lmr599 mobo

[dewah]

thanks for reply to earlier vague description....
to be more specific...its socket 7 ,on board grahics,sound modem etc.
ive installed k6-2 500 mhz,10 gigs ,64m ram ,cdr&cdrom(2 seperate units)
running win98se....
the mobo is atx form. using sis530 graphics chip.
the setup is v.fast. but i think my problems start when i use applications that do similar things. i.e. using 2 different defrag progs , or windows speed improvement progs .
i very rarely use more than 2-3 gigs on hdd.
will close now ,and hopefully this might help
max respect ..dewah
ps can any one explain why/how my previous subject is locked?- pretty new to newsgroups.but i like em......

[ReddDogg]

sounds like a nice system, but would be nice to know exaclty what happens. Does it freeze and not let you shutdown without cold boot? Does it give you funny error messages? Does it Slow down to 486 speed? Does little green martians come flying across your screen telling you crazy glue your feet to the ceiling and play the drums in the shower? Sorry to seem weird, but I really am interested in knowing what the problem is too... Then I can see if I know any answers or solutions.

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Joe Redd
MCP

[dewah]

cheers for feedback reddDogg,
i guess my main problem is identifying what i actually want to know?
as i slowly but surely, convert from haphazard thinking ,to a more logical way of thinking.
with this in mind i can explain....
fairly new to comps(feb y2k) but im reading everythin, and using all kinds of software. this could be the problem,as i understand more it seems that some utilities are incompatible for win98?
also im paranoid about possible virus attack(s).
most recent problems caused blue scr.error reports, and on connecting to i/net my sys. suddenly rebooted.it did this several times .
i decided to format and re install, which caused some worrying noises ,originating from hdd....
part way through win 98 install it locked up .with hdd light active.
tryed again ....similar result,but got gurther in restall process.
third time lucky though?
system back to normal(if theres such thing?)
will send more info if you need,
thanks in advance ....
p.s. my main concern is possible mobo that is causing this?

[ReddDogg]

the fact if froze in the middle of loading windows back onto the system can be caused by a couple things. My first question, if you touch your case with the part of your arm between your elbow and your wrist, can you feel any tingle at all? I know that sounds stupid, but that is like the most sensitive area easily available on your body, and i had a problem similar to yours, it would lock up in middle of reinstall of windows, it would get to detecting plug and play devices. My problem was a faulty monitor that had a bad wire touching the computer in the plug in, and it was putting an faint electric current in my system, but longer it was on, the stronger it got. I first felt it when I touched inner arm on the case. Eventually it got to finger tingling too. Anyway, it is not impossible that your mobo is causing the problem, but there are other things that it could be too. I have heard, though not seen, that certain cd rom drives have been known to give trouble during installation process. I heard this from an instructor at school, who has creditdentials out the wazu, and who has built and isp from ground up for his dad. But, like I said, never seen that happen, so I can't gaurentee. It could also be your ram chips, if they are not functioning properly, now that you have windows back on the machine, have you had any problems? If you are not experienceing any more problems now, then it is possible that the windows reinstall fixed it. If you still have problems, have you run a thourough scandisk on your hard drive? It is not impossible you have some bad sectors on the hard drive, I had trouble installing winders on a 6.4 gig hard drive taht had some bad sectors, I ended up partitioning off the bad sectors all together, but that was awhile ago, I am gonna try to low level format the drive here soon, I just recently got ahold of a low level format disk. Anyway, if you want to run scandisk, you need to either go into start>programs>accessories>system tools and click on scandisk, put dot next to thourough, and probably put check in auto fix errors so you don't ahve to baby sit the process, or you can boot into dos, and then type in "scandisk /all" and let it run through the surface scan that way. I would do this first if you haven't done it yet. Also, when you reloaded windows, did you reformat your computer first, or did you just load windows in again?

while it might be yoru mobo, I wouldn't get to antsy to say it must be that, definately want to check all the components in the system. Is there a reason you think it is the motherboard? I did you handle it alot without static strap? Did you spill something on it? Does it look dirty? Anytyhing at all outside of what you described that makes you think taht is the cause?


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Joe Redd
MCP

[Paleo Pete]

Yep. more info..
Are you running Windows 95 or 98 on this machine? AMD K6-2 CPU's above 350 MHz have a compatibility issue with Win95. I don't have the link handy, but if it's needed I can post it later. AMD posted a patch for this problem. Never mind, I just saw the win98se reference...

And I'd also like to know if you formatted before the reinstall or did an overinstall. It's always best to format and do a clean install, overinstall always brings old problems along with it.

