Windows Loading problem

[shahani]

After adding a new drive to my PII 300, 64MB system, the new drive booted to C:/> after using the disk manager software. Showed full 40GB capacity. Then, when I tried to load windows 98, after typing setup, it just would not go any further. The CD is fine and reads the directory of the win98 cd. Tried with different CD of Windows, same problem. Tried Win95. Same problem. Freezes at the point where it says scanning registry. So I partioned to FAT16 (19 drives!!) and loaded dos 6.22. No problem. Then loaded win 3.1. no problem. But when I type win at C prompt, the whole system shuts down. Then it doesn't restart unless I pull the plug out. Sometimes even before booting, it just abruptly shuts down.

Since it boots to DOS and loads win 3.1, I figured that the RAM is OK and so is the motherboard. Else it wouldn't get this far. Anybody have any ideas before I throw out the mother board and CPU. One other thing: I noticed the CPU fan doesn't work anymore.

[NDD]

Well, after I read the last line of your post ... hmm ... did you try to recover your CPU fan ? http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif MS-DOS and Win3.11 are not so CPU intensive, like Win9x in most cases, even during install ...

Best Regards ...

[shahani]

Did try to revive the fan and it works sometimes. Did the whole thing from beginning when the CPU was cold. Nothing works. I don't think its a cpu heat problem. My guess: something gone wrong with the motherboard. Could be RAM or CPU too. Powersupply is OK as I put in a new 300 watt one and same problem: abrupt reboot.

[surrealchereal]

Could there be anything in the boot record that might be a problem with Windoz? It sounds like there may be a driver on your boot disk that is bad and a conflict with windoz, I would look at any 32bit files (since the old stuff loads, but you're also using the DOS there not the files from your boot disk, You might need to reset the drive back to a clean slate, to make sure there is nothing on the boot record, then partition. I would do a clean partition with FDisk and not use any software, unless you must for the bios to recognise it. If you need any help we will will be here. I think it's worth the extra step, because at least when you are ready to start a process of elimination.,you know there is no ghost in the closet. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif also try it with just your video and hd, ram and mobo. My abrubt re boots were a conflict between the drivers of the modem, video and network.
WHAT EVER YOU DO,, DONT THROW IT OUT!!!! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif If nothing else disect it and have fun,, but wait before you decide that http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif Check out this lots of good software, (http://www.bootdisk.com/)
and because I should have looked at the spell chk to see Windoz become the window..

[This message has been edited by surrealchereal (edited 06-15-2001).]

[shahani]

Thanx for the comforting words, surrealchereal. True I messed with disk manager as bios didn't recognize the large drive. But I have fdisked many times and started clean. Will try again as what you say about the 32 bit driver conflict sounds very logical. The bootdisk.com site is excellent. Anyway, I will try once again to remove any overlay drivers and see what happens. But as I said, I partioned/formatted it to FAT16 and got something like 19 drives but still the problem persisted. Maybe I should use a utility to low level format and then see. Really frustrating. What is your opinion on the conclusions I have reached re. motherboard/ram in my earlier responses?

[shahani]

Does anyone have ideas on this problem? Short of throwing away the cpu/mobo, I can't think of anything.