98SE install problems?

Discussion in 'Software' started by alanc, Dec 29, 2003.

  1. alanc

    alanc MajorGeek

    Not sure if this is software or hardware related...

    I haven't observed any of this personally, this is a system I need to take a look at later today. I worked on this machine several weeks ago, the hardware was working fine then. See hardware specs below.

    Somehow the OS got trashed, so the person decided a virus was the culprit. :rolleyes: Efforts to reinstall/repair 98 didn't help, neither did a brand new copy of NAV 2004 (Ugh, wasn't my decision or my money - it didn't find anything), so the drive was fdisked, formatted and a clean install of 98 was done. She also managed to install Juno email, download and install IE6 sp1.

    She is still having problems with the clean install. Sluggish response, fatal exception errors (some OE .vxd?), random lockups and reboots. Having anything running at all seems to add to the instability. Scandisk in both DOS and Windows (when it completes) says the drive is error-free, but I plan to run PowerMax to verify that.

    Assuming I've gotten accurate info about this, at this point I'm wondering if this is some kind of hardware problem. A flaky RAM stick, maybe? IDE cable going south? I kinda doubt the drive itself is bad. I need some ideas here, something I haven't thought of...

    ____________________________
    Specs:

    PIII-866
    Asus P3V4X slot 1 mobo
    2x128MB PC-133
    Maxtor 20GB
    Asus GeForce2 32MB AGP video
    Soundblaster CT4810 PCI audio
    16x DVD
    U.S. Robotics Sportster 33.6
    _____________________________
     
  2. Kodo

    Kodo SNATCHSQUATCH

    random errors like that on a clean install are more often then not, RAM issues. I would start there at least and test the memory.
     
  3. alanc

    alanc MajorGeek

    Makes sense to me. I'll run Memtest86 on it.
     
  4. alanc

    alanc MajorGeek

    Well, it was a bad RAM stick AND a bad DIMM slot on the mobo. Ditched the stick and avoided the slot - all was well when I left :cool: Thanks, Kodo. Oh, and I installed AVG and convinced her to take Norton AV back to Fry's and get her money back :D
     
  5. Kodo

    Kodo SNATCHSQUATCH

    You're a good man Alanc! :)
     

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