I have an old Win 98 SE Dell computer that was my favorite computer for old games. It would play my old DOS favorites, so please please somebody help me get it going again.

the problem started about 2 years ago and my daughter picked up a virus somewhere. She took the computer to a "computer geek" friend with all the original drivers and disks and the friend was going to reformat the whole hard drive and reinstall drivers etc.

Now when I turn on the computer, I can hear it booting up but it won't turn on any monitor. I have tried it on 3 working monitors but it won't initialize them. I only see a black screen. Needless to say, it is impossible to reformat as I can't read the screen to see what to click on.

This was a great machine and I really would like to get it running again. If anybody has any ideas on how I can do that I would really appreciate it.

thanks so much for your time.

Hopefully you have another 'working' computer.
Go to http://www.allbootdisks.com/ and download a StartUp Disk (if you don't have one). Put it in the drive and turn on the computer. If the monitor remains 'blank', then my guess would be your video card has failed and needs to be replaced. If you are not familar with replacing such, do a Google search, "replace video card" (without the " " ) and you will be able to read, understand and change out the card. Also, the retailer you purchase the card from might feel kind and be willing to install it for you. Good Luck.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.