System Stability problem

[tungtung]

I had two problems that I could not seem to figure out.

problem 1
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I had a system with the Abit VP6 board with a 1.1 GHz pentium III chip (100 MHz bus) that was running perfectly without any problem until about two weeks ago. Then out of nowhere the system started crashing every so often even without any program running.

I have tried reinstalling and even clean install of Windows 98 SE ... no effect. The system just crashed once Windows is loaded ... the funny thing is that it run perfectly without any problem during the Windows installation. The solution at that time was clocking down the CPU to 726 MHz (66 MHz bus) ... mind you that this CPU is a real 1.1 GHz CPU not an overclocked CPU ... and the system ran perfect until yesterday ... when the exact same problem just show up again out of nowhere ... I have asked around and most people suggested that it is a power supply problem since the system had two Western Digital harddrive and a CD-RW as well as a DVD drive and had a ATI Radeon 9500 pro video card.

Does anyone has any other possible explanation of why this occurs.


problem 2
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My second system (also running Win 98 SE) had this strange problem, where Windows says that the registry has been corrupted and then restore a backup registry. I have done a virus scan on the system ... everything is clean ... but this problem (registry error) shows like once every two days.

Any suggestion as to why this happen and how can I minimize the chance of this occuring again ... could it be because of a driver error ... mind you that this system has an old nVidia Riva TNT2 installed as well as an old SoundBlaster 16 ISA installed and had DirectX 8.1 installed ...

 

[snidy1]

First problem could be bad ram or bad power supply.
Not sure on the second, I would just try a fresh install

 

[jackschmittusa]

Dropping the fsb speed often abates a thermal problem. Have you taken any temp readings on rig #2?
Has it gotten warmer where you live in the last 2 weeks? If the psu was marginal to begin with in rig #1, an increase in the ambient temp may have reduced its output below stable levels.

 

[onemo]

Sounds sorta like my capacitor's going out in my 8k3a. Used to reset or lockup/crash out of the blue, but never during OS installation. Replaced power supply and most other components to no avail. When I had given up I sent for a kit from this guy. (I figured if I couldn't use the motherboard reliably, I might as well get some soldering practice) When I desoldered the caps, many were bulged on the bottom and were undetectable as bad from the top during visual inspection. I would say this route would be a last resort.

 

[tungtung]

 

[tungtung]

well ... so far ... rig #2 is stable ...

my problem is still rig #1 ... I think it's the motherboard going bad ...
I've tried taking out all the drives except one harddrive ... still crashes ... tried removing all cards except video card ... no luck ... changing the video card also doesn't help ... I've even tried changing the PSU ... no luck ... tried using the second CPU socket (VP6 is dual CPU board ... I'm only using 1 CPU) no luck ... tried flashing to the latest VP6 BIOS ... no luck either

the wierd thing is that the system only crash when Windows is loading on normal mode ... in Save Mode the system is rock solid ... even at an overclocked speed (tried this for fun) ... it has also no problem when I fresh install Win 98 on the second harddrive. However again once Windows 98 finish loading and the desktop is shown the system crashes ... oh yeah one thing to note ... when the system crashes ... pressing the reset button does not reboot the machine ... the CD-RW and DVD drive light blinks and the harddrive light lit up ... that's all ... and nothing else happened ...

going to try loading other version of Windows (Win 2000) to see if the problem persists ...