Topic: Old PC problems!

[notaclue]

A freinds mother has asked me to 'sort out' her PC & now Im stuck!
God knows the exact spec of the machine but it's old, for example its running Win 95! I'd estimate circa 1996 so proberbly an old pentuim?
She got given the PC for free about 5 years ago & ever since she has been using the internet for free, never ever been billed for it! But recently the connection has been playing up & cuts off line in any random time frame, usually between 3 mins & 30 mins.
When you go to dial up it gives you a choice of about 5 or 6 service providers but only one of them can actually connect. Sometimes to connect via this provider you have to first choose one of the other providers(that makes a dial up tone), dial up with them untill the point comes where it says password denied then go back to the other provider(that DOESN'T make a dial up tone) & it will actualy connect!! This seems crazy stuff to me, she is not trying to do anything illegal deliberatly its just she litteraly has no PC knowlage at all.
Since she only wants to use it for an odd email here & there (read twice a month) she does not need or want the cost of broadband so I suggested we get her signed up all nice & legal to a Wanadoo Pay as you go 1p a miniute service. I did this but it will not dial up. The computer is dead slow, nearly had me painting the walls to watch them dry! The problem is Im not overy clued up on computers (hence my name, lol) but I want to help her out. The other problem is I suggested either buying a new PC altogether or I could build her one up fairly cheaply for want she wants but she doesn't have the money to spend on it.

Help please folks!  

[Sandra]

Try unticking the wait for dial tone box in the connection settings.
If she uses BT and has the 1571 answerphone on, it will have a broken dial tone which will stop it dialling out  

[notaclue]

Ok cheers, I see what happens.

How can I completely wipe the pc clean for a fresh start?

[Sandra]

There are two ways to do it, the best way is to get a program to zero fill the drive, I use Seagate DiscWizard Starter Edition available from here :

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html

Its free and will completely erase all the data on the drive by writing a zero to each part of the drive.

The other way is to get a 98 bootdisk from :

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Unless you already have one.
This is probably good enough for what you need, and with this you set the bios to boot from the floppy first, stick the floppy in and start the computer.
It will ask if you want to start the pc with or without cd rom support.
At this stage select without cd rom support.
When it has finished doing its stuff you will see the A prompt.
A:\>
Type format c: and press enter, it will say warning this will delete all data on the partition do you wish to continue, say yes and it will wipe the partition on that drive.
I assume if its an old pc running 95 it will only have the one partition.
If it does have more than one partition you will need to type fdisk at the A:\> and delete the partitions first, then format as above