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

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Not when I look at it in Safe Mode, no problems. I can't look at it in ordinary mode because of the abovementioned freezing.

[mr-snips.livejournal.com]

Ah. I was hoping a minute might be long enough.

In that case the bext option is probably to go through the boot option tests to see if any particular device or driver has gone bad. There's documentation on this at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q188867 - you can start with the "Windows 98 Starts in Safe Mode" section about halfway down.

By the way, have you (or T) installed anything on T's computer recently?

[mr-snips.livejournal.com]

PS: "Bext" is my Neologism Of The Day - an exciting combination of "best" and "next", a brand new word optimised for the high speed lifestyle of the 21st Century digerati.

Ahem.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

It's a minute if you don't do anything -- but immediate if you do!

Thanks for the link, I'll work through that. I'll also ask her if any new kit etc...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hmm, an intriguing update on this: with all the stuff turned off as described below, you can now do quite a bit on it, but it seems that it freezes when it's called upon to display warning or error dialogs.

[mr-snips.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Possibly a display card problem. You could try:

1) Set the video card to VGA (basic functionality only) from safe mode. If this fixes it in normal mode, try reinstalling the video driver.

2) Unplugging the video card and plugging it back in.

Good luck! :-)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Turns out to have been a hardware problem, fixed at least for now by removing and reseating everything... the startup behaviour was a bit of a red herring!