Software issues

[supershenlon]

Almost none if any of my programs and games work. The only program installed that works is Adobe Photoshop 7. All my games and stuff is always crashing. Half-Life crashes, Jedi Outcast disconnects me off the internet. Ive looked into this problem, and realised it must be something to do with my OS, Windows 98. All my drivers are updated. If i cant get it fixed before Saturday, i'll just reformat and install XP. ( But I much rather prefer 98!!!:( )

[Vic 970]

is your pc 'clean' ? IE: no virus's, spyware, adware, rucks & rucks of temp files etc.

[gwallen4]

Please send us the specs for your system - motherboard, CPU, harddrive, memory type and MB, video card, etc.

How long since you reformatted and reinstalled Win98? What drivers are you using? Any viruses detected?

If it has been awhile since you reinstalled Win98, I would just reformat and reinstall Win98. After awhile any operating system becomes cluttered with stuff that can keep it from running correctly.

If you recently installed Win 98, you probably messed up one of the drivers. Reinstalling it again may work the second time around - since you are familiar with which drivers to use.

Finally, while this sounds like a software/driver problem, there is a chance that it could be a hardware problem - bad video card, memory?

[supershenlon]

MSI MS-6712 KTV4-L - VIA Apollo KT400
Athlon XP 1900+ @1.6gHz
256DDR MB RAM
20GB Hard Drive
GeForce 2 MX 400/440 32MB (with the 45.03 nVidia drivers)
Direct X 9.0b/a?
Windows 98 FE

The only things i have downloaded are video codecs such as Div X, XviD and REALONE player, but they didn't affect my PC before.
I reformatted about 2 weeks ago after installing this new motherboard and CPU. Games like Medal of Honor:Allied Assault run perfectly fine with my system, but other games and software are malfunctioning.

[gwallen4]

Nice system.

Did it work with all the games for awhile and then stop running them?

Have you downloaded the latest VIA 4 in 1 drivers? Also there is a newer version of nVidia Detonator drivers (45.23).

What kind of crashes are you seeing - freezing, blue screen, crash to desktop, spontaneous reboot?

[supershenlon]

I've updated the VIA chipset and the new nVidia driver came out about 2-3weeks ago. It completely freezes and not even Ctrl+Alt+Delete works

[gwallen4]

Freezing - Could be either hardware or software/OS.

If this were my computer, I would test memory with DocMem:

http://www.simmtester.com/PAGE/products/doc/docinfo.asp

Make sure you are not overheating - look in BIOS.

If those didn't find the problem I would try a bare bones boot: disconnect all drives except your boot drive (disconnect power and data cables from CD-Rom, floppy) and pull all cards except your video card. Then see if it still freezes. This only takes minutes to do but eliminates several hardware causes for freezing.

I have an extra video card and I would try that next because I know that I can do that in about 15 minutes. If you don't have one I would go straight to reloading Windows 98SE - takes a couple of hours, but can cure the problem.

[supershenlon]

Im gonna upgrade to XP tommorow after backing up files and stuff. If crashing happens again, I'll come back to you guys/girls again. Thanks so far guys/girls!!:)
P.S. I just dicovered also that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault crashes after an hour or so as well :|

[Budfred]

Okay, I don't know that much about video cards and gaming, so take that into account.... The thing is, it seems like 32Mb Video RAM is pretty limited for many of today's games. I am wondering if you need an upgrade to a 64Mb or preferably 128Mb video card to get the performance you want....

Also, 256Mb RAM is apparently about the minimum for WinXP and if you are doing a lot of gaming, you may want to add more if you do go to WinXP....

[supershenlon]

My PC just about reaches the recommended specs for todays games, but when games like Doom 3 come out, PC will be lucky to be minum requirements. I will upgrade to a GeForce FX 5200 128MB DDR by the end of October (Im on a tight budget as im only 15) and add another 256MB DDRRAM stick as well. At the time of release, MOHAA only required at least a 16MB graphics card. Besides. It doesnt really matter about games, because after christmas I probably won't get the chance to play any because of revision and mocks for GCSE's. But thanks anyway for now.:)