Another interesting problem.

PC running windows ME, has lots of RAM, but has some ‘small problems’:

• Any highlighted text is white text on a white background (ie invisible)… easily fixed via display settings.
• Some help files won’t work, due to a missing learn32.dll (I take the PC to the office at this point, as the client has no internet connection)… I download the dll, but it still doesn’t feel right…
• cannot right click on the taskbar (and start button)… no menu pops up… very frustrating

I search the internet looking for a solution to the right-click problem. I get lots of references to NoTrayContextMenu in the registry… but changing it makes no difference…

I even find poledit for winME, but I still cannot turn off the notraycontextmenu…

I eventually decide on a refresh install on winME…

I try to boot my winME CD… cannot boot from CD… strange.

OK, I’ll try to boot from a floppy… floppy drive is on its last legs and cannot manage a dos boot.

Alright then, back to the CD: look into the bios, and only the HDD is detected… nothing I do allows me to tell the bios there is a CD drive there (yet windows sees it just fine).

I boot to safe mode, and windows cannot see the CDROM drive… curious!

I try to do a refresh install from windows, but it fails the chkdsk.

I manually run the chkdsk (it sometimes completes, sometimes not…)… but windows setup still fails while doing its own chkdsk at install time…

Back to the CD drive: I decide to open up this beast (one of the trickier cases to open and access CD drives). I see the ‘secondary master’ ribbon cable plug goes into the CDROM, but the CDROM jumper is set to ‘slave’.

So I change the CDROM jumper to cable select, then reassemble the whole thing… Yippee! the bios now detects the drive and I can finally boot from the CD. phew!!!

But after booting from the winme cd, It still won’t let me do a repair install (due to it failing the checkdisk)…

I’m sick of this (and wasted many hours), so I drop it and look at the next problem.

The main problem I’d like to fix is: within the help system, there are some webtv tutorials (sbsi – step by step interactive), but they give an error about a missing learn32.dll. after downloading this dll (and reinstalling the help and sbsi system, I still just get a ‘play,stop, skip forward, skip back’ button bar, but the play button doesn’t work.

I have some time (as I cannot contact the customer), so I install winme onto a virtualPC partition on my main system, and I look at the webtv tutorial (which is what the customer wants fixed). It works, and right-clicking on the tutorial animation shows that it is a flash animation. Ah Ha!

I uninstall and reinstall the flash system, and the help system finally works.

I cannot fix the chkdsk / defrag / right-click on the taskbar, problems but I wasn’t asked to fix it, so I leave it, telling the customer that something is still not right, but a full reinstall of me (or xp) will fix the problem.

I must do something about these difficult 95-based systems…

When I get the PC back to the customer, I find he has purchased a TV tuner card (he asked me to look into it & I advised him against it, as it only supports win xp.

He ask me to try anyway, so I install the software (it fails at a few points, but I persist) and I eventually get a TV ‘control panel’. So far, so good… I try to scan for some TV channels. I can see some TV snow or ‘noise’, but it doesn’t find any channels. I try some antenna combinations, but no luck.

Since I haven’t restarted the PC since I installed the TV card, I reckon a restart might fix things… but the PC refuses to boot (a severe error during the early stage on windows startup.

I eventually have to remove the card in order to get the PC to start. I then remove the drivers for the TV card & so: ‘nope, there is no way it will work’.

Hopefully the customer will be able to get a refund on his purchase.