System Hangs
Okay I've been firing off quite a few of my random hardware questions here lately and I've meant to include this one.
I got a Pentium II, for free, of course. It was a PROTEVA. Apparently a genuinely crappy company to get a PC from. But, it has a nice BIOS (it even lets me change the colors! XD), and it runs pretty well with a fresh install of Windows 98 SE.
Now I'm not going to throw this one out considering how long it took me to even find drivers for some of the *generic, unmarked* components. I had to use software to analyze some of it. I had to Google the chip number on the RAM of the video card only to find out it was made by Intel. Lol, Intel decided not to brand their AGP card. Oookay...
But though the drivers work I have some issues with this computer:
- DirectX games don't work. This is somewhat minor, but I wished they did. Any games with hardware acceleration and DX don't run, incl. Chocolate Doom and Need For Speed III and IV. Maybe the drivers are faulty.
- Random system hangs, usually with a lot of things open. I upgraded the original 64MB of RAM to 128MB, and ran 4 passes of memtest86+ without error. I've left this computer on for a few days at a time and it will be just fine. However, if I'm working on it (usually when Word '97 and Opera are open) the system hangs completely, with the HD access light on. Doesn't respond to anything, the numlock key doesn't even work, so I have to reset it every time.
I thought it was a dead PSU but I tested it and the voltages were not horribly off. 3.3V was 3.2, 12.0V was 12.3, and 5VSB and 5V were 5.0 and 4.9, respectively. Is it just running out of swapfile or something?
I got a Pentium II, for free, of course. It was a PROTEVA. Apparently a genuinely crappy company to get a PC from. But, it has a nice BIOS (it even lets me change the colors! XD), and it runs pretty well with a fresh install of Windows 98 SE.
Now I'm not going to throw this one out considering how long it took me to even find drivers for some of the *generic, unmarked* components. I had to use software to analyze some of it. I had to Google the chip number on the RAM of the video card only to find out it was made by Intel. Lol, Intel decided not to brand their AGP card. Oookay...
But though the drivers work I have some issues with this computer:
- DirectX games don't work. This is somewhat minor, but I wished they did. Any games with hardware acceleration and DX don't run, incl. Chocolate Doom and Need For Speed III and IV. Maybe the drivers are faulty.
- Random system hangs, usually with a lot of things open. I upgraded the original 64MB of RAM to 128MB, and ran 4 passes of memtest86+ without error. I've left this computer on for a few days at a time and it will be just fine. However, if I'm working on it (usually when Word '97 and Opera are open) the system hangs completely, with the HD access light on. Doesn't respond to anything, the numlock key doesn't even work, so I have to reset it every time.
I thought it was a dead PSU but I tested it and the voltages were not horribly off. 3.3V was 3.2, 12.0V was 12.3, and 5VSB and 5V were 5.0 and 4.9, respectively. Is it just running out of swapfile or something?
Comments
In the meantime it's a PC for all but NFS High Stakes, which due to its age, is nothing.
I keep localized copies of the Win98 CD at C:\Windows\Win98 or on the network
DMA Settings: I honestly don't know what they're even supposed to be.
Did I mention it was a Proteva? Has anyone even heard of a Proteva? The first Google Result is their consumer complaints page... :P
It makes a weird grinding noise, I meant to add. Probably the PSU fan. I think there's some sand or other crap in it.
I've checked the BIOS and I feel like it's some setting in there (I'm still getting random hangs, but a new video card solved the video lockup problems with 3D graphics
It freezes when using Opera, I was just checking my email and then it locked up and I had to reset it. It does it on many different sites, but I don't think it's Opera itself causing a complete hang - if it were Opera I could probably still get some response from the PC.
note - accidentally posted as a guest, disregard that post if it's approved.
To eliminate the BIOS possibility, reset all the settings to fail safe / default settings. Most BIOS'es have these options in the BIOS themselves. This will eliminate a miss configured BIOS setting as the culprit.
As for the RAM being on "Turbo" depending on the chip you have in, it may or may not make a difference, having a 66Mhz chip set to turbo may cause errors but a 100-133Mhz chip should of worked just fine. Any way your closer to a solution by narrowing down possibilities.
It's hung even without using Opera. The RAM modules are PC100, I set it back to SDRAM 10ns and it hasn't changed much. I'm going to reseat the new video card now. It never hangs under real load (i.e. playing NFS), only when doing semi-stressful tasks or really nothing at all.
It also can't suspend now, I don't know why.
*YEAH*. I need updated *IDE* drivers. God, Win98, it's nice when it works :P
EDIT: researching this issue. What scares me is that it's a *new* issue.
Unfortunately, now I have it on my testing bench hooked up to a different (CRT) monitor. Everything displays fine during POST, and the Windows splash screen shows up, but afterwards the monitor powers off as if the PC shut off video output. I don't have the VGA cable screwed in but reseating it hasn't helped. It happens on every boot - maybe I"ll try safe mode next - I really just want to back it up to a USB drive and wipe the disk if I can...
I think the monitor's OK, I hope the video card is seated correctly. I guess I'll reseat the card yet again...
