flaky notebook...(?) please advise

[somethingwitty]

Got a compaq presario 1650 (pent II, 266; 64mb ram, ~3.8 gig hd) to work with...here's the sequence of events as I recall. (edited below with an error message)

-Formatted hard drive using format c:/s (this format, as well as future attempts, seemed to take a lot longer than usual...i havent formatted in a while, so i could be wrong, but it took over 10 minutes), confirmed system would boot to C prompt, booted off a windows98 cdrom, attempted to run setup. setup kicked me out, something about compression or partition issues-cant recall the exact problem, but I assumed it could be resolved by fdisk-ing.
-Ran fdisk, deleted the partition (the only one), created a new one, re-formatted using c:/s (note that the sys file came off a standard bootdisk i've used before; so it should be ok), confirmed system would boot to C prompt, rebooted from the cd, started computer w/ cdrom support, copied win98 directory to the c drive.
-ran install, got to the point where system reboots and attempts to find plug and play hardware...it hung (mouse moved, but NOTHING doing for well over an hour), rebooted a couple of times, it continued to hang at the same point. went to sleep with system off.
-came home today, rebooted and, on the 3rd or 4th try, it got to the point where i could set the clock, timezone, etc. after all of this a reboot is required, at which point it began hanging again...
-the general situation now is, I finally got into windows on one of the reboots, then shut down normally and restarted, only to have it hang again (multiple times) at the splash screen. booted into safe mode succesfully on first attempt (at safe mode), which is where i am now.
-(going backwards a bit...) the one time i got into windows i ran scandisk (thorough), didnt find any errors.

Ok, so the next thing I'm looking to try will be finding my norton utilities (i have it *somewhere*) and running some diags.

My inclination is bad ram or bad hard drive-so i guess i'll grab memtest too. any other ideas as to what the problem might be?

(its currently plugged into an outlet, doesnt seem to be running hot or anything, and booted fine into windows the 3 or so times i tried BEFORE the initial formatting)

exorcism under consideration, please advise thanks

edit: when the system hangs at the spalsh screen, hitting ctrl-alt-del brings up the following message: "windows protection error. you need to restart your computer", and the system must then be shut down

 

[wnied]

run a bootlog in windows and see where it hangs. My guess is either faulty hardware that windows cant pin with a driver, or a driver thats incompatible with the hardware being used. My other guess is a bad hard drive. if u want, try taking the hard drive out of the computer and freezing it for a couple hours. Once its nice and cold, replace it and see how it runs. If it boots up without a problem, I would seriously consider getting another hard drive for it. If it still hangs, then you can rule out a bad drive at the very least.

~wnied~

 

[somethingwitty]

Thanks for the reply...right now, I have memtest going on a cycle...much as I'd prefer this be a memory issue, it's gone through 3 passes so far with no errors. As for the theory that it could be some other hardware-i dont know the computer's history, but I took out the only PCMCIA card before formatting (a "SMART Token Ring" which presumably connects to a dongle that I do not have-the system, i believe, was used as part of a network, so an ethernet card would make sense), and i *think* the other hardware is original.

2 "stretch" theories that come to mind are 1. re-insert the pcmcia card, maybe it needs it or something and 2) try and find a compaq restore disc (i'd hate to do that, cause i like doing my own installs...neither of these 2 seem particularly likely, though at least the first would be easy to test)

I'd like to try and avoid the deep freeze, cool as it sounds...i guess i'll let this pass finish then begin playing around with drivers in safe mode...uhh, dumb question, but i *CAN* install drivers while in safe mode, right? (i havent had a system act up like this for a while lol)