Video adaptor maybe?

[kayofcircles]

New system

MSI 6340 M ver 5
256 RAM
onboard video..says "S 3 Graphics Pro Savage"
900 Mhz Athlon
Win 98 with service pack
Philips 107T21 monitor

Problem(s): We noticed after loading the video adaptor that one of the screens (the one that has "verifying pool data" at bottom with a bunch of other things I have never seen on old puter because flashed by at light speed) began "flashing"..all the way "on" and all the way "gone" for 4 times. Doesn't seem to affect performance after Windows loaded, BUT getting numerous invalid page fault errors in various places..like can't even open Dial Up Networking. Finally got one yesterday after using the CDRom to load a file for emailing that was "Explorer..invalid page fault..Kernel32.dll". So, went Aumha on Kernel32.dll errors , and second thing down is to update drivers for video card. Just been to MSI and ??? can't find anything about updating video drivers, and not real sure that's the problem, except clues kind of point that direction. Another one was "Explorer...invalid page fault in Lightframeiecom.dll"...monitor.. and so video adaptor?

Any thoughts?

[iisbob]

looks like you've nailed it to me kay. Onboard video is hard too trouble shoot unless you have the exact make & model no#.

i suggest you actually go by the physical chip on the board and do a search for the drivers based on what you see on the chip.



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iisbob

Computer-Show me the Enterprise; no bloody A, no bloody B, and no bloody C-just the original...Mr Scott { from a STNG episode }

[mjc]

Try here, they have them broken down by chipset ....looks like you have the KM133 chipset...

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[kayofcircles]

Thanks..I appreciate it.

[ranchdog]

Kay....

Maybe I'm too late here. Tried the link by mjc but
no luck.

Try this Link and scroll down to the bottom of the page for
MS-4426. S3 Savage 3D. And select your O/S for the
proper drivers.

http://www.msi.com.tw/support/driver/vga_driver.htm



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[mjc]

The link should be:
http://www.savagenews.com/drivers/drivers.html

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[kayofcircles]

The above link that mjc posted just had that extra "http://" stuff..I figured it out and got there. Just been kind of chicken, and went ahead and posted in the MSI forum to see if there was something easy could try. Haven't checked there yet this morning. Tried some other things yesterday because think also have an IE problem..but no joy. And, truthfully, today am just on a "data gather for later" because if I don't get my Paint Shop installed and get back to "work" a bit..think I am gonna go nuts..lol.

ranchdog : Thanks! I looked all over their site and could not find much of anything. And doing all the "odd" browser glitching..like not being able to go Back..get a "This page has expired"..wha???..was making me awfully cranky. Just been really strange on my end the last few days. So, no, not too late..really appreciate the input and will attempt driver replacement soon.

What was that "repair tool" called???

[ranchdog]

B.F.H.




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

Update: Downloaded and installed new video adaptor..dated this month. No change in flashing on bootup screen. Uninstalled IE 5..checked and puter reading the 4 versions that came with 98..reinstalled IE 5..no change. Error messages in kernel32.dll. Checked through Power Management settings in BIOS..made some changes. BAD IDEA..no boot for awhile there..put them all back to previous setting. Safe mode showed duplicates on all kinds of things in System..removed duplicates. Upon rebooting, Windows reinstalled every one of them. Husband stubborn..makes no sense to have duplicates..tried again. Same result..Windows reinstalls every one. Checked bootlog.txt yesterday morning..only one SDVXD failure..no big. Checked this morning, and have another file that I remember from old puter that's no biggie, but have two other failures now that might be. Says dynamic load failed with ":000F4036: File not found" and another that I will go and check on in a minute. Pretty sure can find help on "WINMEM32.DLL Failure code 0002". Husband and I are getting pretty frustrated and have moved beyond our depth. He thinks we should wipe and start over, and I am just wishing for some guarantee that if we do that, we won't end up "here" in the same spot.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance. This is one of those times that I am fervently wishing that I lived close to one of you...sniff. Just read what Pete said over in After Hours post about taking puter to "qualified" shop..but we don't have a shop of any kind, period.

[ranchdog]

Take a deeeeep breath.... exhale slowly.

Take Hubby out for Dinner & Wine. Work on PC tomorrow.

I'm going to step out on a limb here. Registry is a mess.
Master Boot Record is totally confused. Was it caused by not
doing a fresh install of O/S maybe? New Mboard needs such.
"Old" files showing up, many duplicates showing in D/M. DirectX
is in confusion.

Suggestion. Fresh install of Windoz. Install VIA 4 in 1 drivers
for chipset first. Video drivers and Sound drivers next. Plug
and Prey stuff last.

Funky RAM (non-compatable) can sometimes cause weird errors. The
S3 Video chip has an *issue* w/some modems. I'm still looking for
the patch I had on that one.

It's Murphy's Law. Please do not commit Hari-Kari just yet.




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

I am so "rich" that I have an old puter to come and chat on while beloved is loading stuff back on new. Yes, was fresh install of 98. Was a Creative external modem, but I didn't like it...I know, they're MUCH better, but flashing things, would flash during bootup, had to be plugged in UPS, and wasn't getting any better bps rate anyway. So bought a US Robotics Saturday and stuck it in there. Kingston RAM..never given us any problems before, but only have one other MSI board actually up and running.

Your suggestion was better BY far than what we actually did. Husband took afternoon off, and we started over. May be worse now..reporting missing dll files after installing 98. And he just got a Run32.dll error after checking through msconfig. Flashing screen began again on bootup after loading video adaptor. Just spoke to beloved..and he says he did install everything in the order you recommended.

Thanks. No Hari Kari temptation, but the B.F.H. seems more and more of an option to be considered.

[iisbob]

Kay i'm gonna throw in my $.2 worth here and tell you that when i've seen similar error's upon a fresh OS install-it usually was a bad/failing hard drive.

