Weird win98 problem

[nebulae80]

Hi, i am very new here so please bare with me and help me.
I have the following system:

PIII 733EB
GA-6VX7-4X Mobo
256 MB PC 133 SDRAM
Hercules GeForce 256 DDR-DVI
Creative Sound Blaster Live! Value
02 x HDD
01 x CD-ROM
01 x Teac 512EB CD-RW

I have windows 98 first edition installed and also norton systemworks 2000, I have the following loaded at startup: the Norton Auto-Protect, Norton Crashguard, ICQ Ndetect, Norton Protection, systray, taskmon, scanregw, loadpowerprofile. The problem is that sometimes when I bootup the system will hang at the desktop, sometimes with the desktop wallpaper and the mouse cursor there only and sometimes with the desktop wallpaper and the icons loaded. Please help, thanks!

 

[lilnnjaboy]

try taking out the norton...and see how your system boots. ICQ...disable the start up with windows...that is just one more thing it has to loads. It seems after all the stuff you are trying to load up it's just taking a long time. Try it without any of that stuff...and see how it goes. If the problem goes away, and the programs one by one and see which one is giving you the problem.

I am almost sure it's the norton. That stuff makes your system goofy. also try this before removing norton. If your system is hanging...wait like 10 minutes and see if it'll somehow get into windows. It might just be taking an extreme amount of time.

 

[nebulae80]

Hi, thanks very much for the reply. Whenever the hanging problem does not occur (it occurs randomly, so it is really hard to troubleshoot it), I checked the system resources and it says 92% free, so is it still a resource prooblem? You also advised me to wait for 10 mins before rebooting, but there is no signs of disk activity (no blinking light) and also when it loads the desktop wallpaper and the icons, the mouse cursor will hang there, when it only loads the desktop wallpaper, the mouse cursor can move but there is still no disk activity.

I have followed your advice and have disabled the crashguard, the norton email protect and the ICQ Ndetect. Crossing fingers and praying now. Thanks!

 

[readysetgo]

Hi

One trick I thought you might like to have to help in your trouble shooting is holding down the SHIFT button when your desktop is loading. What this does is prevent ALL the programs in your startup folder from loading. In this way, whenever I choose(especially when about to play games), I can start my desktop environment with only the windows sound utility and task scheduler loaded.

Good luck, and if you please, keep us updated! CHEERS!

 

[morriswindgate]

Two thing you can and should do:
One > Uninstall Crashguard it's junk and will cause more problems than it is worth. The other parts of Norton Are OK and useful.
Two > as far as you boot up problem goes, Open Norton anti-virus and enable the Start-up scan. The reason your computer is locking up is that the Soundblaster and the Norton Anti-Virus are trying to load at the same time. There is another way to do this, but enabling the Scan at Start is the easy way,plus if a virus got in that requires a restart it will be stopped cold before entering Windows.

 

[nebulae80]

<< Two thing you can and should do:
One > Uninstall Crashguard it's junk and will cause more problems than it is worth. The other parts of Norton Are OK and useful.
Two > as far as you boot up problem goes, Open Norton anti-virus and enable the Start-up scan. The reason your computer is locking up is that the Soundblaster and the Norton Anti-Virus are trying to load at the same time. There is another way to do this, but enabling the Scan at Start is the easy way,plus if a virus got in that requires a restart it will be stopped cold before entering Windows. >>



Hi, how does the hardware (sound card) conflict with the software (Norton AntiVirus) and how does enabling startup scan solve the problem? If there is a conflict, then shouldn't the hanging occur everytime, but mine is totally random.

Anyway I have followed your advice and is keeping track. Thanks!

 

[nebulae80]

Hi all, I have tried the solution of enabling the startup scan and the problem still exist!!! Please help!!!!!! I don't know what to do anymore!!!!!! This random hanging thing..........

 

[lucidguy]

Format hard drive, reinstall Windows.

There really is no way to reliably reintroduce stability to such an essentialy unstable OS. Except reformatting, reinstalling. And that will last you a month or two at most. And then you have to do the same thing all over again.

Hopefully every time I give this piece of advice, I will manage to convert at least one person to Linux, which has never and will never exhibit this degree of unstability.

