I built a new system with all new components with the exception of the cup and RAm. Everything appears to work fine, but when I try to load windows 98 I get the error message "runtime error integer divide by 0" and my system locks up. I suspect its something with the cpu or the RAM. i do not have the CPU overclocked and have a nice big CPU fan on it to keep it cool.

Welcome to the forums!
Can you tell us the exact version of Windows 98, what the CPU is, and what type of RAM and how much? Also the basics on the other components, esp the motherboard?

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Charles M. Kozierok ( ixlubb@PCGuide.com )
Webslave, The PC Guide (http://www.PCGuide.com)
Comprehensive PC Reference, Troubleshooting, Optimization and Buyer's Guides...

the motherboard is a P6FX1-A Pentium Pro socket 8. I do have the jumpers set right for 200 mhz and the bios recognizes it as a Pro 200s. The cpu is a Ppro 200 with 256k cache. the RAM is 2-16 mb sticks of 72 pin EDO. Not sure if it's parity or non. the OS is Win 98 SE, but I got the same error with win 98 and win 95. that's why I'm sure its a hardware glitch. The hard drive is a brand new Seagate ST37221A 17.2GB and I used seagate's disk wizaard software to set it up. It defaulted to UDMA mode 4 with a 66MB transfer rate. Maybe my MB doesn't support that high of a transfer rate?

Ah, neat. The first PC I built used an Elitegroup board, and I still use it for my kids.
Have you used this RAM on this board before?
I was thinking maybe this was one of those "upgraded to new, fast CPU on older version of Windows" timing loop problems, but you've got that covered.
Could be the hard drive. Did it come with a util to force it into lower speed mode, or have you tried a drifferent drive?

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Charles M. Kozierok ( ixlubb@PCGuide.com )
Webslave, The PC Guide (http://www.PCGuide.com)
Comprehensive PC Reference, Troubleshooting, Optimization and Buyer's Guides...

I downloaded the diskwizard software from the seagate web site that lets one do nearly anything to the drive. I just popped in some different RAM and got further than I have, but got the old "integer divide by zero or overflow problem message again. I'll try lowering the transfer speed of the drive and partioning it to two smaller partitions.

Sounds like maybe a parity error is corrupting your windows software either when it was written to disk originally or when its being read off the disk. Try enabling S.M.A.R.T on your IDE drive and turning on the RAM parity check in BIOS. Turning these on at this point might be too late since if when you installed Windows the parity error occured, you would still have corrupt data - so you might need to reinstall Windows with all the parity checking turned on. Lowering the transfer speed of the drive sounds like a good idea too.

dale

I changed the parity of the ram in the bios once, but i made the wrong choice and it didn't like it so I changed it back. I'll try both suggestions again. thanks