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Win98 will only boot to safe mode

M

morkinva

Diamond Member
The computer was found on its side (he has kids - who knows how many times its been knocked over) and the OS had 'locked up'. . Anyhow, I was thinking that since it will boot to safe mode, it is a software problem with real mode protected drivers. Several times I've had to restore a registry or restore an image backup on this computer to get the thing working again.

But this time after restoring these things, it will still only boot to safe mode. I did a scandisk on the boot drive, and it was okay. I did a virus scan with AVP. I took the board out of the case, and inspected it, but found nothing broken. I reinstalled it checking all cables with the same result. I tried switching the boot drive to ide-2 and some other things with the same result. Different memory sticks in different slots did the same thing.

If I select "normal mode" when the windows start menu screen comes up, it hangs at the windows logo screen.

Is it time for a new motherboard? Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

abit be6
celery 366 socket 370 on a slocket, not overclocked
highpoint ata-66 drivers disabled
sblive
ati rage32 agp
56k modem
 
No telling what driver is corrupted - but what does BOOTLOG.TXT say? A long shot fix is to reinstall 98 over itself.
 
Originally posted by: corky-g
No telling what driver is corrupted - but what does BOOTLOG.TXT say? A long shot fix is to reinstall 98 over itself.
Click to expand...

But how can it be a driver, if I've restored an image of the original working backup of the partition? Anyhow, I looked for bootlog.txt, but didn't find it. Only later to find out it is a hidden file -- I'll call him tomorrow to find out.

Thanks for your response, Corky
 
I had the exact same issue with my mothers system....hers is a Pentium II 300mhz, 192mb RAM & ATI Rage II Graphics. It kept locking at the logo screen under Windows 98SE unless I was in safe mode.

I changed to Windows 98 (not SE) and it worked fine. Not sure if that will help loads but it was the same thing happening to thought I would mention it.

Generally my feeling would be that it must be a driver issue somewhere, if it is damaged hardware causing an issue....as it can....then it could be something else other than the motherboard....might be worth unplugging everything but HD and Graphics and try it then (maybe even try other HD & Graphics if poss....)

Corm
 
Well I called him, and upon inspection of bootlog.txt, there were no load errors, which I though unusual.

Anyhow, it turns out that the SBLive card would not work in that slot, but the system will work with it in another slot. Since it had been in that slot for the last 3 years, I'm assuming that the slot was damaged when the computer hit the ground.

Thanks for your assistance!
 
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