 

[nebulae80]

Har har, out of desparation, I have already formatted my harddisk and reinstalled everything before. The thing is that the weird random hanging at startup still occur!! S.O.S!!!!!!!!!!

 

[lucidguy]

Windows is crap. You have realized this yourself, after multiple formats and reinstallations.

Your cure is in Linux.

Format hard disk, install Linux.

 

[Lemon2001]

hehe, since we are giving out this kind of advice. format drive, then install win2k. that should fix some of your problems. the only thing from norton that you should have running in your background is the anti-virus and the firewall if you have that. turn off everything else from norton. the utilities are nice but you don't need them running 24/7 sucking your resources.

 

[Lemon2001]

also check to see if you have a heat problem in your case. heat will cause your computer to hang and bootup is one of the hottest instances other than heavy gaming or rc5 cracking. then check your hard drive. scan disk it. hopefully its not your hard drive that's dying.

 

[nebulae80]

I don't really have win2k, but am anxiously waiting for XP to come out. Shouldn't be a HDD problem as I have scandisk, defrag, scan for virus before. Shouldn't be a heat problem it occurs during startup and during serious gaming like Unreal, the system is still stable. Can anyone think of any more solution??

 

[Jolt2]

I have the same problem that you are having. Ramdom lockups at startup when at the desktop. I know that it has something to do with the programs loading in the background at startup. I have tried turning off different stuff from the startup group but the ramdom lockups still happen. It's weird because I had the same Windows98 running on my computer for over 3 years and no problems (trying to keep the registry clean is almost a full time job- ha,ha). Then 4 weeks ago I decided it was time for a format and install. I upgraded the processor and installed Windows98 SE. Now I get the same ramdom lockup only at startup. Once the system boots up, it runs great. I was thinking that maybe I could track this problem down by looking at the &quot;bootlog.txt&quot; file in the C:\ root directry but the date on that file is from 6/10/01 and I just booted up today (6/19/01) so that file must not get updated each time the system boots.

Are their any other ways to monitor the bootup and loading of Windows98? I know it is a Windows-software loading problem at startup. If not I may try reloading a backup of my old system and see what happens then. Thanks for any help you could give the both of us!

p.s. there is one thing I see that we both have and that is Norton. I have the System Works Pro 2001 version and had it installed on the old system that did not ramdomly lockup at bootup into Windows. So I don't think thats the problem.

 

[SuperDaveDCF]

<< p.s. there is one thing I see that we both have and that is Norton >>



IMO, Norton System Works is a joke. It tends to cause more probs than it is
worth. A good general rule is to have as few apps as possible running at
startup. Besides the startup folder, look for the other apps by trying the
following at your own risk!! Start-Run-msconfig-startup tab.

MS Office, especially 97, is bad about throwing unnecessary items in startup.

Good luck.

 

[nebulae80]

<< I was thinking that maybe I could track this problem down by looking at the &quot;bootlog.txt&quot; file in the C:\ root directry but the date on that file is from 6/10/01 and I just booted up today (6/19/01) so that file must not get updated each time the system boots.

Are their any other ways to monitor the bootup and loading of Windows98? >>



Strange you should mentioned the bootlog problem, my system also does not create a bootlog automatically everytime it boots up! Does anyone knows why? The random hanging thing is what makes the troubleshooting difficult!!!!!!

 

[Jolt2]

Yes, I have very few apps running at startup. The only Norton stuff that gets loaded is the antivirus and the Norton firewall.

Now for some info:

Check out this Microsoft page Q261766 - Hang at startup or shutdown with Ndis.vxd Enabled

This is for Windows ME and 98SE. The biggest thing is that it tells you how to perform a logged boot. Now you will be able to use that &quot;bootlog.txt&quot; file to see what is happening. There are other links here to more info that may help too. I'm going to check it out more but at least I know how to track my boot/startup now so I may be able to figure out what is causing the problem for me.

 

[Jolt2]

Nebulae80,
Here is a site that may help too. It has links about startup and bootlog in Windows.

Startup &amp; Bootlog in Windows9x and Me

Next stop may be Norton web page to check their data base for trouble of this kind.

