Bios Update

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Bios Update

Postby Tina » Sun 2005 May 15 2:53

Hello Spock,

Thank you for the invite, i almost didn't register because i was thinking about throwing in the towel with my pc.

Its a long story, if you would like to hear about the problem let me know.

The problem is with my new HP Printer all in one, i contacted HP Tec Support and found them very helpful, they told me that i need a Bios Update. The shop where my son bought the pc are fobbing me off, long story and didn't want to give the motherboard name, i had to find it myself by doind a search and findind a program called Everest, it gave a full profile of me pc.

The shop said they don't like doing Bios Updates as it could harm the computer!!!!!!!!

I am too scared and not knowledgeable enough to do it.

The motherboard name is Fujitsu Siemans D1183, Bios type Phoenix.

I get a screen freeze each time i start the Printer, it lasts for 3-4-5 mins and then will print ok.
I run Win 98 SE.

Before i make a decision to withdraw from my pc FOR GOOD:) can i have your opinion on all this.

Many thanks,

Tina.
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Postby Spock » Sun 2005 May 15 4:27

A BIOS upgrade is both simple and dangerous... [:D] [:O]

It is dangerous because, if the upgrade is interrupted before full completion, you will need to physically replace the BIOS chip. With newer motherboards, this is non-trivial and would require the old chip be unsoldered from the board and a new one reinstalled. This would most likely destroy the motherboard. Therefore, if the upgrade fails, a motherboard replacement is usually required.

It is simple because all you need do is follow the instruction to about creating a boot floppy containing the BIOS upgrade, leave the floppy in the drive, make sure your computer is set to boot from a floppy first, shut down the computer, and then restart. When restarted, the bootable floppy will boot the computer as far as is needed, update the BIOS, and tell you to remove the floppy. Once finished, you reboot the computer and the new BIOS is in place.

I have done many BIOS upgrades with no problem but I also make sure than the computer to be upgraded is connected to a UPS so there is no chance of a power failure causing an interruption during the write phase of the upgrade.

I don't know if this is the information you were looking for but this is all I know. [;)]

My recommendation is that, if your new printer does not work with your old computer, you either need to:

1. return the new printer and get your money back,

2. upgrade the BIOS on your computer, or

3. get a new computer.

I can understand why the store selling the computer doesn't want to upgrade your BIOS as then they would be responsible for its replacement if they failed. If you don't feel competent doing the upgrade yourself, there should be any number of computer service organizations local to you who would be all to happy to do it for you.

You may also want to go on the Internet and research prices for replacement motherboards similar to yours ... just in case. If it's really old you should be able to find a replacement or even a slightly newer one for less than $200 complete with CPU and BIOS.
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Thank you

Postby Tina » Mon 2005 May 16 1:01

Thank you for your help and opinion [:)]

Not sure what to do now, the store does not want to update Bios and i am not qualified enough to do it, actually i spoke to the tec guy at the store this morning and he said the pc does not need an update, he thinks the printer is at fault.

I also phoned HP tec support guy in England today, he was the person that said i needed an update in the first place, when i first spoke to him last week he asked me to go to Device Manager then to Universal Serial Bus Controller and tell him what was there, he said something was missing, i can't remember what he said or what he was talking about.
He was to phone me this morning at 11:00 but didn't!

This is so frustrating, since my son bought the pc in 2001 he has bought three Printers that never worked properly and now i have this new one on my hands.

By the time i'm sorted out with my problem ( if ever ) i will be able start up a Printer shop [:D]

We have only two computer repair shops in my town so i don't think i will make progress.

Many thanks for the help,

Tina.








I'm going to bring the printer to my son's tonight and install it on his pc to see what happens.

I
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Re: Thank you

Postby Spock » Mon 2005 May 16 1:58

Tina wrote:... I'm going to bring the printer to my son's tonight and install it on his pc to see what happens.

That is an excellent troubleshooting step to take to help determine if the printer has problems. Best of luck. [:)]

Given you are using a computer from 2001, it may only be that you need a printer driver that allows your computer to recognize the printer. If the printer didn't come with a floppy disk or CD of software that should include such a driver, you may be able to find it online and download a driver from the manufacturer.

It would help us to help you if you gave us the full story with all pertinent information rather than just single, intermediate steps. [;)]
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Thank you

Postby Tina » Mon 2005 May 16 4:35

Hi Spock,

I've just come back from my son's house, we installed the printer on his pc, three programs installed and appeared on the Desktop (correct ) but the one called HP Director would not open, the other two programs opened fine. Just to refresh your memory the Printer is an all in one, Printer, Scanner and Copier

We then did a clean uninstall and tried to reinstall the Printer but then got a message on screen saying internal error.

