After solving my previous hangups with a system I am building (Tyan s1598 mobo,AMD K6-2/500, win98), there remains a problem that makes it virtually unusable. Sometimes it boots from powerup without a hitch. More often it turns on, everything spins, CDROM lights. but then nothing comes on the screen and it just sits there(no beeps. Pressing reset usually repeats the same scenario, but after trying it three or four times it will usually boot up. Sometimes I have coax it by putting a non system disk in the floppy, but this doesnt always work and I just have to power down and wait for another try. While installing things or changing settings and the screen says windows will now restart the system, forget it, it never restarts on its own and I have to go through the whole reset flogging again. This makes intallation a very tedious process. Also even though I set the CMOS to the instant off power setting it still requires a four second delay to shut down. It is also erratic in allowing shut down from the start menu, most often freezes. This thing is driving me nuts. If the first computer I build gave me this much trouble I wouild have never tried it again. I have only OS, and video card installed so far, and apart from startup/reset things seem to work ok. I am ready to try another motherboard. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

What size power supply do you have in it?

What other devices are currently attached...like CD drive etc?

What kind of cooling setup do you have?

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Originally posted by mjc:
What size power supply do you have in it?

What other devices are currently attached...like CD drive etc?

What kind of cooling setup do you have?


Its in an Enlight case with a 300w pwrsupply. I have a 50x cd rom, a 20gb maxtor HD, and a floppy. The CPU is cooled with a heatsink and fan which was supplied with the chip.

In root directory of your C-Drive is a file called MSDOS.SYS.

On my systems and every system I help friends with, I add the following line.

logo=0

It goes after the following.

[options]

This prevents the Windows Logo from displaying and hiding various messages. Most of the time the messages do not mean anything, but now and then there is an important one.

I discovered this about two years ago during a heat wave. My system and two belonging to friends of mine died loading Windows 98. Our air conditioning was not coping with the heat wave and the CPU was overheating. The BIOS was shutting the system down. The Windows Logo was hiding a message which would have made the problem obvious.

Now all my friends have the logo supressed. Note that MSDOS.SYS is a system hidden file. You have to turn off attributes before modifying it.

Since making this change, there has been an occassion or two when a displayed message explained or called attention to a problem.


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Gouverneur
Eschew Obfuscation!
If one hundred million people believe a foolish idea, it is still a foolish idea.

The problem turned out to be bad memory sticks. I got two bad ones in a row. First was a K-byte, second was a Kingston Value Ram. Solution resulted from trying each in a second machine and getting the same problems. New memory from a local vendor (Micron) seems to have fixed everything. Thanks for your input.