 

[nebulae80]

Hi, thanks for the reply. But my problem as I say is random so it is quite hard to troubleshoot it. I am using win98 FE, so the ndis.vxd doesn't apply to me. However, in my bootlog, I found this line:

[0001885B] Dynamic load device
[0001885B] Dynamic load failed : [0001885B] File not found

I can't see what device it is trying to load so I can troubleshoot it. And also, my system doesn't create a bootlog everytime it starts, so can anyone help??

 

[Jolt2]

That Microsoft link tells you how to make do a bootlog.txt file when you want, so for a ramdom problem you will have to make a bootlog every time you boot up to catch it. To find that device number I would suggest that you are going to have to search though the registry to find it. Besure to backup your system before starting but then again the system is hosed so you are really out nothing if you loose the system at this point. You just have to re-load it again and start over.

 

[lilnnjaboy]

few more question...have you tried updating the windows files, and if you have? which updates did you do? you said it can't be your harddrive...but did you check the harddrive with the manufacture's utility? If there is a bad sector on the harddrive or something wrong, the windows diagnostics will not find it.

 

[nebulae80]

Hi, I have checked my hard drive, did a thorough scan disk, defrag it and scanned for virus and all negative. I have used windows update and updated everything and the norton live update and updated everything and it still happens.

Then I found this url: Sound Card FAQ. I followed the advice, disabled SB16 enumeration and switched my sound card from Slot 2 to Slot 4, and the error still happens!!! And also, now my sound card and my Hercules DDR-DVI share IRQ 11, is it wrong? But my system device shows no conflict!

Could it be my drivers? But I have updated all of them, BIOS, chipset included.

Could it be because of the DMA enabled??


I AM STILL LOOKING FOR HELP!!!!!!!! Please help!!!!! Thanks!!!!!

 

[Jolt2]

Well, my startup problems seem to have gone away. After trying to find out what was causing my system to hang at startup, I just put everything back the way it was to begin with and now it works fine. Of course I wrote down all the changes I did when I was trying to find the problem so that I could put it back. It may have been a flakey setup by one of the programs and after removing the program from the startup group and then turning it back on again got it reset - I do not know but my system is starting fine now.

My bootlog.txt files were the same if it was a good startup or a bad so I don't know what was doing it but it is gone now.

Nebulae80, your IRQ's are going to change when you change cards in slots on your motherboard. Think of it as each slot in your motherboard has a surtain IRQ number to it by default. These slots share IRQ's with other hardware that is not in a slot. By changing slots for a card, you have changed in cards IRQ in the system. You want to try to get each piece of hardware on it's own IRQ but most of the time you will not be able to do it so some hardware has to share an IRQ. You want to group two pieces of hardware together to share the same IRQ so that these two hardwares are not used at the same time. You would not want a video card and a sound card to share an IRQ because there would be a conflict when both pieces try to pass their info through that IRQ at the same time. You can force slot IRQ values in the BIOS but that a whole other can of worms and had nothing to do with your boot problems.

Have to turned off all the startup programs and tried rebooting your system about 10 or 20 times in a row? To turn off all the startup programs: click the start button; then click run. Now type in &quot;msconfig&quot; in the box. At the &quot;Systen Configuration Utility&quot; screen click the &quot;startup&quot; tab. Click on each tab to remove that line form your startup. You will need to leave the lines &quot;System Tray&quot; and &quot;Task Monitor&quot; checked as these files are reqiured for Windows operation. When you reinstalled Windows did you remove all card except for your video card and then do the install? After system is up, then add one card in at a time, booting up between each card setup? It is easy for Windows to get goofed up if you try to make it do everything at once on a install.

Well, good luck to you.

 

[nebulae80]

I have finally &quot;caught&quot; the mysterious hang thing on my bootlog but to my dismay it is the same as the normal bootlog....... sign it is rather sad that this case will go into the unsolve files together with all the blue screens, fatal exception errors and the illegal operation that has a strong link to Microsoft. Now I know why there's a reboot button......

 

[igiveup]

What version of drivers for your video card are you running? You might try updating those.