Crashes and errors when installing programs(reproducible)

[Vincent22]

I recently did a full restore,win98, as a last resort, after my PC became sluggish.
Although it seemes to restore alright, not once have I been able to load any program without getting a system error or blue screen at the end of the install, Photoshop, corel WP suite, Printer software, Iomega tools, etc, from cd, from Zip, or even copied to the hard drive and installed from there. Ctr Alt Delete will not reboot after those errors. The programs are there after rebooting.

Some reproducible error messages are:
Setup has caused a GPF in module GDI.exe at 0026:00000ebe
and another error caused by explorer
015F:BFF9DBA7
I don't own a Bill Gates decoder ring so I am in the dark here.
I have done several restores, including removing all but one DIMM and dumbing down the BIOS.
In sysedit after a restore the auto exec.bat and the config.sys files are blank,,,totally empty. If i go to "find folders" I can open a config sys that is identical to the one from the win 98 boot disk.
Although I never use a sound card on this unit I tried a restore with it in the slot and Windows did not detect it either during restore or during boot. I have since restored without it.
When I get on the net and go to type in an address as in www...the (http://www...the) cd rom starts up.

I have run BCM diagnostices and all is well.
I installed and ran REGCLEAN today and after an program installationand each predictable system error or blue screen REGCLEAN says there are errors in the registry and "fixes" them.
P2 400mhz
SuperMicro P6SBU mobo
384 mb siemans sdram(only 128 now)
Quantum viking2 HDD scusi2 with LVD
toshiba 40x SCSI CD rom
IOMEGA int zip 100 scsi
viper 700 w/16MB
Aureal sound card( basic)

Any help will be greatly appreciated
Thanks in advance
Sincerely
Vincent

PS> shhh Tried other Win98 cd's thinking an area may be damaged...no go.

[golfcart]

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q229/6/70.ASP?LNG=ENG&SA=ALLKB

[alien_from_io]

First go to Nathans great MS link site for the errors.. If that fails come on back for some more.... www.ehelpfree.com/nathan (http://www.ehelpfree.com/nathan) Take me to your leader.

[obenton]

Sounds like data writes are getting corrupted - hard drive, cdrom, memory? I'd pull everthing out and test on another machine. If you've got an IDE drive and an IDE cdrom laying around, put them in and see how they do - maybe it'll help to pinpoint the problem.