Win98 Registry Checker Problem

[Planetoa]

I've been trying to fix an old Pentium III for my parents. I wiped c:\ and reinstalled Win98. However, I keep getting Windows Registry Checker popping up and telling me that I have registery problems. Windows says that it fixed the problem but it keeps popping up everytime I restart. Any ideas?

Can I just download a new system.dat file and replace the corrupted one? I'm lost here folks...

 

[rkoenn]

I am not sure but I would be suspect of a hardware problem, possibly the hard drive. It might be writing the registry incorrectly and corrupting it enough that windows detects it and tries to repair it. I have only had that happen a couple of times where it did it continuously and I have worked on a huge bunch of machines. It seems like maybe once it might have been due to bad memory as well. It could even be a faulty motherboard component. The registry, to the best of my knowledge, is constantly being manipulated while windows is running and it sounds like during that writing to the registry the corruption is significant enough that windows recognizes it, probably finds some type of read error when attempting to read it. Of course I can't be sure but I would suspect hardware problems.

 

[Planetoa]

Thanks for the reply. I stuck in a new hardrive that I know is good and the Windows Registry Checker still keep popping up. The same happened when I replaced the RAM. I'd bet my life that it's a problem with the motherboard.

It's time to scavenge any decent parts off this machine and scrap the rest of it.

What a frustrating ordeal...

 

[bendixG15]

I would run memtest to test the memory, one the slight chance its bad memory.

Then write all zeros to the hard drive, run scandisk or chkdsk or some other drive tester and then format and install Windows.

 

[Planetoa]

I already reformatted the hard drive and installed Windows. Would it make a difference if I ran Scandisk and then reformatted?

 

[bendixG15]

I would write zeros, that wipes off all data, reformat does not.

 

[Planetoa]

Okay...

I'm embarassed to ask. How do I write all zeros?

 

[Planetoa]

Anyone know how to write all zeros?

 

[spherrod]

you could get DBAN - that should do the trick

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

 

[RebateMonger]

If you have a drive or memory problem that a re-partition and a ("normal") re-format won't fix, then writing a bunch of zeroes isn't going to fix your problem. I can't remember the last time that I had to use any drive tool that forced zeroes on a drive.