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Please help me fix this Duron system.

Zorba

Zorba

Lifer
Well my Bro hosed his computer, and he of course wants me to fix it.

Here is the problem: When booting up the computer will boot up, POST, run the Autoexec.bat, then pauses for a couple of seconds (like it would for the registry scan), then it reboot (by itself), when it comes back it asks you to go into Safe mode, etc.

I ran scanreg in dos, and it said that the registry was fine. So I have no idea whats wrong with it. (BTW: It does boot into Safe mode just fine) He swears he didn't do anything to it (yeah right), so I have no idea what could be causing it. It had been running just fine for 6 months, before this.

His system is:
Winblows 98se
MSI K7T Pro
DURON 700MHZ
Mwave 128MB PC133
WD 20.5GB ATA/100 7200RPM 2MB OEM
Guillemot 3D Prophet II MX 32MB
PANASONIC 1.44 FLOPPY DRIVE (The floppy control on his MoBo is dead, so his computer can't use a floppy)
48X EIDE INT CDROM
SOUNDBLASTER LIVE! VALUE OEM
56K/V90 INT PCI WINMODEM W/VOICE
Vantec Socket A Cooler
Iomega (Plextor) 12x10x32x burner
Probably (not really sure) generic 250W PS (it came with the Aopen case, seems to do the job)

He has Via 4-in-1 v4.25
Whatever BIOS came on the motherboard


I want to try to flash the BIOS, but since the floppy doesn't work, I am not sure how I'd be able to do it. If I can't flash the BIOS, I am going to RMA it for the bad FDD controller.

Things I have tried:
Pulling out SBLive
Pulling out everything besides want is need to boot
Booting off a CD bootdisk (to reinstall windows on top of itself), but the computer locks up when booting off the CD for some reason.

Thanks for the help,

BTW: His computer has been running for about 6 months just fine, until about a week ago.
 
man i had a similar problem, but it was an old crappy system of my buddys. the thing is i had an extra harddrive laying around and put it in and it booted up fine. then i stuck the harddrive out of his machine and stuck it in mine as the slave and then formatted the drive. then took it out, stuck it in his machine and ran setup for win98. i know that is a poor solution, but if nothing else is working..........
 
Another quick fix, without all the waste of trying to figure the cause...

Place another HDD in as a slave...copy valuable info off if any. Then reformat!

You can rack your brains on this one for quite awhile and have limited success. Too many avenues here in which to go...


 
Yeah, I was planning on putting his HDD in my computer as a slave and getting every important off of it.

The only thing is, I am worried I won't be able to boot into dos with CD rom support. Since the floppy doesn't work, and is locking up with the CD-ROM bootdisk (which I know the CD works, and I tried two different drives).

Also, anyone know the e-mail address to MSI tech support? (I can't find it anywhere on their site).
 
try resintall win98 over itself. this will allow you to get in and get what you need. then do a format and clean installa nd make aghot image of it. I would also partition the drive so you bro can save his data on the second partition. That way the next time he screws it up, you can just ghost over the first partition.
 
Well there could be some settings in the bios that makes the motherboard not boot from the floppy. So you will have to change the boot order setting in the bios to get it to boot from the floppy.
 
knutp: The Floppy controller doesn't work, period. In dos or windows, never has. I have tried 3 different drives with 5 different cables, which I know all work as I tried them on other computers.

Adul: I was going to do that in the first place, but then I remembered my bro knows jack about computers. So I could picture in my head, his 2G Win98 partition would be maxed out, and there would be nothing at all on his 18G data partition 🙁. I would show him how to save to it, etc, but everything I tell him about computers, he forgets in 2 seconds.

BTW: After this I have decided never to build computers for anyone that can't build one themselves (or at least work on them themselves).

Thanks guys.
 
I hope you have tried the different connectors for the floppy. The msi board I put together (and abit, asus) used the floppy connector after the twist. But well there could be some floppy disks that uses the connector before that twist again. But you have tried this I guess. If the floppy connector doesn't work, rma that thing.
 
wasnlos: I cleared the BIOS with using the jumper.

knutp: Yeah I did try that too, even though I believe that the A: always goes after the twist (although I could be wrong).
 
Enable boot logging (it's on the menu that shows up when you hold down control before windows boots). After it crashes/reboots go into safe mode and look at bootlog.txt (specifically the last few lines) and see if you can find anything strange in there...
 
Just a few thoughts:

Go into safe mode and run a full scandisk and virusscan (actually, run the virusscan from DOS)

Set video drivers to standard vga

Remove network card and drivers

Install standard IDE drivers (not via or anything like that... try removing the current ones and rebooting)

Rename your autoexec.bat and config.sys so that they don't load

Uninstall any programs that have been recently installed and/or seem suspicious (low quality, possibly virus infected, etc.)


Good luck 😉
 
When you put his HDD in your computer as a slave to backup files, format it (from DOS) while in your computer. Then copy all setup files from the win98 CD to his HDD *and* while in windows right click on the drive, select "Format" and check copy system files only. You should now have his HDD freshly formatted and have the win98 setup files and system files on the drive. Put his drive back in his computer and boot from the HDD like normal as if windows was still installed. It should boot into DOS (like a boot disk) and give you the option to run the windows setup from the files you previously copied from the drive. Hope this helps.

-Justin
 
I had a similar problem with my floppy drive in my Soyo 6BB motherboard. To fix it I went into BIOS and then into STANDARD CMOS SETUP and there is an option called "Floppy 3 Mode Support". Try turning it on for drive A. I'm not sure what it does, but it made my floppy work. I agree with jepritchett, if you're gonna do a fresh install of win, then format and make the drive bootable from your PC. To make it bootable when you're in DOS type:
sys D:\
Of course you change the drive letter to whatever it needs to be. Good luck!
 
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