Blue screen, freezing..

[Julie Az]

My computer is driving me crazy! I'm hoping that maybe someone here can help me figure out what is wrong with it or what to do to fix it!
First, a little history about it because I think it may have something to do with the problems.
My dad bought it in the summer of 98. A few months after he got it, the cdrom drive wouldn't open, under the warranty they replaced the cdrom with a new one. Then just a few months ago, the computer would do absolutely nothing when turned it, they put a new motherboard in it. After this my Dad got a new computer and we reformatted the hard drive. Everything was working OK for a couple of days. Then I started getting this blue screen all the time "fatal error" "fatal exception occurred in OE at.."
The blue screen would come up all the time, when on the internet after about 10 or 15 minutes, it would says ILLEGAL OPERATION PROGRAM WILL SHUT DOWN.
So, with the advice of some "expert" on ehow.com they said it sounded like a boot drive virus to delete the partition and reformat the computer.
OK, I did that. It got past enter product key way adn then during "personalizing system settings", the blue screen still came up. I fought with the computer enough for four months to know that when the blue screen came up, if I got it to shut down properly and left it off for about 30 minutes, it would work good for about 30 minutes.
NOW the computer will hardly start up or shut down. It is always making me go into safe mode, I have to shut it down from safe mode a couple of times just to get win 98 to load completely and not freeze. Then once I get it to load and am going to my email or pcpitstop, if the blue screen doesn't come up or if it doesn't freeze, it goes to this blank screen with a little cursor line _ in the top corner.
Another problem the cdrom won't open at all. Under device properities it says the driver needs to be updated, when I click on update, it says I am using the most current driver. I came here looking for a driver for it, but I have no idea what kind I need or anything.
One other thing it says under system properties and then performance it says "drive a is running in ms dos compatilbility mode"..it says the same thing about drive c.
So...if anyone got this far or has any idea what I can do besides throw the whole computer out the window..

[bassvax]

Hi Julie http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif
I think one of the problems is related to overheating possbly due to cooling fan failure or venting ribs being blocked. This indicated by the way the system will work for a while then shut down. The drivers also seem to be the problem which is putting your system into the MS-DOS compatibility mode. Although, the CD ROM drive uses the system default drivers loaded with Windows. Paleo Pete provides us with this link for a discussion on the MS-DOS thingy: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q130/1/79.asp
The irregular way of having to get Windows to start could still be related to said virus...If you haven't already used a virus scanner to specifically diagnose your boot records I'd suggest this, but this often is already a default setting of "competent" virus software. Something to try to get the CD-ROM to load correctly would be to go to the device manager and remove the CD-ROM from the system then re-boot the pc and have windows detect and re-install the drivers for it. Getting the drive tray to open can be done by inserting an opened paper clip in the small hole on the front of the CD-ROM drive. Other suggestions involve removing the case to check for loose cable connections from the drive to the motherboard. Someone having been in your pc's case recently could've easily account for loose connections. Use caution when removing the case so as to not damage cables and such. Power down the system and discharge yourself of Static Electricity before touching the components inside. With the case off you can restart the pc and observe to see that the fan is working. While in safe mode have you run any diagnostics like scan disk or the likes? Please keep us up to date and surely others will have more specific help with the driver issue and other suggestions. Good luck finegeling.

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Jerry

[Julie Az]

Hi, thanks for responding.
I read the ms-dos thing through one of his posts earlier tonight, unfortunately, I'm not very familiar with any of that...
Also, I don't have any virus program on the computer. Before I reformatted
it. I had to put AVG virus program on it because when I tried to install notorn when my cdrom was still working, it kept coming up with the blue screen or telling me something about not a valid win32 something, I don't remember...Although the virus program I did get downloaded and with up to date files was a free version, it always did a boot up virus scan and never came up with anything!
Another thing I've done tonight after reading some FAQs on Microsoft. I went to the system information and then to "automatic skip driver agent". It had a couple things listed there. "starting a device=>ROOT\ADAPTER\0002", "calling a PnP BIOS=> Get extended system config data" and this one was shown twice "calling a PnP BIOS=>Get statically allocated resource info". One other thing I did tonight was under the Sys Config, I cleared the checkbox for everything under selective start up. Not much of difference.
I've run scandisk from ms-dos mode and safe mode, I've done defrag in safe mode too. When I try to do defrag or the full scandisk in Windows. it comes up with a blue screen too.
I am using my brother's computer right now, I can't stay on the web or on my computer long enough to do much with it. I got it turned on and loaded up after a couple of tries and errors. Then I deleted the cdrom controllers and cd rom from the device manager, then I went to search for new hardware and it worked for a couple minutes then froze.
I wouldn't know what to even look for if I took the case off. I don't know what to do...I've been searching, looking at things all night...I guess it's time to give up for the night, ha, and work on this more tomorrow.

[PostCode]

Another possibility is a bad power supply. What is the rating on the power supply? 200, 250 or 300 watt? Have you tried another power supply to see if this solves your problems? Another possibility is bad memory. If you have more than one DIMM in the system, try removing all except one, then run the system for a time to see if the problem comes back. If so, then try another DIMM, etc... Also, try running the system without any other add on cards, i.e., sound, modem, scsi, etc...only the CPU, memory, Hard drive and then once you know these components are running properly, then add in one component at a time and run the system for a time before adding another to see if the problem is reproduced. Check all ISA/PCI, CPU and memory slots for cleanliness also and reseat all components. Hope this helps some.

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Eric's BIOS Post Codes (http://www.webenet.net/~ntuser)

[Julie Az]

OK. Well today my brother got the CDROM to open. We did a Restore entire system, it got through everything and right before "starting to run windows for first time" came up. It said "default.ini not found" and sci signature" not found. I don't know if that has anything to do with it or not? But when windows was setting up new hardware the same blue screen came up like five times, then the screen went black and had purple lines across the top! Urgh, so...if anyone knows what I can do or try?