Problem

[FireMogle]

MODS:if this is the wrong place please move to where apllicable, I was told to put it here by William.

--Problem--
My roomate is having problems with her computer and Ive tried about everything I can muster to fix it. It has random BSOD, and win explorer crashes whenever opened. She is Running win98. Most programs crash upon opening. And problem exists in Safe Mode. Problems started before the TV tuner and ethernet.

--HardWare--
It is an Epox EP-MVP4F with a 500mhz K2, 128mb kingston RAM, Generic HD/DVDrom, AOpen Ethernet, ATI TV Wonder VE, Onboard Vid/Sound.

--Current Efforts--
Ive tried the good ol' format/restore to no avail. Replaced RAM, Thurogh scan of HD, disabled all programs from startup. Anti-Virus finds nothing. Would clearing the master boot record help, forgot how to do that. Would clearing them need to be done on a format/install or no. Any help would be nice. Thanks

 

[scoobydoo]

Good to see you found the right forum....I hope

If you have formatted/FDISK'ed/repartitioned and reinstalled Win98 and the problem is still there it is pretty safe to say it is a hardware problem.

Time to start taking out components one at a time to find the culprit

 

[FireMogle]

Well he told me to put it here. I have this one saved to a file if it does it goes back up somewhere else.

 

[Silver]

Were it I, I might try pulling the last two and make sure that it is stable again. Once this has been proven then I would insert one card and try for stability, then the other. If one, both or none of them cure the problem then we have come a long way on finding the cause.

 

[FireMogle]

Good thought, I may have to try that. I didnt think it would be those two cause it had simmilar problems before. I think its just scewed. I told her I could build a newer, faster, BETTER one for a few hundred.

 

[scoobydoo]

I edited my post above to include some useful info, but it seems Silver is on the same track

If it isn't a hardware component, maybe the bios is screwed so try to flash it with an updated one.

 

[Bull]

I would start with the bare essentials. Vid card, motherboard, ram and hard drive and cd rom. Remove anything else in the system. Check the HSF. I would take it off and reinstall it just to make sure its not an overheating problem. Reinsert ram, make sure cables are not damaged to the hard drive. I would go into the bios and enable virus detection for the boot then use a win 98 startup disk and use scandisk from that. If she has the win 98 cd you might want to try to reinstall the os it should keep her settings. Myself I don't like to reformat because you lose all your info. It could be some system files are corrupt thats what happened to a friend of mine and the reinstall worked and all her data was saved.

 

[Silver]

I edited my post above to include some useful info, but it seems Silver is on the same track

If it isn't a hardware component, maybe the bios is screwed so try to flash it with an updated one.

We are in agreement. Try to get it back to a stable state. I would remove the cards if you had an instble state before and work on getting it stable. You can always start over, fdisk format and re-install (something I can do in a flash now due to ocing). Get the newest bios and lets bring her up again. If there are stability problems under this pretty much naked environement then all here would more than happy to assist in gaining stability. Once that has been gained then add the two cards which should at that point install without a hitch.

 

[Silver]

Hey Scooby dooby doo, where are you? This isn't a one dog (?) show. Ideas please.