I've seen several instances with problems related to CDR drives. Try removing it and installing, then installing the CDR drive after windows is up and running.

I would suggest running scandisk from DOS. Boot with a win98 start up disk and choose Command Prompt Only and use this command line to run an unattended scandisk:
scandisk c: /autofix /nosummary /surface
Autofix is self explanatory, nosummary gets rid of the pop up prompts, letting you walk away and let it run, surface tells it to run a surface scan. Make sure you put the spaces before c and before each /, they are necessary.

Also, after installing Windows it's best to install other software one thing at a time and test the machine for a couple of days before adding anything else, this lets you pinpoint any trouble lots easier, since you know you only added one program. If it starts to give you problems, you know which one to uninstall. Same for adding hardware, add one thing at a time, and if you have trouble at any one point, you know exactly what caused it.

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If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[dewah]

Thanx for replies,heres some more intreging(?) info.
after earlier lock up (may y2k)i managed to over install
without a single glitch.
however ,the last lock up(more severe, as it disconected from
internet)wasnt havin any overinstall (hdd clunks etc). so i booted to dos
and typed fdisk.the reasons for this were to create partition,( to see what it did )
during this ,as u probably know, i was notified i would loose all data on drive ,etc. i did this and then succesfully install win98 without a problem. im not sure if this is the same as a format ,or if it does similar job. anyway it worked,and as yet (since sunday afternoon) have had trouble free system and internet use(despite the uk isp problems of over subscribed and many people complainin of poor service) anyway i wont get into that right now........
ive checked for live case ,but no tingling skin!. u mentioned possible cdrom probs....
i use two cd's.in my previos instal i later added 2nd drive(cdr) as slave(on cd ide channel) and set cdrom as master . this seemed to work fine , but incedently,the dma box in propeties was checked ,so i uncheckedit and rebooted. it was still checked when i looked again ?

now i notice that they are both un checked , but still appear to work fine ...strange ithought.

i assembled the sys myself , but it was a pre system ,and only required me to add cpu,hdd and ram.but having some electical experience i was very careful about static.although inever used wrist strap .
the 64m of ram was cheap(£40) but was new. could this be inferior ?
or glitchy ..........
the main reasons im thinking about mobo probs are :-
when i got pre sys home and set everything up ,i couldnt load on board drivers . being a novice i called them to explain .they asked if the box had PIC SPAIN wrote on,which it did. he said sorry but it appears to be a faulty batch, my 'youve been conned 'head came on.
anyways i returned pre system ,and was given another.
this time i managed to instal one of the various drivers , but got stuck. called them again and they tried to explain what i should do to set it up,i was mystified.they very kindly offered to set it up for me..
so off i went back to shop....
any way the point is ,he took it away to set up.he returned a little while later and said ,he had to give me another pre sys coz that one died when he flashed the bios chip ? i never asked him to do that,but i suppose it is normally the correct thing to do when setting up system.
so he set up the next one and said eveything was installed and ok. i asked about flashing the bios and he recomended not trying to do that.
(unsurpring i thought)
the system functioned great.
look forwards to your feedback
thanx again ....dewah
maybe it was software related?

[ReddDogg]

I have 0 experience with a pre-system, whatever that eactly is. But, I can see now why you are worried about the motherboard. Is the computer function ok right now? When was the last problem it gave you? and, the one that does make me wonder... you ran fdisk, and you deleted the partition and then made a new one? If you do that it should require you to reformat the partition that you create. If you didn't have to format anything, it means it never got anything equivlant to it. If you are still having problems, I would run scandisk from boot disk, make sure all sectors on the drive are good, and then reformat the drive, and reload windows. If everything is working fine, I would just file that suggestion until it starts giving you problems, and with winders, it is enevitable that you will have some problems at some point or another.

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Joe Redd
MCP

[dewah]

cheers reddDogg,
just had a lock up.i was downloading a 4meg file and wham!
after usual ctr-alt del yielded no result , i reset. then it restarted(counting nvram).... passed the first couple of lines and froze (curser remained blinking ) powered down for proper restart and is ok again.
anyway ill start backing up ,ready for what seems enevitable...proper format ,as im unsure if i formatted before.(bad memory or what).but i dont think i did, as it seemed pretty quick, in fact im certain it never.its all coming back now................
thanks very much for your help all.it was very usefull,think ill upgrade that mobo though.......
by the way a pre system is a partly built (nearly fully) system.all u do is slot in your cpu , connect hdd and clip in that ram.thats it man!
puttin a mobo in is another story,as im sure u know.
any way thanx again.
dewah....