Packard Bell Pulsar 16-35 - Hardware

When the screen saver comes on, the floppy disk drive is accessed. This is caused by the Mcafee Virus Scanner software, which can be set to run a virus scan when the screen saver comes on. To disable this, go into the Control Panel and then Display Properties. In the Screen scan section, there is an option to disable the feature.

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If the machine is having problems going into sleep mode, or the sleep mode button doesn't work when it is pressed, in Windows, go into the Control Panel, then Power, click on ADVANCED, then TROUBLESHOOTING, enable APM 1.0 and restart computer when prompted. Then restart the computer and go into the BIOS and make sure Power Management is Enabled.

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Some of the Pulsar machines come with Radio cards installed. If the machine has had the Master CD run on it, then despite Audiostation saying the Radio is present, the software for it will not be loaded. You need to run the separate Radio software disk (normally one 3.5" floppy disk), which should be supplied with the machine.

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To remove the case on the Pulsar Tower Units,

• Lay unit on it's side.
• Locate 2 screws protruding out from the bottom of the case and unscrew them.
• Carefully stand unit upright and lift case upwards.

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If you get the green on-screen volume display appearing whilst playing games, this is due to the game changing the volume level during play. The only fix for this is to disable the volume display permanently, which can be done by renaming or deleting the file OSD.EXE, which is in the c:\Program Files\Media Select\Onscreen folder.

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Multimedia Keyboard

If the media select keys stop working, then the software to reinstall it can be found in the C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS folder. Find the file MMKBDUK.INF, right-click on it and select the Install option. When it has finished, shutdown and restart the computer, and all should be fine.

Flashing Lights

If you get a problem whereby the keyboard fails to respond, and all the lights start flashing, then try the following. Go into the BIOS (F2 when you switch the machine on), and press F9 (Load Setup Defaults). Then go into Peripheral Configuration and set the Serial A port Back to COM 1. Then save the changes and restart the computer.

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The correct way to remove these modems is to double click on either the AT6800 or US Robotics icon in the Control Panel, and then click on the Uninstall button. If you then restart, it'll happily autodetect and reinstall the modem for you.

If you don't remove the modem this way, then (normally) it won't reinstall properly, either telling you there are missing files, or the installation will loop. To get round this,

• Firstly check in Control Panel to see if there is a US Robotics icon in there. If so double click on it, and choose uninstall.
• Go into Device Manager, remove anything listed under Modems, and Other Devices. Also check in the Ports (COM & LPT) section and remove any US Robotics ports.
• Then go into Start / Find / Files or Folders.
• Do a search on *.inf (note you may need to go into My Computer, View, Options, View, and make sure show all files is selected, as these are hidden files).
• Delete the following files,
  • PBWWAVE.INF in the folder C:\WINDOWS\INF
  • PBWMDM.INF in the folder C:\WINDOWS\INF
  • PBWMODEM.INF in the folder C:\WINDOWS\INF
  • PBWPORT.INF in the folder C:\WINDOWS\INF
  • PBWWAVE.INF in the folder C:\WINDOWS\INF\OTHER
  • PBWMDM.INF in the folder C:\WINDOWS\INF\OTHER
  • PBWMODEM.INF in the folder C:\WINDOWS\INF\OTHER
  • PBWPORT.INF in the folder C:\WINDOWS\INF\OTHER
• Run the program REGEDIT, and delete the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/enum/ISAPNP/USR*
• Restart the computer, and when Windows 95 asks for a path for the modem drivers, point it to C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS

With the AT6800 modem, if you have the modem plugged into the telephone line and reboot the machine, when it gets into Windows it automatically grabs hold of the line, cutting off any other call on the same line.

To troubleshoot these modems, first start Hyper Terminal. If there is no visible prompt, type ATE1, then press (Enter).

Then you can use the following commands -

• ATI1
  • ROM Checksum test. The result of this test should be a code followed by OK.
• ATI2
  • RAM Checksum test. The result of this test should be OK.
• AT&MS18=10&t8
  • Analogue Loopback With Self Test. This test is used to verify the integrity of the local modem transmit and receive circuits. During this test an internally generated test pattern is transmitted from the modem, looped back into the receiver circuit and compared with the original pattern for any errors. The result of this test is a 3 digit number ranging from 000 - 255. 000 indicates that the modem is working OK, any other number denotes that the modem is faulty. It is advisable to reset the modem before running this test, so type in ATZ4 and press (enter) before running it.

