I screwed up....

[montage]

...now what do I do?

Sometime ago, I gave my folks my old machine: a no-name Pentium 66 with 32MB. The soundcard was an ancient soundblaster that must've blown up from electrostatic discharge, because by the time I set it up, the card was non-functional.

So...I got them a cheap CompUSA type card to put in, which I did without noting the settings of the previous card. As a result, once I installed the drivers and stuff, it now never fully loads Win95 and gets stuck with a perpetual hourglass.

Is my best course of action to:

1. pull out the new card
2. put in the old card
3. hopefully it boots up fully
4. note settings
5. reinstall new card

OR

am I totally screwed?

Any thoughts and comments appreciated, thanks.

 

[drstawl]

That's pretty close to what I'd try but I'd try a boot after you yank the new card and before trying anything else just to see if it's not some other problem that happened coincidentally to the sound card changeout. Then note what IRQs are in use by other stuff in the PC and when you try a soundcard again, avoid the ones that are in use.

 

[Emeric]

Try taking the new card out. Rebooting in Safe mode - hit F8 just before you see "starting win9X..." Select option 3 safe mode. Go to device manager (right click 'my computer', select properties) Remove the old card if listed in there. Shut down, install new card. Reboot. If that doesn't work try pulling everything but your video card and see whether it will boot with the new sound card in a barebone config.