Caught in a reboot loop

[paperfist]

Howdy folks,

On a Windows 98 SE machine, I installed a 'new' sound card, a Creative SB 32. After Windows detected the hardware and installed the software it did the typical you must reboot your system request. After the system rebooted it loaded into the start of the splash sreeen then seconds later switched to 'It is now safe to turn your computer off' screen. Now thats all it will do, boot-splash screen-shut down screen. I've tried resetting the BIOS defaults, tried using older system registry files and tried getting into safe mode and nothing seems to work (even safe mode boot up ends up shutting down) Anyone have any ideas on how I can get back into windows? I am fairly sure its a hardware conflict... Thanks for the help

 

[iamwiz82]

have you attempted to remove the card and reboot?

 

[DaiShan]

did you remove the old soundcard drivers before installing this one? also could we get a rundown of all the hardware you have in your machine?

 

[paperfist]

Yes, I removed the old sound card drivers first before removing the card, rebooted to make sure everything was okay then shutdown, installed the new SB card having Windows detect and install the drivers for it. After the reboot is when the reboot loop started. And yes also I have tried rebooting w/o any sound card installed and also with only the video card installed.

As far as componets go: Soyo SY-6VBA-133 MB (w/last BIOS revision, Celron 400MHz CPU, looks like a Trident PCI Video card (S3 Trio64V2/DX chip), IBM 16Mx72 100MHz SDRAM, Segate ata66 HD and the 2 problem child cards: some kind of ISA modem with a Rockwell/Apache chip on it and a ISA Acer Magic S20 sound card. The sub sound card is a full length ISA Creative SB 32 AWE PnP.

It's my friends system and no idea how that intresting collection of cards got in there. He gave it to me with 2 problems. 1) Internet connetion wouldn't work. It was because of a program called new.net having a missing DLL file. 2) Sound would play for AOL and some system sounds worked but he couldn't play music files and game sounds didn't work either. I tracked down the original Acer drivers for the sound card and installed those. Still wouldn't play properly. Also tried switching ISA slots with the modem and that didn't work. Finally I tried changing the sound card with the SB one I had from an old system. And then the reboot problem started...

I thought at first the problem was that the SB card is a full length card and it ended up just clearning the pins for the reset/power/HD led light, etc and maybe that it knocked the reset contacts loose. I checked those and all seems fine. So I have no idea what the problem is and would greatly appreciate some input as I am running out of hair to pull

 

[DaiShan]

can you try another atx psu?

 

[WarCon]

Maybe if your lucky you might have a backup copy of your registry.

To Restore the Registry:

Restart The Computer using the command prompt, (F8 during the initialization of windows, right at the very beginning then I believe the its option 5)
Change to the Windows directory. For example, if the Windows directory is C:\Windows, enter cd c:\windows
Type the following commands, pressing Enter or Return after each line.
(system.da0 and user.da0 contain the number zero).
attrib -h -r -s system.dat
attrib -h -r -s system.da0
copy system.da0 system.dat
attrib -h -r -s user.dat
attrib -h -r -s user.da0
copy user.da0 user.dat
attrib +r +a +s +h system.dat
attrib +r +a +s +h user.dat
attrib +r +a +s +h user.da0
attrib +r +a +s +h system.da0
Restart the computer.


......................edit.....................
Sorry didn't see that you already tried older registry files. I think you may be looking at Reload time. I have done 4 complete reloads (Part I hate is backing up other people's crap (I know what is crap to me may be gold to others)) in the last 5 days (none my own) and you kind of just get use to it.........

 

[paperfist]

Thanks for the help everyone, but yippie I fixed it! It ended up being a missing wininit.exe file! All that from a sound card install...goes figure...

 

[WarCon]

How strange for the driver to kill that file. But nothing really surprises me with Windows.........

I was taught in school that self modifying code is just asking for trouble and Microsoft asked and trouble came..................