Is it the MB, CPU, or OS?

DSLer

Member
Feb 10, 2001
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0
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Please read and offer advice. I'm using AMD Tbird 900MHz, KT7-Raid, 300W power supply, Generic Geforce 2MX, 256MB Micron RAM, Aureal Vortex PCI sound card, Kingston kne110tx NIC, Creative 8x4x32 CD/RW, DVD-ROM, WD 30GB ATA100 HD, Windows 98 1st ed. Recently, the system began locking up when running IE6, then wouldn't even boot. Repartitioned and formatted the HD to 1.5GB and 28.5GB drives. Reinstalled Windows with only video card, then installed one card at a time. By the time I got the last card installed, the desktop background would pull up, but before the taskbar and icons come up, I got an error message. Details say Explorer (not IE) caused a page fault. I started over from scratch again,and got the same message. I have checked the RAM with Simtester, and also run "Heavy Load". They ran fine. I swapped out the IDE cables for new ones, and also pulled the HD off the RAID channel. This time (3rd install), Windows will come up with the desktop, icons, and annoying sounds. But, when I try to do anything as simple as explore a CD, or open anything, I get BSOD errors, including one that reported 2 vxd errors on the same error message (one was MSCTP). I thought it might have been IRQ conflicts at first, so disabled the serial ports (no dial up modem - I love my DSL). That didn't help. Do you have any suggestions as to where my problems might lay? I'm leaning to either the MB or CPU, but don't want to dive into buying one and it be the other.
 

Nevo

Banned
May 28, 2001
696
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0
In my (bigoted) opinion, your main problem is that you're running Win98.

However, since the machine will boot to reinstall hardware, MoBo and CPU are probably fine.

Probaby poorly written drivers.

My advice: go to Win2K! :)
 

Buz2b

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2001
4,619
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Doing a Google search on the MSCTP error brings up lots of info that may or not be handy for you. Bottom line, try to rid yourself of IE6. There have been some problems associated with it. The reports I read did not mention this specifically, I'm just drawing a conclusion. 2 cents worth anyway.
 

DSLer

Member
Feb 10, 2001
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0
61
IE 6 has been gone for a couple of weeks already. Right now, it's IE5 - what came with Office 2000.

RE the 1st reply, I forgot to mention the fact that this system ran just fine for about 6 months, no load problems, no unexplained reboots, etc... the reason I decided to reformat started with a bad decision to upgrade Zone Alarm -- things started messing up from there, and ZA wouldn't uninstall. The system has never recovered.