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]

Mm, good checklist.

1) I haven't, and T says she hasn't.
2) Only half full, and have defragged.
3) Done that.
4) Her definitions are a few months out of date, but its clean as far as they go. Unfortunately I have no way of updating them as when in safe mode, or when booted from floppy, it can't go online or read them from a CD. I suppose I'll have to copy them across on several floppies... if I can find that many working floppies! Oh, I wonder if I have a bootable CD, presumably that would be OK, I'll have a look.
5) I did manage to fire up the system monitor before it froze, but it was reporting flat memory usage and plenty free.
6) I've now established that even when disabling the entirety of config.sys, autoexec.bat, win.ini, system.ini and the startup group, the error is still present. Yet it isn't present in safe mode. I find this kind of baffling... next thing I'll try is disabling all the devices in Device Manager, although I don't know if that is really any different from disabling the ini files.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Next thing I'd check is hardware failure. In order of most to least likely:

1) Hard drive is failing.
2) One or more memory chips are failing.
3) Motherboard is failing.
4) A PCI or AGP card is loose or faulty.

After booting in not-safe mode, try downgrading the screen resolution to something really rubbish (lowest available preferably) and see if that prevents the crash.

Try getting hold of a bootable Linux CD for something like Knoppix. Start lots and lots of apps under Linux and see if that crashes it.

If the former test does still crash but the latter does not then you've probably ruled out hardware as a cause. (And if not, you then face the tricky task of working out which hardware is failing.)

If the hardware's OK, you have a really odd Windows problem. If you get that far, reinstalling Windows and all software (after backing up your data, obviously) may be your only option.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Heh -- I took out and reseated the SIMMs and PCI cards, and unplugged and replugged the drives, and the problem has now gone away.

I think I'll give the memory a proper test just in case...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Good plan.

Ugh - I hate vanishing bugs.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm! I've got some spare SIMMs of the right size and vintage from one of my old PCs, so if there is a flaw it'll be easy to replace at least. Thanks for your help!

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Good luck !

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Knoppix also works wonderfully for getting stuff off elderly Windows PCs when the network card drops dead and they don't have (functional) USB so can't use a CD writer. I speak from experience. (Memo to self: you said you were going to sort your dad out with a new computer sometime soon.)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

My instinct there would normally be to whip out the hard drive and shove it into another machine, but Knoppix certainly sounds less drastic!

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

This was actually as part of an OS upgrade, so we wanted to back everything up before doing much else...