Need a $100 solution on a build

[Bill in SD, CA]

My sister's PII 450 died. "No OS found."

She had a lot of pics on the HDD and I told her not to let anyone do anything to the system without checking with me first.

(wants to take it to Gateway)

Told her before Christmas to get an internal CD-RW to back up her files but ...... nooooo ..... they go out and buy an external drive only to find out it needs a PIII or faster CPU to work.

Being 400 miles away I can't just pop over and check it out for her.

I have a PIII 833, fan, HDD, MB, RAM, NIC, & video card laying around gathering dust.

All I need is a case, floppy and CD-RW to finish a build for her.

Can I pull this off for around $100?

I'm hoping I can ship it to her and talk her through slaving her old drive and maybe recover her files.

Bill

[John Prophet]

yeah, you can do it. Especially with a rebate deal on the cdrw.

No OS found huh.....hmm, wonder if her hard drive died? or if they somehow messed up the boot order?

frankly, it might be easier ot just pony up the money for her to ship her tower to you and you fix it and ship it back....also making a recovery cd for her using ghost...so if she messes it up she will have a quick fix back to page one.

[Bill in SD, CA]

Originally posted by John Prophet
No OS found huh.....hmm, wonder if her hard drive died? or if they somehow messed up the boot order?

I had the same thing happen the other day on my PII 450 dual-boot and found out my HDD was not spinning up.

Tapped on the side of the drive a couple of times and got it going.

Bill

[Omardeth]

thats a good idea jp . only down side is she might not want to wait .

bill u got a pm .

[John Prophet]

Well its not an ideal situation and I was just thinking along the lines of the bottom line of getting something to work for sure....id rather pay the freight than flip out for 2 weeks trying to do stuff over the phone and then just ending up with her taking it to a local place and paying thru the nose anyway.

[Bill in SD, CA]

Hmmmm ........

What about just shipping the HDD?

Packed right in an ES bag.

Bill

[Omardeth]

this might sound dumb but have you looked into air fair ? i think you might get it cheap . i just flew coast to coast for 200$ with 2 days notice . if you can take parts ya got with ya and just change out what ya need it will work out the same . plus seeing family is a good thing .

plus if she has kids that are young you can be the cool uncle and bring noise toys

[DallasDon]

Did you have her try to reseat the IDE cable and power plug? They might have worked loose, or dirty.

Otherwise I like the idea of her shipping you the hard drive.

You can see if it will work as a slave before starting a new build.

[rcrusious]

Give her the P3, she's your sis

case 45+18=$63
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...129-121&depa=0

floppy 5.59+4= $9.59
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...=BROWSE&depa=0

CD-RW $34
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...=BROWSE&depa=0

total 106.59

I almost had it