Windows 98 Registry Problem at boot up

[Miklozz]

Feels good to be on anandtech again; but anyways the question that I have is this:

My PC at home does this weird thing with the registry backup (scanreg.exe) and causes my computer to boot-up multiple times. This is what happens: when I push the power button on, the post and blah blah blah is fine, but after I login to windows 98SE, the infamous "blang" comes up and a message saying: Windows has encountered a problem with the registry, please restart the computer. I click ok and it reboots the PC and then the whole cycle repeats about two three times until I am finally able to work in Windows 98.

The funny thing is this, the only time this registry deal comes up is when I cold boot the machine, you know after I shutdown the machine for the night or something and reboot it in the morning when you want to use the pc again. I've tried using scanreg/fix at the DOS prompt, and I've reinstalled Windows 98. After reinstallation, it's okay for a few days and then it does this again. I'm wondering if it could actually be hardware? I've read on the net that sometimes registry problems are caused by bad RAM...

I'm confused... help?!!

 

[BadThad]

What kind of hardware do you have? Overclocked? Hard drive problem?

The only time I usually see this is on OC'd systems. Normally, a bump in CPU voltage can make it go away.

 

[Miklozz]

Here's the specs on my PC:

PIII 667 CPU @ 133 Mhz
ASUS P3v4x Motherboard w/ VIA Apollo Chipset
256 Generic PC133 SDRAM @ 2x128
Maxtor 20 Gb Hard Drive
WD 13.6 Gb Hard Drive
56x CdRom
ACER 10x 4x 32x CDR

I'll try bumping the Voltage on my CPU and see if that works... however, my CPU is NOT overclocked. I'm also looking at setting my jumpers for my CPU manually, because as of now it is at jumperless, would that help you think? And if I jump the woltage, how much higher can I jump it?

 

[Vinny N]

usually that's caused by some level of memory be it level 1 cache, level 2 cache, system memory, or the swap file on your hard drive...since you aren't oc'ing. I'd be leaning towards some faulty system memory unless your hard drive is going south.

 

[UnixFreak]

I have seen this before, try scandisking the drive and defragmenting in safe mode. HD problems can cause this to happen, like posted earlier, in the reg or swap area. Also faulty memory could be culprit,if at all possible, see if you can replace the RAM, just to test it. Cold boot it a few times. if it is a HD issue, the best fix would probably be to format it, run scandisk, and reinstall OS. unfortunately.

 

[Blain]

Problem resolved

 

[Blain]

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