ASUS mobo, Crucial ram, or Win98 problem

[ghouldini]

Got an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe along with a Barton 2600+ recently.

Had to run the ASUS with my 1800+ and Crucial 2100 (2 x 256) till my new PC3200 (2 x 512) order came in. It ran fine.

Got the ram in, and installed that along with the Barton.
Also put a NV Silencer 1 on my GF4 at this time, but already ruled that out as the trouble maker in this problem I got.

The ASUS/2600+/Crucial 1gig(2x 512) will boot up past the first WIn98SE boot screen, but will lock up on that same screen when it appears again just before windows goes to desktop loading. The Win98 screen lloks different, like somebody applied 10,000 volts to it. The colors are changed and it's looks distorted, like a mosaic look or something. I have seen that once before (the 98 screen's look) on another computer and never found the cause, and it went away.
This one isn't going away. It will sometimes reboot itself to the boot choice menu (like hitting F8 key) saying windows failed to load. Other times it just locks on the funny picture.

I tried the vid card in another computer and it was fine. It was also fine in this computer when I yanked one of the 512 ram sticks and ran on one. So the vid card is not the bad guy.

I tried my 1800+ in place of the Barton, and it still crashes, so it's not the Barton cpu.

That leaves the mobo, ram, and win98 itself.
I have never heard anyone complaing win98 crashes on ram of 1 gig, so I kind of doubt that. I do have WinXP Pro but will have to load up a drive for that mobo. I use XP on another rig.

The mobo does work dual channel with 2 x 256 (512 total) just fine.
Can the mobo do that and then crap out on higher ram?
It's not a dual channel versus single either, as I tried the 2 sticks in the other slots that make it single channel. It crashes on that as well.
I downloaded and ran memtest86 on the ram chips by themselves (16 passes on one stick and 3 on the other) and together (about 3 passes). All passes, no errors.

I can run Unreal on one 512 stick with either CPU fine. It's just the 2 together.

These are the Crucial regular sticks that Newegg has been having on sale for $39.99 each + ship. The ones that end in .8T (ramchips on one side only).

I am going to try my old gigabyte mobo and 1800+ with the new ram tomorrow, to see if I can narrow the guilty party down. If it still crashes I would suspect the ram, despite passing memtest, has trouble with the 2 sticks together (these were not "matched" sticks), or it's Win98se itself.

Does this ring anybody's bells?
Haven't goggled on it yet.
Opinions welcome.
I needs my 1 gig.

Thanks for looking.

 

[mechBgon]

Win98 needs help to deal with >512MB of RAM properly. Maybe kill two birds with one stone by applying the Unofficial Win98 Service Pack. Props to Zepper for that one

Bigger picture: WinXP someday?

 

[ghouldini]

Hmmm, I got the M$ CD they sent out, that of course installs IE6 without you getting to say no. Of course that has none of the updates that came out after it's release.

I do have XP Pro on another box.
I also plan to load a drive up with that to test this system out and see if it crashes there too. That will happen after the Gigabyte gets a shot at the ram, as it's quicker than doing the XP install, which I did plan on doing on a 2nd hard drive anyway for this new mobo/ram deal.

Thanks for the linky, I know some others that might use it as well.
I doubt this will fix my problem though, since this can't have too many items the M$ CD didn't have.

 

[mechBgon]

No, install that anyway. It does address the 512MB ceiling and also has more security updates than the MS CD did (I have one of those too).

 

[ghouldini]

OK will give it a shot.
I'll post back either way it goes :thumbsup: or :thumbsdown:

 

[ghouldini]

Problem SOLVED.

That service pack did the trick all right.

Thanks to mechBgon & Zepper + the guy who made the service pack.

I didn't try the M$ steps first. Those may work as well, but I figured I would try the SP to see what other help it gives. Not sure on that yet.

Thanks again :thumbsup:

 

[mechBgon]