I'm not sure what to make of all this.

I will wait for your reply regarding the above before i explain everything to you because it will make a long post.

Exactly what information do you need?

I'm wondering about this particular printer model, i was very surprised that the price was so reasonable, it cost 90Euro which is cheap for Ireland and was also surprised to see it on sale in an Aldie Store, not sure if you are familiar with Aldie, it is a food store but also has a hardware and electrical dept, they sell items very cheap.

Before i get into anymore details i will wait until i hear from you.

Many thanks.

Tina.
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Postby Tarmithius » Mon 2005 May 16 9:30

How are you connecting the printer to the computer? What are the exact specs for the motherboard in question? You mention that the tech asked you to look at the USB controller but I looked up the board you mention and I could not find where it stated it had a USB port.

For a more detailed look at your specs you can download a program called Sisoftware Sandra, that link is for the free version. It will tell you exactly what you have in the system.

There are known problems with HP Director software, I have it for my digital camera and it crashes on me too. HP's boards are flooded with complaints about that.

You mention you are using Win98SE, have you updated it with all the patches? If not I would recommend buying XP Home, you can get the upgrade kit fairly cheaply.
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Postby Spock » Mon 2005 May 16 10:45

Hmpf! Looks like tarmithius has jumped in in an attempt to help. [:O] [cg]

He has asked some good questions and made some good comments. Why not start by answering his questions and let's see where he is going first. [;)]
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Thank you

Postby Tina » Tue 2005 May 17 6:34

--------[ Motherboard ]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Motherboard Properties:
Motherboard ID <DMI>
Motherboard Name FUJITSU SIEMENS D1183

Front Side Bus Properties:
Bus Type Intel GTL+
Bus Width 64-bit
Real Clock 100 MHz
Effective Clock 100 MHz
Bandwidth 800 MB/s

Chipset Bus Properties:
Bus Type Intel Hub Interface
Bus Width 8-bit

Hi all,

Appreciate the help, i'm not sure if the above is all that you require please let me know.

The printer is connected with a lead to the back of the modem, hope you understand my lingo [roll]

Yes, to the best of my knowledge i have all the security updates, i am notified by Microsoft when there are updates, i went to Win updates yesterday and there are no updates for me there.

I'm not sure if my computer will take XP if you can understand me [:)]

HP Tec support said they would phone me back yesterday morning but did not, i waited in all day. They were trying to help and phoned me a couple of times but i feel now that they can't help and i doubt if they will phone back. I can't afford to keep phoning them as the calls are expensive between Ireland and England, there is no Tec support for HP in Ireland, i phoned six different numbers in Ireland before they gave me the England number.

Hope i have given you enough motherboard specs.

Many thanks to you all.

Tina [:)]
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Postby Tarmithius » Wed 2005 May 18 10:53

Ok, in looking up the specs for you computer motherboard I have determined that you do have a USB port, you should make sure that you have the proper drivers for the ports. If not then you are most likely connecting the printer using the serial port.

If you go to the start menu and click on the control panel, that should open a new window. Look until you find an icon named 'System'. Double click that icon. On Win98 I cannot remember if the tab is called system devices, but I think it is. If you click on that tab you should get a page full of the hardware installed and such. Do you see an yellow '!'? If you do that means you have a problem with that device.

If there are problems write down the name of the device in reference and post it here.
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Postby Spock » Thu 2005 May 19 12:17

Tarmithius is talking about the Device Manager. An easier way to access it is to:
1. right-click on the My Computer icon that should be on your desktop,

2. Select Properties,

3. One of the tabs across the top of the System Properties window will be Device Manager. Click on that and you will see the list of hardware installed on your computer. [:)]
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Thank you both

Postby Tina » Thu 2005 May 19 5:59

Thank you both for the help.

This is very strange regarding Device Manager! i should have mentioned it before but didn't understand what it meant.

Before i brought the pc to the repair shop i did some looking in Device Manager ( not that i knew what i was looking for):) there was a YELLOW!,
I clicked on it and i think it said unknown, i'm not sure, i should have written it down. The repair man said everything was working perfect when he checked it but he did something with chipset and didn't charge me which i thought strange.

I think this is very strange, maybe you will understand it better than me.
When i brought pc home i checked everything, i went to Device Manager just to see if anything had changed, the YELLOW! was gone.

The Printer is still causing screen freeze for 1-2 minutes BUT the Scanner is working perfectly, i sent a photo by email to a friend and she recieved it ok.

