics
• Move the hardware acceleration to none
• Click OK/Close until prompted to reboot and do so.

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Once you've made the backup disks, then there is no way of creating a second copy of the disk. To get round this then,

• Edit the file C:\DISKIMAG\DISKIMAG.INI
• Look through the list for the disk that you want to recreate. For example the CD driver section looks like this,
  

  [CDDRIVER]
  Disk1=C:\DISKIMAG\CDDRIVER\ATACR.IMG,Disk 1/1,-1
  Complete1=1

• Delete the Complete lines from the section, you may also need to change the -1 at the end of the line to -0.
• Save the changes and the option should be back in Disk Image.

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Passwords

Version 1.0. Edit the file C:\PBFRONT\NAVIGATE.INI. Look for the line SECURITY=1, and change it to =0.

Version 2. Edit the file C:\PBNAV30\PBNEW\NAVIGATE.INI and change SECURITY=1 to =0. Also you need to delete the file C:\PBNAV30\PBNEW\PASSWORD.INI.

Kids Space

Running windows 3.11 and is unable to name 4 out of 5 draws in Kids Space, and anything that is put into the draws is lost. You need to check firstly that the following directories exist,

C:\PBNAV30\KIDSPACE\FLDR1
C:\PBNAV30\KIDSPACE\FLDR2
C:\PBNAV30\KIDSPACE\FLDR3
C:\PBNAV30\KIDSPACE\FLDR4
C:\PBNAV30\KIDSPACE\FLDR5
C:\PBNAV30\KIDSPACE\DESKTOP

and then delete *.INF files from the C:\PBNAV30\KIDSPACE This should then enable you to rename all of the draws in Kids Space

To remove Kidspace Password on the preference drawer, delete the file C:\PBNAV30\KIDSPACE\KIDSPACE.INF

ODBC 16 Bit Database Driver Installation

This setup is required for Navigator to display any text within Navigator screens. To install the ODBC 16 Bit Database Driver:

• In Control Panel select "ODBC"
• Select "ADD..." in Data Sources
• Select "Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)"
• Under the Data Source Name,type the following line - Ark Language Resources
• Under Database, select the "Select " button
• Under Database Name, type C:\NAV30\DB\LANGUAGE.MDB
• Close ODBC setup.

Try this if you are having problems with Navigator, and it complains that the Access Database language isn't installed etc..

Not Running After Reinstalling Windows

After reinstalling Windows, Navigator will no longer run. If you still have the PBNAV30 directory try this:-

From Dos:

XCOPY C:\PBNAV30\MISC\WINDOWS C:\WINDOWS /S

Nav should then run from - C:\PBNAV30\PBNEW\NAVIGATE.EXE

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