PC locks up before loading Win98SE

[Cornbread]

I spent a good while looking at all the "boot problem" posts, but my problem seems unique.

Right now the computer is completely stuck. Upon power up, the computer gets stuck right after the windows sound comes through the speakers and gives me the warm, fuzzy error message "browseui.dll" invalid page fault. When you enter through that, it gives me the ol "devldr16.dll" error, with an invalid page fault module kernel32.dll.

I thought I'd circumvent that by reinstalling win98SE, but the PC won't let it get past reading the drive for available space. It subsequently locks up like grandpa's hernia.

This is what I got:
Asus A7V133 MB & AMD Athlon 1.13 Gig CPU w/ coolermaster BB fan
Western Digital 7200 RPM Caviar HDD running on ATA100 cable
ATI Radeon VE 32MB video
Soundblaster live 5.1 sound card
Toshiba DVD-ROM
Sony 1.44 floppy
Micron PC133 SDRAM 256k
total of about 4 fans in it and one custom fist dent!

I just whipped out my softball bat and turned on some gangster rap... help me before I pound it into oblivion and waste all my money I spent on it.

[mjc]

Umm...if you tried installing over top that may have been your problem. If you really want to go the reinstall route you should format first and then try to install.

But if you can still get into to Windows then you may be aboe to repair the damage...first have you installed anything new latlely?

If you have then one or more systems files may have been over written woth incomaptible/older versions. If you can get enough functionality out of it the get into safe mode try running SFc in the run box.....

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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.

[Cornbread]

Format first. I should have thought of that.. well anyhow I cannot get into windows at all. Yes I did install something new before my computer took the proverbial crap, a DSL modem.

The computer was running unstable before that, however.. I set the computer up to be a gamer pc to run Mechwarrior 4. I think I picked the wrong video card, because it kicks me out of MW4. It won't lock the computer up, but it will kick me out to the desktop along with a nice error message.

Is it possible to get back into windows? the reinstall never went through. or should I just format the hard drive again?

[mjc]

Try Safe Mode....if you can't get in, in Safe Mode the wipe and start over from scratch....as for dumping you back to the desktop, I have seen about three dozen causes for that.....only one dozen of which are video driver problems.....
http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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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.

[Cornbread]

Roger that. I think it's F8 that gets me in safe mode, right? And once I get into windows safe mode, then what?

I'm thinking this is some kind of deep rooted windows problem. The last time I used the computer, I had just installed the modem, was downloading some stuff and came home to it locked up. I wasn't running any games.

After attempting to reboot it, it locked up and left me at my present condition. The computer would often screw up upon the bootup with some kind of registry error, making me reboot the computer and then sometimes it would give me that sweet blue screen saying I'd restored a good registry.

Any opinion on this?

[sea69]

seems to me, if you're having all that many problems you need to reformat/reinstall.

of course if you have things there that you would like to save try the safe mode tip.. F8 is for boot menu, F5 should take you right into safe mode.

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif



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sea1_69@hotmail.com

homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/index.html)

[Cornbread]

The last time I installed a DSL modem and got online with it, it was very volatile (like this time but with a different modem) and that led to the first format and reinstall (done by a computer shop) and it worked but with the aforementioned problems until I put in the new one, and low and behold it folded.

Is it possible I have a crap copy of win98SE? The same thing happened last time. I'm thinking if I format and reinstall again it will do the exact same thing again.

[sea69]

what modem is it out of curiousity??


who is your dsl carrier??




[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 03-26-2002).]

[Cornbread]

the most recent DSL modem I installed was a Broadxent, apparently made by Creative Labs. The one before that was a Actiontec, and I found out later that there's known compatibility problems with them and AMD processors.

My DSL carrier would be Verizon. But I have it through AOL ultimately. The whole thing makes me wanna vomit.

[classicsoftware]

The problem is with the virtual NIC driver you are using called WINOPET.
What a POS....

Get a router, Linksys and connect directly w/o the winpoet software.

You will have to disable winpoet with MSCONFIG after getting into safe mode.

[Cornbread]

Unfortunately, I'm not very network savvy...yet. What exactly is linksys? And by router do you mean one of those butt-expensive Cisco Systems jobs or something to that effect?