Dell Optiplex 745 USFF

[Esuazo]

So, I had recently (within the past few months) bought this computer off a craigslist ad for $20 USD to just mess around with. It came attached to a working monitor and stand that held it all together. It had no hard drive and no os. I grabbed a cheap 500 GB HDD off eBay and an XP install disk since it had the old XP license key sticker on the computer.

 

So let me get to why I am making this post. The computer works, XP booted up just fine, but when I hard plugged in the cat5 cable for the internet it didn't go online. I know the connector works because while waiting for the XP CD to arrive I loaded Ubuntu on it and was able to get a stable internet connection that way.

 

Also, I have since decided to hand this computer over to my now 4-year-old daughter to get her something to mess around on and get used to using a computer with. I wanted a simple internet connection to look for simple games she might like to play along with ABC mouse and do some updates. Looking at games from the past I am also worried this system may not handle some games and since it is the Ultra small form factor version (I noticed a lot of Lego games came out during this time and thought those would be fun) I doubt I have room for upgrading outside modding, or simple ram and CPU upgrades.

 

Any ideas what I am doing wrong as far as the internet is concerned? Any suggestions for component upgrades? Any suggestions for games? Should I try a different OS? (btw sorry if I posted this in the wrong forum. I looked around and wasn't sure exactly where this one would fit.) Thanks in advance everyone!

[mariushm]

Install the drivers for the network card. Ubuntu probably has the drivers built in, while Windows probably doesn't.

 

Dell says in this specifications PDF that the network card is Broadcom 5754 ,and the drivers for  Dell Optiplex 745 are here: https://www.dell.com/support/home/ro/ro/rodhs1/product-support/product/optiplex-745/drivers

( note link has some text in Romanian because site detects my country, or site may redirect you to another version of the page, for your country. But should have no problems downloading the drivers)

 

if you click on View more at the bottom, you'll see there somewhere Broadcom 57xx netwok driver, a 5 MB download.

 

Look in device manager at what devices are not detected properly (if any) and then download the drivers for those from Dell's website.

You may want to install Intel Chipset drivers either way ( Intel Chipset Software Installation Driver) as they improve perfomance of pc and should be newer than what comes with a Windows installation and the sound card drivers may be worth downloading (Analog Devices ADI 198x Integrated HD Audio, v.5.10.x.7265, A02)

[Esuazo]

Thanks for the reply! I am a little confused on how I am suppose to download the driver for the network card when it is not allowing me to get on the internet to begin with? Am I able to download it on a separate computer and use a usb or another device to transfer it to the optiplex?

[DeScruff]

Classic issue. Yeah With a working computer, download the driver and put it on a USB drive. -
Everyone always says "throw away all driver CDs and just get them from the internet!", but I always say 'keep the network CD/or put it on a flash drive' for obvious reasons.

If USB drives dont work... Then you need to move the HDD it's self to a different machine... Or burn a CD - Ive had to do that to a few PCs

[mariushm]

Yeah, you have to either download and copy the files onto a USB stick or burn a CD or DVD with the files.

 

Before USB was invented, people had the option to use either floppy disks, or use null modem cables to make connection between two computers using the serial ports, giving you at least around 15-20 KB/s of transfer speed (on par with floppy disks) - the idea is that you would put the file transfer application on floppy disk (a few KB in size) and then use it to transfer the bulk of the files (megabytes) you wanted, so you wouldn't spend time writing floppies and inserting and ejecting and checking for errors when floppies got bad.

Another very rarely used (as far as I know) is infrared (IrDA) ... it wasn't that common because not all motherboards had the connector or the bracket with the actual emitter in the box, it was optional accessory on lots of motherboards. Software was also hit and miss.

 

Oh... and there's also very "clever" ways of transferring data, like if the computer had a sound card or system speaker, you could have a computer playing a sound (different beeps for different characters in a text file for example) and the other computer would record input and convert to data on disk. The transfer speed is really low though, in the KB/s range. Almost never used, as serial ports or floppy disks would be faster but useful thing to know if you have some vintage pc with only 8" or 5.25" floppies for example.

 

[Esuazo]

Awesome! I will try the USB tomorrow! Hopefully, it works because my personal PC that I built like most modern PC's nowadays does not have a cd dvd drive, just a lot of usb ports. May have to buy an external if this doesn't work.

[Esuazo]

I was able to get the drivers downloaded via usb but I am still not able to connect to the internet. I'm half way tempted to see if a usb wifi dongle would work better. It shows the cable connected and data being sent and received but I cannot even pull up google because it says I am not connected.

[mariushm]

Well,right click on it, properties, go to tcp/ip properties or something with ipv4 in the name

Make sure the option to automatically get IP and DNS from router / cable modem is checked - maybe the drivers defaulted to not requesting an IP address from the router or modem, whatever you have.

 

Go in Control Panel to Windows Firewall (or click o Change windows firewall settings, see picture).  Make sure the firewall is not set to block any application by default

 

Anyway, from the picture all i can tell is that the drivers are installed and that a cable is plugged in and also making connection to something on the other end - that's what connected means. Doesn't mean that the computer requested an IP address which is required to connect to internet.

 

I haven't used Windows XP in a while but you can also check if the network card received an ip address using  built in command tool

 

Click start > run > type cmd and hit enter to open a console window > type  ipconfig /all and hit enter

 

The tool will enumerate one or several "network cards" , but one of them should be you card... see if it gets an IP address, if there's a DNS server detected (required to access websites, because it converts names like google.com to an ip address like 1.2.3.4 )

 

Maybe paste the text that application outputs and we can try to help more? (right click on text, select mark, drag with mouse, press enter when done and text should be in clipboard)

[Esuazo]

Thank you so much for your help. I truly appreciate it.

 

I found it was detecting the DNS Server but for the life of me I couldn't figure out why it was making it so difficult to simply connect to the internet. 

 

I decided to attempt and boot it in Windows 10. I had tried this previously before xp or linux but it never worked. (I was using 64bit windows iso instead of 32bit) finally figuring out the older computer needed the 32bit iso to boot into I did that instead for windows 10 and now I can get online and do all the stuff I want. I am a little worried since it is a usff pc that it's limited hardware may not handle 10 so well, but so far no issues.