Note : These tests will only work if the modem is properly installed in Windows. If these tests cannot be performed because the modem cannot be accessed in Windows, uninstall the modem and then reinstall it.

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• In Windows 95. Click on Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Device Manager.
• Go to "System Devices".
• Select "Plug and Play".
• Select "Settings Tab".
• Tick box "Disable NVRAM/ESCD updates".
• Click "OK".
• Shut down machine and reboot into BIOS.
• Go to "Advanced" menu.
• Reset Config Data.
• Save settings and exit (F10).

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When your computer runs into Windows, you get the following message "Wave Rider is enabled on this computer, but software libraries are not loaded". The solution, go into Control Panel / System / Device Manager, and remove everything in the Sound, Video & Games Controllers section. Shutdown and restart the computer, and it should redetect the sound card, and the message should be gone.

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Strange as it may sound, try reinstalling DirectX, this normally cures the problem.

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When you switch the monitor on, all you get is a completely blue screen. The solution is to switch everything off, then unplug the power cable from the back of the monitor. You then need to plug it back in, making sure to get a firm connection.

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According to Packard Bell, with the Pulsar 20, 23, and 24 models, unless a UDMA hard disk drive is fitted into the computer, it will run slow and start to lose data.

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If when you switch the computer on, the screen is blank, try unplugging the keyboard and restarting the computer. A lot of the time it is a faulty keyboard rather than a faulty graphics card that causes this problem.

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When the Pulsar 30 was booted up, it gave POST errors, these were 1 long and 3 short beeps or 1 long and 2 short beeps.

Moved jumper J8B2 to pins 2-3 and re-booted, this boots into CMOS screen. Exited out of CMOS powered down and replaced jumper back to original possition (a screen tells you to do this).

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If you get a Pulsar machine that will happily load off a warm reboot, but will consistantly show no operating system found off a cold boot, then go into the BIOS and check that "Hard Disk Predelay" is enabled (Shold be on the first BIOS screen).

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Anyone who is experiencing problems fitting a WIN TV Card to a Pulsar machine and is getting an error message saying GetHdl ERROR, try this -

• Go into Device Manager, and bring up the properties for the WinTV Card.
• Click on Resources.
• Remove the tick from automatic settings.
• Highlight Memory Range
• Click on "Change Setting" and change the memory range to FEE00000 - FEE00FFF.

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Camera Causes System to Lock

When trying to make RVP call, using the camera supplied with some Pulsar systems, the system freezes while trying to connect video and needs hard reboot. The solution is to disable our old friend the Software WaveTable -

• Click on the Start button.
• Select Settings and then Control Panel.
• Double-click on the System icon.
• Click on the Device Manager tab.
• Double-click on the Sound, Video, and Game Controllers.
• Double-click on Sound 16 SRS PnP & Wave Table (or click once to select and then click the Properties button).
• Click on the Settings tab.
• Click on the checked box for Software Wave Table (SWT) Enabled. This should uncheck the box and disable SWT.
• Click on Apply, then OK.
• Click on Yes to reboot

Also make sure that you've installed the supplimentary disk supplied with the Create and Share pack.

MSCVRT40.DLL

You might come across MSCVRT40.DLL ERRORS with intel camera pack. According to Intel this is because of wrong version of MSCVRT40.DLL. This might have gone unnoticed with windows 95 but it looks like Win98 it bit fussy about the correct version, causing the camera to cease working. As usual a patch has been produced, which can be downloaded from Intel's website.

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The speakers emit a loud wailing noise when the machine first enters Windows. This is caused by the speakers feeding back through the built-in Microphone in the Monitor. To solve this,

• Turn the speakers down with the control wheel on the bottom left corner of the monitor.
• Mute the microphone by clicking on the speaker icon in the systray and putting a tick in the mute of the microphone fader.

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The HP Laserjet II printer software is installed on the Packard Bell Pulsar machines by default in the factory (and may be reinstalled by the Master CD). This is because some of the bundled software (I forget which) requires printer software installed before it will work.

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