Win 98 cold boot problems

[nscrfan]

Well here is my problem......
when I first start up my system it hangs at what looks to be at the "isapnp" line in the boot up log. after it hangs i press in on the power button until the system restarts and it will boot to the boot menu saying windows did not load properly and instead of going into safe mode i boot normally and it works fine! It hangs in the same place if I push the RESET button. ( what is the difference between these two things, reset vs. power?) I have had this problem for weeks now and have gone through all of the troubleshooting methods using msconfig and still end up back at square one! i have removed the isa devices (modem and sound card) and still it happens. i thought i had this resolved once by removing the isapnp enumerator from the registry and then rebooted (win 98 detected it had new hardware and reinstalled it) this actually worked for a couple of days then back to the same thing. if i shut down the system and restart within 30 minutes it is fine anything over an hour has the same problem. also the time i tried it directly into safe mode it did boot up. i am hoping someone can give me some direction to help my problem. thanks
mike

[thxmanu]

Is there an option to disable the ISA slots in the BIOS somewhere?

[Mark]

Could your cmos battery be getting weak?

[Mark]

Could your cmos battery be getting weak? Since it holds for 30 minutes but not an hour it seems like it might be the battery.

[Mark]

Could your cmos battery be getting weak? Since it holds for 30 minutes but not an hour it seems like it might be the battery. The case power supply might also be going bad. Maybe you swap them both out to confirm or deny.

[Mark]

Sorry about the multiple posts. Weird.

[nscrfan]

There is no place in bios that I can see to disable the ISA slots. I was contemplating the battery.....pretty inexpensive thing to try anyway. The voltages listed in the bios show that they are good and I checked the 12 volt and 5 volt and they looked okay, not saying that it could be bad anyway. Interesting thing, i tried to use a SVGA driver instead of the Monster Fusion driver and today it booted right up.....maybe I am on to something, or just luck that it started? Thanks for the info, any other suggestions would be great but will let you know about the video card/driver.
mike

[nscrfan]

I tried The SVGA driver a second time and the system halted again. So that is not the solution. Back to trying what you suggested Mark! Just thought I would fill you in.

[Mark]

I'm still somehow suspecting the battery or perhaps something underneath shorting the battery. But, you might want to take a look at the Automatic Skip Driver Agent located in System Information to see if it detected something not loading properly.

Stay in touch!

[Marty]

I had that problem with a maxigamer pheonix videocard, voodoo banshee chipset,had to reflash video card bios. Try removing video card from dev manager, shut down,replace video card with another card to diagnose.

[nscrfan]

Well Guys.... I happen to have an extra Video card here so I thought why not replace it! Well it has now been 3 boots and all have been succesfull! Hopefully this isn't just toying with me. Thanks Marty for the post and hopefully this takes care of the problem. thanks mark also for the help as I was thinking this could have been the problem too I was ready to try anything.

[Mark]

Glad you're back up! I would have never suspected the video card based on your symptoms. Good work, Marty!

[This message has been edited by Mark (edited 06-04-2000).]