VFAT/VCache errors on Athlon650/biostar mobo

[gellor]

I have installed the Athlon 650 with the Biostar M7MKA motherboard and I am have extreme issues. I am installing Win98se. After the installation is almost complete and windows is finalizing the settings I always get VFAT errors. I have several times continued the installation anyways. I get the system up and running but it is VERY unstable. Everytime the system is writing to the HD it would seem that it has a good chance of blue screening on me with a VFAT or VCache error. At first I thought it might be the hard drive. I have a Maxtor 7200 10.1 gig drive. I went to their site and used their MaxBlast utility hoping that would help, but it didnt. I went to biostar's website and installed the updates they had there with no luck. I went to AMD's site for new drivers, but they had no effect. I have no idea what is going on. I always get the same error, I got it before I flashed the Bios, after I flashed the bios, I put in my old IBM hard drive(reformatted) and got the same error, switched cables, ran RegClean a million times. I have no idea what to do. I have reinstalled windows 10x. Can anyone give me any idea what to look for? My system is currently too unstable to use and I am at the point of considering putting back in my k6-2 chip and motherboard. I have considered buying a new motherboard, but I really dont have the money to do that now. It is very depressing, I have spent the better part of 4 days on this issue, any help would be EXTREMELY appreciated.

Thank you

[mschuch]

Sounds like a memory issue to me.
Make sure you are using AMD approved memory on the board.
Are you using PC-100 memory as well?
Blue screen and VFAT issues are usually caused by bad or improper memory, at least in my experiences.

Hope this helps.

[gellor]

The memory is generic pc100, I was using it in my old K6-2 450 system and it ran fine. I did order some Micro CAS2 PC100 memory that should be arriving this week. Would it be possible that my old memory would run fine in one system and not the other?

Thanks for the reply

[mschuch]

Unfortunately yes -
The new Athlon boards are really picky about what brand memory it uses.
If you've ordered Micron brand memory, that should do the trick. The generic stuff just doesn't cut it on these motherboards.

Best of Luck.

[gellor]

Well I have a friend coming over with the Asus Athlon board and 128 megs of micron mem. Gotta love the 7 day return policy. I am going to try swapping out the memory first to see if that does the trick. I do a clean install of Win98 to completely test it. If that doesn't work I'm going to try the Asus board. The place where my friend does business said they actually quit selling the biostar and FIC boards due to the number of returns they were getting. Once again thanks for the help. If you like I will post what I find out to let you know what the issue is.

thanks