Clean W2K Install - Need Help

[like2be]

Currently experiencing frequent screen lockups when using internet and some games and I can't determine what the cause of problem is. I shutdown ACPI and went to "Standard PC" config due to IRQ condencing in W2K(you know,everything on IRQ9) and it seems to have helped but screwed things up somewhere else because now system is fussing with USB devices and mouse drivers at every startup? So I'm going to reinstall for the experience and also to load in this "standard pc" feature during setup in hopes that it will take better. I plan to also remove every component except for CD-Rom and NIC card during setup this time instead of full equipt. setup as before. My Question is if and when is the best time to install chipset drivers(VIA 4in1 4.28) and how? Also would avoid this "standard pc thing" and go with regular setup if I could get things to work well, any suggestions. I probably have a device or something here that doesn't agree with system but I just can't determine which it is? My system; W2K, AthlonTB 1g,A7V,AsusV7700
video,SB Live 5.1 sound,Acer56X CD-r,HP 9110 CD-rw,NIC card, Maxtor 60g, 300watt p/s,IBM rapidaccess keyboard,MS explorer trackball mouse.I appreciate any help or suggestions, Thanks

 

[igiveup]

Try and figure out what is wrong with the comp before you reinstall and it might not fix things.
Hey, have you done the reinstall yet? If not navigate to c:\WINNT and look for setuperr.log Open it up with notepad and see what you have there. Should be empty for a trouble free install. If it is empty, a clean reinstall might not help.
To find out what errors your system is giving you go to My Computer and right click. Select Manage, and then expand the Event Viewer section. Go to System and see what it has there. That information is about as good as you will get from your computer. Pay attention to anything that is in there. Next you can go to the Applications part above System that you clicked on before and find out what your software is doing.
I hope this helps you figure out what is wrong. Your plan to strip out all the non-essential stuff is a good one. Get the computer running good and stable with nothing in it and keep checking the computer after re-boot. See if you get any icons and warnings in event viewer.

Good Luck!

 

[like2be]

i give up too! but thanks or the tips, I'll try them before I go any further

 

[huggis]

OK, first off; are you sure it was any problems letting w2k handle irq´s? Your motherboard is fully ACPI compliant and your other hardware also seems to be that.
Secondly; i noticed that you have a burner (IDE?) and i would stay away from installing latest busmaster included in via 4.28 since that would make your IDE devices to SCSI devices ! That will lead to no burning
And finally; check out your cd-rom and burner in the device manager, don´t have DMA enabled for them.

(oops almost forgot... Do you have quality memory sticks?)

 

[like2be]

Thanks Huggis, was just about to reload and I thought I'd check addt'l replies before I started. You saved the day!! How would one go about finding exactly what is in an updated driver before it's downloaded. What a mess that would have been. Also, say I stay with 4.25, should it be the first driver installed or what?? Thanks again for the advice...

 

[like2be]

I forget to mention that my memory is NEC 256Mhz PC133, Cas2 I think. BTW, I sort of agree with you on the ACPI issue, but the screen lockups real feel like overload to me. I wish I new the answer so I wouldn't have to disable anything because that's why I moved to 2000 to begin with, but what else could it be?? I also have to consider what both the video and sound card requirements are and that's to be on individual IRQ's, right?

 

[AMD4ME2]

ive got the same problem here.. let me ask you this.. if you go to www.shockwave.com, and just set there. will your machine eventually freeze up? mine does. something is not being nice and I don't know what it could be.. I pulled the sound card completely out. so thats not it.. now everything is on separate IRQ's..

I love win2k.. but this is driving me crazy...

 

[like2be]

AMD4Me2, you know what they say. "Misery loves Company", That only took 14 seconds to completely lock me up. No mouse control,no ctrl-alt-del, no nothing, had to reset whenever this happens. Somebody out there need to fiqure out this crap or I'm gonna go postal. Now that I've got that off my chest, do you have any suggestions? I guess non-acpi operation is just a waste of good w2k resources because I'm on it now and it still doesn't apparently help, does it? Glad I'm not alone at least, but sorry for your frustration!

 

[like2be]

AMD4me2, also what is your video card and chipset? Maybe it has something to do with Nvidia Geforce2gts or Athlon processors?

 

[AMD4ME2]

thats really sad.. ive tried just about everything, it just isn't working nice, so im going to try windows ME, figure why not, I got my win2k experience.. at least some anyhow.. I start a new job as a PC tech for PC on Call tommorow.. so I might as well know the ups and downs and ins and outs of ME as well

I got good quality stuff in this system.. mushkin rev2 cas2, and seemed fine in 98 except for the horrid memory management. I'll let you know how ME does.

keep me posted though... if you fix it I want to know what the hell it was causing it.

 

[AMD4ME2]

well im in ME now... no problems yet, as I was installing ME I noticed something interesting.. a VIA USB filter driver on my Abit CDROM... I don't think I ever installed that... you might want to try to install that in 2k and see what happens if you didn't already..

 

[UWDawg]

like2be-
I had the same problems. I am on my 5th install of Win2k. It runs rock solid now. Weird.
The only thing I did different on my latest install was flashing my bios. Hope this helps.

 

[like2be]

UWdawg thanks for the reply also. If your wouldn't mind, what BIOS and what was the BIOS installment? Thanks for the HOPE you given me!!

 

[like2be]

UWdawg
are you running as ACPI compliant or any other tweaks you'd suggest? Thanks again..

 

[UWDawg]

Here is what I think happened to my previous Win2K installs. I initially set up the OS with the harddrive on the ata33 controller. This ran fine, but I just had to try to sqeek out every last bit of performance. This is when problems started to happen. First, I switch my harddrive over to the ata100. This led to loooong reboots. Then I started tweaking with the pio. Crash and crash again. So I tried to load all the previous defaults. More crashes. My confuser would just freeze at random times: Sometimes after boot sometimes not at all.

I tried everything. I removed one pci card at a time to see if it was my hardware. Nope. I even used different ram in different slots.

I went over to amdzone.com and found out that other people were having the same problems. They said the fix was the 1005d bios, however, I had to reinstall Win2k after I flashed. My only minor problem now is the Promise controller under device manager. For the life of me I cannot get Win2k to reconize it. I could force it, but I don't think so. I think that is what started my whole mess.

I have not had any problems at all since my last install.

My Rig
900 Tbird
A7V bios 1005d
256 Cas2 Mushkin
X-Gamer 5.1
Adaptec 2940UW
Toshiba 40X Scsi
Pioneer 16X DVD
Elsa Gladiac
D-Link DFE-510+
21" Nokia 445x
IBM 20.5GB harddrive on ata66
LS-120
Zip 100 USB

 

[AMD4ME2]

like2be, any luck with that problem? a friend sent me this link to a a MSKB listing..

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q270/7/15.asp

since I went to winME, I couldn't try it but you might want to give it a shot.

I can't seem to get a completely flawless install of anything though.. now the computer runs
fine, but when the monitor goes into standby mode... I have to reboot to use the computer cause
it will not respond to any keystrokes or moving the mouse.. monitor just stays off! DOH!

 

[AMD4ME2]

bump for like2be's attention