Windows 98 problem

[undyingking]

Anyone out there remember the happy days of Windows 98 SE? T's pc has a problem -- it boots up apparently OK, but freezes within about a minute of finishing populating the desktop. In safe mode, though, it's fine. I've done the obvious things like turning off all the startup gubbins, but no joy. Seen this sort of thing before?

Comments

[mr-snips.livejournal.com]

Anyone out there remember the happy days of Windows 98 SE?

Those of us who work on games with a PC version are still living in them:-)

Seen this sort of thing before?

More often than I care to remember:-)

If you go to Settings \ Control Panel \ System \ Device Manager, does anything have a red cross, yellow exclamation, or other strangely coloured appeal for help attached to it?

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

but freezes within about a minute of finishing populating the desktop.

Are you able to do anything in that 'about a minute'?

[wimble.livejournal.com]

F8 as it's booting windows, and you get prompted for the various lines in autoexec.bat and config.sys?

You also get prompted for assorted other things that I never understood, so always said yes to.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

One of my machines (Scary-II) still runs 98-SE due to my no pirated software policy combines with a refusal to buy Microsoft's overpriced cr*p any more than is absolutely necessary.

As mr_snips implies, this kind of symptom is almost always caused by a device driver failing or locking up. The steps I follow to deal with this are:

1) Ask myself whether I have recently changed any aspect of the system configuration, including installing new software or hardware or using something which was previously unused. If so, that's the cause 99% of the time.
2) Check whether any of the disks or partitions are more than 80% full. If so, clean out some junk until they're not, then defrag.
3) Unplug all USB, parallel and serial devices and remove all CDs, then try booting again.
4) Scan for virusses. Note that I don't run a virus checker by default since I find defences at point of entry far more effective. If you already run a virus checker, try switching it off for one boot and see if that helps.
5) Check the Task Manager after boot to see what's running and whether anything is grabbing vast amounts of CPU or memory.
6) If still no progress, fall back on F8 as wimble recommends. Be warned that stepping through the whole thing is quite technical and about as much fun as watching paint dry.