PCA Forums

Whats up with this?

A neigbor of ours decided to get cable but didn't want to pay the "premium hookup, so the guy pretty much just hooked things up and left. He said just follow instructions on the cd. No go for her.

I some how got involved in this and went over there to check it out. (I don't even know these people)

What they have is about a two year old HP running 98 and a RCA 235 USB cable modem. Its hooked up straight to the pc's USB. At first I thought we were going to need a nic OR a an external USB nic. It has connectors on it. I call the cable CO and find out the modem has a biult in nic and should work the way its hooked up. OK.

I load the CD and pretty much wants drivers right off. OK. So I find the path on the cd for the RCA 235 drivers and hit next. WTF? Next thing it tells me is Windows was unable to locate driver for this device.. Then I try the same thing for the 255 driver and the 245 drivers. same thing.

I call tech support again and they say everthing I am doing is correct and they are baffled. I ask if there are drivers online and they say they do, as I am begining to think this disc has a bad spot.. They agreed.

So I go on to their AOL 7.0 dial up.. OMG the masses of colorful windows piled over the tops on one another! I Had a hell of a time just navigating in such a mess!

Buy anyway I find what I need at the att website and download the drivers for the RCA 235 cable modem. I try installing again pointing to the new dowloaded .INF file..

Guess what? SAME thing!! Windows is unable to locate drivers...

I just plain don't get it.

I told her to buy a cheap nic and we'll try that route. She hasn't yet, but what if the darn thing does the same thing while installing the nic drivers?

Guess Ill know more after she get the nic..

Just wondering if anyone had any ideas or stories like this.

Browse the driver folder on the CD. There should be an INF file in there - if there isn't, then something's goofy. There may also be a readme file and possibly an installer.

However most of those USB modems just need a driver.

Did you try installing it using both driver wizard methods? Try selecting "show all drivers for this device" then clicking on the "Have disk" button. For some stupid reason, Windows will have a problem installing drivers using the wizard, but will install them fine this way.

Try doing a search on Google newsgroups for the modem's brand and model, along with the word "driver" and see if you get any hits. It might be a common problem someone else has solved: http://google.com/grphp?hl=en


It's possible that she needs to update the driver for her PC's USB port - but I doubt that if it's a retail HP box.


If the modem has a RJ45 port on it (and I guess it does from your post - most modems with a USB also have a network jack) then your next option is installing a NIC on her computer.

FAIR WARNING: HP's are NOTORIOUS for having hassles with add-on cards. Do yourself a BIG favor and backup the registry first before doing anything else. That way you can restore it back to the way it is now if it gets ugly. I like to use Microsoft's ERU utility: http://soldcentralfl.com/quakecoop/files/eru.zip

Remember: no good turn goes unpunished. You don't want to screw up her computer in the process of trying to add a NIC (been there, done that).

Good luck!

It sounds like the INF files pointed to did not agree with that specific router ( cable modem ).
But my first thought would be AAUUGHHH! Don't use USB!
I just bought the DCM245R RCA Cable Modem for myself. I have it going into a NIC but it works fine.
Are there any other USB devices on this PC? The reason I don't like USB is that with one device it usually works well if not perfectly. With two it might screw up. With three.... I've seen as many as 4 or 5 on a PC but it took the owners weeks and weeks of seeing which one to hook up first, which gods to invoke when hooking #3 up, etc.
Another thought occurs: 2-3 year old HP might have an older USB port. I used to do on site warranty work which included HP PC's. They had a lot of hardware problems, and maybe that is part of where I got my sour grapes impression of USB 1.x
another thing to try is downloading they INF file for W98 from RCA ( it sounded like you got it from the ISP ). @Home pointed me to incorrect files dozens of times over the past 5-6 years for both myself and for clients.

Remember: no good turn goes unpunished.

Amen. OTOH, you just picked up a good neighbor

Are you even sure that the USB is working? That would be my first spot to check out... If the USB ain't workin' then it ain't gonna pick up the modem... Try dumping thye USB if it is there and let win98 pick it up again... Then go from there... Or just try a NIC thats how i would prefer to hook them up...

Hey thanks FP for the links and advice..

Just found out these people are so poor a $20 nic will have to be worked into the buget and may take few weeks to buy..
Im on hold for now and sadly I don't have a spare PCI nic to slap in there for testing or to give them.

And yep your right Blue, I can see it now... (no explanation needed) Heh.

I thought of that Pred. On reboot it begs for drivers so I know windows sees it and it does ask for the rca 235 drivers that get rejected no matter the source. And I dont even know how to get into those HP disk sets.. and dont want to.. LOL

Till they get a nic I know nothing more..

Thanks guys! Guess they have to make to next move..

I would force the driver on the modem them... put in the disk and force it... I've had to do that before with stubborn hardware and 9 times out of 10 it will work...

I would force the driver on the modem them... put in the disk and force it...

Don't they arrest people for that in Kansas?


:lol

LOL couldn't tell ya

Don't they arrest people for that in Kansas?

No, only if there are goats or sheep involved. That is why I am hightailing it to Denver.


Hey Koo Koo Mouse, is that Win98 or Win98SE ? If it is Win98, you might need updated USB drivers. Just a wild guess.