Video Drivers

Our first setback came after we installed Win98. None of our computers was able to display 600×800 and none offered more than 16 colors. We browsed those countless driver CDs, all to no avail. Unable to find the proper display driver, we used the Ultimate Boot CD tools to determine what display controllers our computers were using. Armed with this helpful information, we went online and downloaded the proper drivers to a USB flash drive. But wait! Our computers lacked the driver for the flash drive! We burned the flash drive driver to a CD, installed it, and then installed the display driver from the flash drive. Sure, we could have burned the display drivers to a CD, but we knew that we would be doing a good deal of transferring drivers and other data, so making the flash drive compatible with our computers was a helpful tactic.

We incurred the same problems for many of the computers already at Lessie Bates. However, we were successful in downloading proper drivers for most. After several (and I mean several) attempts at downloading proper driver software for one of the already-existing computers at Lessie Bates, it was decided to remove a video driver from an old nonworking computer and place it in the working computer. After a successful installation we rebooted the computer and, as everyone heard from our screams, it didn’t work. Several attempts to change settings, size, colors was unsuccessful. Knowing that most of the use would be on the internet a good resolution was vital. We decided, in the end, to swap out computers and make one side of the room less crowded.

CD-ROM Drives

Thankfully, only a few of the computers had issues with the CD-ROM drive. Realizing that the Win98 CD was not being read we checked for connection problems with the cables. If everything was copasetic with the connections, we knew that drive had to be replaced. Finding a working CD-ROM drive in the cabinet was another thing. We were able to have working drives on all of the computers we brought down to Lessie Bates Center. Thankfully, we had the foresight to bring an additional drive to East St. Louis as one of Lessie’s already-existing computers had a malfunctioning CD-ROM drive. All worked like clockwork after that.

Hard Drives

Ah, the hard drive. What noises or smells did we not encounter? Malfunctioning hard drives prevented us from properly installing Win98 on a few computers. Running tests to determine the size of the HD, we realized that they were too small. Replacing those with larger HDs was easy. The HDs that made the loud clunky noise, well now that was something special. One of these returned to normal after a little TLC (or luck) but the other, we decided, needed to be replaced. Taking the computer apart to reach the HD was fun as there were many physical barriers that needed to be removed (and put back together properly). But sketching out a little diagram helped.

NICs – The Bane of our Existence

All but one of our NICs worked just fine, but this one was a real doozey. The computer recognized the NIC, we installed working drivers, enabled the device in Device Manager, and then restarted the computer for these changes to take effect. After that, our Device Manager showed a yellow exclamation point with an error note saying Windows was missing the file necessary to load the drivers – the elusive odiload.vxd file. In desperate attempts to solve the problem, we did the following after much troubleshooting and much Internet research:

~ tried several different NICs in different PCI slots
~ tried countless different drivers
~ removed the NIC from the Device Manager
~ reinstalled Windows altogether
~ extracted the odiload.vxd file from the Windows CD
~ completely reformatted and started from scratch

Nothing worked. We tossed and turned at night, wracking ourselves with guilt for having failed to solve this problem. Finally, we ditched the hard drive we were using. We installed a new hard drive and yet another NIC, formatted and started from scratch, and voila! It worked! The Internet finally became our playground.