windows 95 on dell inspiron 2600

[cov3rt]

i've been trying to get windows 95 working properly on the dell inspiron 2600 laptop but still having issues. it seems that the problem directs to the graphics adapter. at first, setup wouldn't get passed 20 percent of the hardware detection process, so i went ahead and reran setup and choose safe recovery as recommended by the setup wizard, it then mentioned that i needed to manually select a vga display adapter, so i selected the one already highlighted. after setup, i noticed that there were 3 different graphics adapters in device manager with 2 unknown monitors in the monitor section. the unknown monitors were shown to be working properly with no errors or exclamation marks, but one of the graphics adapter in display adapters section has an exclamation mark, this one is called standard display adapter (vga) and has the error code 27, mentioning try changing the driver, the other two are standard pci graphics adapter and standard pci graphics adapter (vga) and mentioned as working with no error markings.

 

This is the second time i did a clean install in a slightly different way, the first time, the only difference was that in the bios, i had the lcd simultaneous mode option enabled during setup, then i changed it to the lcd only mode, the other one is crt only mode. but i don't think that changed anything so i decided that maybe if i had the lcd mode only before running setup, then setup would configure the devices differently, but it still didn't change anything, and i had to rerun the setup with safe recovery, as mentioned above. the first time, i installed all necessary drivers, updates, etc, before installing the graphics driver, and when i did, it just hanged on the restart part, after doing the driver installation when selecting change display adapter, and manually selecting the device, i had to shut down the computer manually, scandisk ran and upon reboot, it gave a fatal exeption of some sort and then pressing enter, brought the desktop screen but looked a bit messed up, like the taskbar was skewed upward and taking up a large portion of the screen. i then changed the resolution to 1024x768, and it didn't look messed up anymore but i noticed something strange, that the next updates i was trying to do weren't being installed properly or not responding. like part of the wizard would initiate, and then cut out, and the computer would freeze on and off. after restarting, it did the usual scandisk, which i did, but same fatal exeption, except it didn't even boot to the desktop anymore, that is when i decided to do a clean install with the lcd mode only in bios checked now.

 

so, what exactly can be the issue or issues? is there a way i can remove the multiple display adapters or monitors in device manager to possibly cure the problem? also, would it better to try install the graphics adapter next time using the setup wizard, instead of doing it by changing display adapter? and lastly, how exactly do i install pcmcia drivers / cardbus support? there is a pci cardbus bridge in the other devices section in yellow, and also pcic or compatible pcmcia controller in red in the pcmcia socket section of device mananger, i have what appears to be the drivers for the pcmcia / cardbus, it has a setup option in the package contents and an inf.