things getting worse help

[eifion]

Hey folks,

am at my wits end with my puter now.

These are the bits I've got.

Abit KT7A v1.3, latest bios.
256MB PC133 Ram
GF4 Ti 4200
Athlon 1.1 GHz
SB Live - latest drivers
Win 98 SE
IDE channel 1 20GB HDD (OS and programms) + 4GB HDD (backup)
IDE channel 2 - CD rewriter.
Microsoft intellimouse optical

Used to be a lovely gaming system, fast and reliablem but things started going awry on installing NOLF2. Kept getting dumped back to desktop, system hangs, random reboots.

I've tried all sorts of things, latest VIA 4 in 1 drivers, USB filter patch, then went for a reformat and reinstall.

First problem encountered while reformating, the format comand got to 98% of the 'checking existing format bit' and reported 'insufficient memory', and even an unconditional format wouldn't convince it to intsall. I had to delete and recreate the partition to get it to format. I read somewhere that this could be due to a corruption of the master boot record.

Anyway, win98 is now installed and working, but the probelms that dogged NOLF2 is now affection other games like Hitman 2 and Mafia that previously ran beautifully without a problem. In fact, even browsing in windows is juddery, the computer can't seem to do anything like start an application, open a file, and move the mouse at the same time, the pointer moves in fits and starts.

I don't think it's overheating, the bios reports a CPU temp of 50deg C ish and a system temp of 30degs odd.

Is there something wrong with my mobo? Is the main HDD about to go belly up?

I'm aware of the SB Live / VIA chipset issue, but getting rid of the SB and putting in a Hercules soundcard changes nothing.

I'm now willing to try anything to get my games machine running the way it should - lucky charms, wiccan spells, rebooting in the middle of a crop circle!!!

[Sterling_Aug]

Have you tried a low level format of the hard drive using the manufacturers' diagnostics utility yet?

You may have picked of a nasty virus that is still hiding on the drive.

Run the diagnostics program to check out the drive.

[eifion]

where would I get hold of such a program? Certianly nothing came with my HDD or mobo. And would a virus survive having the partition removed and recreated? certainly nothing else did!

[paramufay]

yes a virus can survive a fdisk and format.

a zero fill will kill the virus if its on the HD

drop me an email with the name brand of you HD and I will send you the correct zero fill program or you can search the hd manufactures site for the program.

good luck

[AlexGee]

Sounds like flakey hardware to me. I'd give memtest86 a run www.memtest86.com - if you need a copy.

Next I'd be looking at the MOBO, PSU for some sort of subtle or intermittent problem.

Since these same games ran well before I guess we can rule out video drivers, but only if this is certainly the case. Make sure your vid card fan is spinning.

[Wibmiota]

Same thing happened to me 4 days ago. Mine's a PC Chips 758/PIII-1.13/SiS 630. Was gaming great until I installed a new CD-R. With the driver was an auto DirectX upgrade to 8.1. 15 mins later every thing went to hell. Reformatted/reloaded & nothing works right. Went to my backup drive to redo main one still working on it between other systems. Don't know if that helps. I'll watch your posts, I could use a fix also.

Good luck

[eifion]

cheers for the ideas everyone who's posted,

paramufay - no idea who made my hard drive, might have been WD, might have been seagate - whoever was cheap at the time. I'll have to get in there with a torch and look. Zero fill is definately something to try, although Norton Antivirus says my system's clear, I never open dodgy attachments and have zone alarm running all the time. I only ever got one virus before in my life, a romeo juliet virus and that was from a boxed retail cd of duke nukem!!

Alex, cheers, I'll do that tonight. I've got a spangly new aluminum case arriving soon (my current micro ATX case wasn't venting well enough, now running it with sides off and a desk fan pointing at it!!) with a beefy PSU so I'll be able to eliminate that.

Wibmiota, this sounds quite similar - things started going wrong when I installed NOLF2 - which installs DirectX 8.1 - and its since then that things have been going haywire. Mind you about the same time I flashed the bios so it could be that but I've flashed back a version and still getting problems. Wonder if anyone else had a system go belly up with DX8.1

Thanks to all that have replied, it's good feeling I'm not tackling this on my own with such a wealth of expertise out there!

[eifion]

wont' that even create more problems with invalid registry keys pointing to DX files that aren't there anymore?

[eifion]

I'm starting to think it might not be directX causing the problems. I'm thinking this cos I now have a clean install of win98se, on which I have only installed Mafia. This ran beautifully previously but now causes the system to crash. After a crash if I enter the bios and check the cpu temp its generally in the high 60s, so I'm thinking it might be a heat issue.

thanks for the registry cleaner link - always a good thing.