I/O Subsystem Driver?

[SirCarcass]

Okay, I checked the board but didn't see anything that addressed this particular problem. Here we go.

I came home for lunch and booted up my computer to surf the web like I do everyday. I did my thing and was getting ready to go. I started a file download and left. When I got home, my wife said my computer was acting funny so she turned it off. I turned it on and everything seemed fine until it got to the Windows 98 splash screen. It sounded like my hard drive kept trying to spin up, then it would click and try again. It kept doing this before displaying this message and halting:

While initializing device IOS. Error: An I/O subsystem driver failed to load. Either a file in the .\iosubsys subdirectory is corrupt or the system is low on memory.

Okay.... I tried rebooting, same thing. I tried going into safe mode and it gave me an error about a missing or corrupt ios.vxd file in my System.ini file. Well, I rebooted a few times and it finally booted to Windows, but still was making that noise. I checked my System.ini file but found no mention of IOS. Everything seemed to work fine, but when something would access my hard drive, it would pause, make the spinning/clicking noise, and then go on. At the moment it doesn't seem to be making the noise, but I know if I try to reboot, it'll do it. Anyway, I checked the Microsoft website and it mentioned this being a problem with Win 95, but that it was fixed in Win 98. I've been using Win 98 since it came out on many different computers and have never seen this before. I haven't changed anything since I reformatted about 2 weeks ago. Here's my specs:

AMD Thunderbird 1.2GHz
Iwill KA-266 DDR mobo
384MB of DDR RAM
Voodoo 5 5500 AGP video card (waiting for my GF4 Ti 4600 to arrive....)
SB Live! 5.1
40GB WD hard drive
BTC DVD-ROM drive
HP CD-R/RW drive
Windows 98 SE

I have all of the latest drivers, etc. Like I said, I've never had this problem before and I've had my current system for a little over a year. I just hope my hard drive isn't going out. Any ideas?

[ski]

The noise means your hard drive is dying. Back up all critical files ASAP and replace it.

[SirCarcass]

It doesn't seem to be doing it now. Could it have been a freak occurence, or should I start shopping for a new hard drive?

[ranchdog]

At this point the best thing to do is go to
Western Digital website and run a system check
on the HDD.


Luck.

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....How long is a minute... depends on which side of the Bathroom door you're on. ......
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[SirCarcass]

Okay, I downloaded the WD diagnostic tools and ran the tests and didn't didn't find any errors.... Strange....

[iisbob]

if you've rebooted less than 5 times since this happened, go to a DOS prompt and type Scanreg /restore ands choose teh date before this happened, this will restore your system registry back to befoere this error and should take care of it.

if you've booted/rebooted more than 5 times ( the default setting for scanreg is 5-you can increase it or decrease it at will ) then you can reinstall windows over itself ( a " dirty " install ) and see if it will rewrite your system.ini file.

Your data should be ok, most times it is.

or you can get a system.ini from another pc running 98se and copy over yours to see if it'll fix it.



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iisbob

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.-Mark Twain

[mjc]

I am going to guess that it could have just been a freak occurence, because it is now running (right?)...the noise and such could have just been the drive thrashing because the IDE drivers were not loaded correctly...the Windows CD and IDE drivers are the files in the iosubsys folder.

Run SFC (system file checker) and see if one of the those files has been changed, also you may want go into Safe Mode and remove your drives (hard drives and CD) and the IDE controller and let Windows reinstall them. That should remove a corrupted vxd (do this if SFC doesn't turn up anything).

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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.

[SirCarcass]

Yeah, I've rebooted many times since then. I'm sure I rebooted more than five times the day it happened.

One thing I did when it was happening was boot into Safe Mode and remove my ALi IDE Controller, which removed the two drives (I have it partitioned). Then I rebooted Windows and it reinstalled everything. Now that I think about it, I don't think it's done it since I did that. Maybe that fixed it. I'll watch it for a few days and see if it does it again and let you all know. Thanks so much for your help!

[sgelhar]

One thing about windows that is extremely bad to do is shut the computer down while windows is running. Whats worse if the computer is busy trying to do something such as download a file or running an application. This can cause windows files or drivers to generate unexpected errors. These errors then can be applied to drivers or the registry. But the one nice thing Microsoft has done with windows is the ability to repair itself. This is why you notice problems sometimes go away. The downside, however is that the registry can be so badly corrupted that you would have to re-install the operating system. So, any time a computer hangs or looks like it is suspended animation. Do a cntrl-alt-del and go into the task manager and end the programming manually that is hung up. You will thank the computer gods for it that you did it this way.

[SirCarcass]

Yeah, I'm intimately familiar with Ctrl+Alt+Del. I use it religiously. The only times I have to do a cold reboot is when it completely locks up, which happens on occasion. I can't think of a particular occurence recently where I had to just shut it off, but I'm sure it's happened. Hopefully, the problem has fixed itself. We can only wait and hope.

[iisbob]

This is why when i first saw 95 in operation i was so amazed that MS would put out such a crappy OS to the general public. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

I had been using NT for a couple of years before i started fooling with 95, then 98 ( i really liked 2000 ) and never could understand why anyone would put up with the crappy coding of 95/98 that crashed so often.

Won't even go into ME here.

Now NT will crash, but not anything like the 95 kernel-since 3rd party softwae doesn't have direct access to the hardware like in legacy based 95/98.

That was why when Xp debuted i was ( and am ) all for it-it's based on the proven NT stability-it can still crash, but nothing like the older 95 OS's.

Of course, for true stability i've always used Unix/Linux for serious work. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/tongue.gif




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iisbob

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.-Mark Twain

[SirCarcass]

The problem I have is that I'm a hardcore gamer. Naturally, compatibility is a major issue with me. I have XP, but have hesitated to put it on because of compatibility issues I've been hearing about. I'm as likely to play a game from 1990 as a game from 2002, so that causes problems. I'm mainly waiting on the purchase of a new hard drive so I can dual boot. Until then, I guess I'll put up with 98.

Funny tidbit, where I work, my department's computers still have Windows 95. The supervisors can't figure out why people's computers lock up and crash all of the time. They've even bought new computers, just to put 95 on them. I mentioned that upgrading them to 98 would solve a lot of the problems, but what do I know? I'm just a data entry clerk.... working on my BS in Computer Science.... Ah well.