I'm not very educated about these things, i hope i have explained so that you will understand me. If you need more info just shout:)

Really appreciate your help, thank you both.

Tina:)
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Forgot to mention

Postby Tina » Thu 2005 May 19 6:15

I went to HP Website, it checked to see if i needed an update, they said i didn't.

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Postby Spock » Thu 2005 May 19 12:53

The yellow exclamation point simply means that there is some problem with the hardware indicated, usually driver related but not always.
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Thank you

Postby Tina » Thu 2005 May 19 2:13

The screen freeze does not annoy me, i'm just worried in case the printer is not right and could cause conflicts.

Seeing that the Scanner is working ok maybe the Printer problem is minor? [roll]

Tina [:)]
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Postby Spock » Thu 2005 May 19 2:49

How long does the screen freeze for? Perhaps it is simply loading something ...

During the print process your computer will freeze until all printing is complete. When printing, the text is usually sent from you word processor to a print spooler on your hard disk and then to the printer. Once the document has been completely sent to the print spooler, the computer thinks the print process is finished, so it is available for other processes and the printer continues to draw the document from the spooler.

If, however, you are printing directly to the printer, you will not be able to use your computer at all until the entire document has finished being sent to the printers buffer. If the document is large and the print buffer small, you will have to wait for some of the document to print so the rest of the document will fit into the buffer.

This sounds slightly confusing, even to me and I wrote it! [:O]

Think of your document as a 55 gallon drum full of water. If your print buffer is a 1 gallon bucket, you will have to wait to regain use of your computer until the printer can empty the 55 gallon drum 1 gallon at a time. During this process nothing else will work, including the mouse and the display.
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Postby Tarmithius » Thu 2005 May 19 3:04

I just realized what the problem may be. As simple as this sounds it might be because the computer is old. The CPU itself is slow and you are most likely using USB 1.1, also couple those facts with you are using Win98SE. I have seen where it takes a computer a few seconds to a minute to process the data, send that data down the USB line, which the older USB 1.1 spec. Plus Win98 was not very good at doing something else while sending print data.

When you scan a photo it takes time right? How long does the scanning take? When you scan do you have the HP software open?

Edit: I did not see Spock's post above, but I agree with him also.
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Thank you both

Postby Tina » Thu 2005 May 19 5:53

Thank you both again for the help.

For Spock,

Everything is fine until i press the printer to start, it's then that i get screen freeze, sometimes it lasts for one minute sometimes less sometimes between one and two minutes, it varies, then it starts to print and all is fine.

For Thar,

Comp bought 2001, i started with Win 98 and always had problems with printers, they would print for a short while and then stop!

I upgraded to Win ME in 2003 and had loads of problems, had to have a reformat and a few months after reformatting i had to have a new c drive,
i went back to Win 98 because i heard it was the safest.

The Scanner is working fine, it doesn't take long to scan ( ill go and check and tell you ) Hp software is open, the printer is all in one, printer scanner copier.

I'll get back to you about the Scanner.

Tina;)
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Thank you

Postby Tina » Thu 2005 May 19 6:23

When i pressed Printer start button and then pressed scan button the pc screen froze for about 30 seconds then it started to scan photo, it scanned instantly, no problems at all.

Maybe it is something simple, maybe it takes the printer time to communicate with pc [roll] [:D]

I know it won't be too long before Win 98 will be history, i suppose i should be thinking about XP but it means dumping this pc and three printers [:(]

I very much appreciate your help with the problem, as i've said it could be a simple thing its just i'm complicated [:D]

What do you think now?

Tina [:)]
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Postby Spock » Thu 2005 May 19 9:24

I'm running WinXP and there is a delay from the time I click the print button until the printer actually starts. If it is actally 120 seconds, that seems a bit long but may just be due to the age and condition of your components.

If the computer were mine, I would have disassembled it, cleaned all the contacts and connectors, ensured all socketed chips were well seated, and vacuumed out all the dust before reassembling it. A very light layer of corrosion on card edge connectors can sometimes cause enough of a signal loss to cause intermittent problems.

If you have "always" had printer problems, could it possibly be the printer interface card? Unless you are using a connector built into the motherboard, you should be able to buy and replace the interface card cheaply. Maybe around $5 to $10 at a second hand computer shop. Just make sure they guarantee it to work.
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Thank you

Postby Tina » Fri 2005 May 20 8:59

Thank you Spock,

I appreciate all you are doing to help me solve the problem.

I will put up with the problem for now and maybe down the road i will get a better pc.

I don't do a lot of printing anyway and im glad it's not a serious problem that i have:)

Tina:)
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