EDIT: darn, MouseKeys isn't allowed... in safe mode with no mouse :(
EDIT 2: Video works in safe mode. Maybe 1024x768 was screwing with the CRT. Odd though as the CRT has displayed 1024x768 fine before.
Can you take a screen cap of your device manager with all branches expanded, so we can see what it's saying.
Just to get some things out of the way: it's the Proteva. I've posted about it in another topic as well. I am pretty sure I put the cards back in the same slots, I might have switched the PCI ethernet with the PCI sound card, but I'm unsure.
Basically this PC worked fine aside from occasional hangs when browsing and writing stuff (really never had it hang when running bootable diagnostics or playing games, only within Windows. Hopefully just a drive issue...) It hung with both the old video card (Intel740 8MB AGP crap) and the newer one (ATi Rage 128 Pro 16MB), at completely random times.
That problem wasn't so bad. However, one time *completely out of the blue* I couldn't suspend. Suspend always worked before, but one time after rebooting I was told by Windows that a device driver or program was preventing the PC from entering suspend. I checked device manager and I saw the listing:
Primary IDE controller (dual fifo), with a Code 10 error. This was new as well, and likely causing the problem.
Before this I'd tried to install Lubuntu and gotten package corruption errors while installing from the CD. I also was told during partitioning that the free space was being reported wrongly, which I ignored (I probably shouldn't have...). I also turned the FSB up to 103 MHz from 100 MHz, for about 4 seconds of running time, as I did it as a test and disabled that setting in BIOS after the first POST with it at 103 (never ran Windows or anything).
So there are a LOT of possible problems. BTW I was using a Lubuntu 10.10 *alternate* CD before, so I might try the live CD later, but there's only 128mb of ram so I'm not sure if that would work.
Anyway - the latest problem is I can't boot from the Ultimate Boot CD which I had done earlier, for diagnostics.
When loading, I get this message as I posted in another thread:
ISOLINUX 4.0.4 2011-04-18 ETCD Copyright (C) 1994-2011 H. Peter NAnvin et al
aborted.
boot: _
I tried giving it 15 minutes and it stayed at the flashing cursor. I don't know what to type at the boot prompt. Didn't hit any keys while it was loading. If I type "isolinux" at the boot prompt it re-displays the message.
My current plan is to figure out the bootable CD problem, then wipe the HD, and install Win98 again. I'm a little tired with this one by now, but at least I have all the drivers on the network so it shouldn't be so bad this time.
I will try, when I can, to boot to the Lubuntu CD again. But my guess is I will get the same error... as it probably uses ISOLINUX as well, and the Proteva couldn't boot to a re-burn of UBCD either, at 8X.
That and I may try another CD-ROM drive.
But while I like the idea of a floppy boot, how would I copy the Win98 setup files (on a CD) to the hard disk, without using the network? And if I run Setup from the HD, then why wouldn't drivers be installed automatically during Setup? (How does Setup know it's being run from the C: drive, and why would it care?) OR (sorry, last question) is there a command-line switch for Setup that bypasses hardware recognition?
Setup doesn't care if it's run from the C: or not.
As far as the LED goes, switching the polarity doesn't usually fry them. At least, in my experience. I always used to get it wrong the first time and then have to reverse the connector. Never fried the LED...
So boot up from the floppy and use FDISK to make your partition(s). You have to reboot your system once you have made the partitions before you can format. Once rebooted format your partition(s).
Now with the drive freshly formatted, navigate to your desired partition, in this case C:. Then using the md command make a directory called anything you want. I use W98.
With that done, navigate to your CD drive, usually E: on a floppy booted system based on a system with one physical partition as C:, then a ram disk as
Again Navigate into the Win98 folder, then issue a Copy *.* command and tell it to transfer the files to the W98 folder on your hard drive. Once copied navigate over to the W98 folder and start Setup.exe from there. Makes the install slightly faster especially if your install files are on a 2nd physical drive, as hard drives read faster than CD drives, or at least back in the day this was the case.
As for the CD drivers, it may just be me, but sometimes when I have used a floppy and ran setup straight form the CD when it restarts and loads the graphical portion of setup it hasn't installed the optical drive yet. So I copy windows over to a simple file usually on the root of a drive, then I just type C:\W98 and hey presto it's getting the files it needs.
I've had this same phenomenon happen on Win95 and ME as well and like I say I don't know why it does it, so I just make sure I have a copy of the OS files for easy access.
Makes life easier since you don't have to go hunting down for the CD as well, I do this with all 3.x-9x Windows, even sometimes Win2000.
I tend to leave setup as normal but I do use the /iv switch as it stops the billboard video from running during setup, which allows it to get on with the install and saves time, from 3 to 10 minutes depending on how fast the comp is.
http://www.theosfiles.com/os_windows/os ... p_switches
Most of the switches are listed here.
I finally got everything running, the UBCD spontaneously worked again, fixed the HDD light, and then the one problem? The system would hang. Every time. I opened. Opera. Preferences. That was the kill switch for me, can't live without Opera on that thing... it happened on 10.00 and newer, and I don't like Opera 9. Well its parts now reside in my drawer of expansion cards.