As the drives fails , files don't get written or get corupted upon being written to the clusters.

Try completely wiping the drive first before an install ( use the MSDOS program wipe.com from bootdisk.com-it's in a zip file called zerofill.zip ) then run the diagnostic's tool provided by the drives vendor.

You could also use the FORMAT command with the /c switch to restest bad clusters ( the FORMAT cmd after DOS 5 doesn't do this by default anymore ) and i always use the /u ( unconditional ) format command-this does not save any unformat information, it tells FORMAT to completely wipe the drive clean and setup a new file system.

Don't know how helpful this is too you-but it's all i can think of at this time.



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iisbob

Computer-Show me the Enterprise; no bloody A, no bloody B, and no bloody C-just the original...Mr Scott { from a STNG episode }

[kayofcircles]

Thanks. Is a brand new Maxtor 20 GB, 7200 rpm..which I should have said above, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's up to par. And we didn't do the writing zeros to HD in between our two attempts...so I will go and fetch utility in a bit.

This may be a stupid question, but are the newer, faster systems actually more complex than the older ones? We've not had this sort of problem with any other systems we've fiddled with...but just now getting to the 200 FSB and 7200 rpm and chips over 500 Mhz. I sure hope that beloved and I can get up to speed because I really liked the way the 900 Athlon was handling things in PSP..very zippy, no little hourglasses, and screen capturing went like a dream..I finally got around to cataloging all my CDs now that I need to "find" files I have saved over the last couple of years. My husband said probably more system bus speed than chip that I was noticing..but still, was pretty cool.

[BigBlue66]

I have a suggestion. Go into BIOS setup and load fail safe defaults or equivalent. MSI boards are really picky with the performance settings. If you don't have top notch stuff, it will puke on you. Not saying you don't have top notch stuff, but maybe it's a little bit compromised after extended periods of use.

Setting the BIOS to fail safe defaults should set the CAS latency to "3", but check it to make sure. If it's set to "2" and the memory can't handle it, you will get all sorts of errors.

More I think about it, the more I think these are BIOS level issues.

Good luck, Kay.

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[BigBlue66]

Check this out Kay:
http://www.lexxguide.com/reviews/ms-6340/

Maybe it will help, maybe not. Do you have anything in the first PCI slot next to the AGP slot? If so, try moving it to a different slot. However, my feelings about the BIOS settings still stands.

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[kayofcircles]

Extended use, huh? I will have you know that I haven't had time to use it extensively..lol. Clarification on that, please? You don't think the mobo "likes" the RAM..or something? Everything is brand new "inside" the puter except the Sony CD writer.

I am starting to think is a BIOS thing too. We did try the fail safe setting, but I have no idea if husband checked CAS latency..in fact, I have no idea what that is, but will pass it along to beloved because he probably does. You may have hit on the problem. That would explain why yesterday's attempt to start over ended us in a spot "worse" than before. Somewhere else to check is cool...thanks!

I ran a virus scan yesterday before we started over because weird stuff was happening. Set on "remember each folders view settings", but wasn't remembering..kept defaulting back to icons. After getting all my shortcuts down to toolbar yesterday..the clock stopped displaying the proper time. I played a few games of Spades and was thinking that must be playing real fast when realized that clock had said 12:06 for too long..lol. Checked, and clock running..and went to correct time as soon as I opened the clock adjustment screen. Just tossing those out in case that points to anything particularly..other than "it's broke!"...lol.

[kayofcircles]

Thanks for article! Just read through that, and that first PCI slot not being active..well, don't know how he has it plugged in, but certainly another place to check. Way cool. Agree with his bottom line..giving documentation a rating of 6/10 because we spent a lot of time with the manual trying to decipher some of the BIOS settings..and for the most part, we left them alone because we didn't understand what the settings were for. Another very fine reason for letting "qualified" techs put one's puter together..yes?

[mjc]

Kay, don't entirely discount the drive not being upto it...I have seen two brand new Maxtors go belly up, one was my sister's and the other was right here on the forums...both of them sort of worked, but either after a struggle to install gave up the ghost or just flat out would not install correctly (that is what the second attempt to reinstall on my sister's machine did...)

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[BigBlue66]

Hmmm, might be worth your trouble to replace the CMOS battery. That board is what, a year or so old, or maybe a little more. Get yourself a CR 2032 3.0volt coin battery and slap that puppy in, just for peace of mind.


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[BigBlue66]

Ok, so what about that memory? Is it PC100 and you have the memory set to 133Mhz? That could cause a problem. Vice versa wouldn't, but if you're trying to run 100Mhz rated memory at 133Mhz, then that could cause problems.

Just trying to think of every little thing, Kay. Maybe I can come down and have a look?

Hehe, my oral hygienist called me up out of the blue the other day and wanted me to come over and look at her computer. Woohoo, ain't word of mouth grand?

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[ranchdog]

Think of Latency as a time span. A time span for RAM to get something
accomplished before moving on to another task.

There is some data corruption going on. It could be worse... could be
having Hard Freeze problems to go along with present situation.

Do you have the install disk for this 6340M board? Most install disks
are so outdated by the time the consumer gets them they are a hinderence.

As I read your posts again, problems seem to arise after installing video adapter drivers/data. Which tells me the Mboard chipset doesn't feel like co-operation.

I realize the video will be funky but un-install the S3 video drivers and let Win98 furnish its own. It will be the same as immediately after a fresh O/S install and video drivers haven't been downloaded yet. Run your system and see if all(most) the the problems still exist.

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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[kayofcircles]

Absolutely, BigBlue ! You can have my side of the bed while you're here...lol. Pete rather zapped us accidentally in the After Hours section where he was saying not to take your puter to someone who "knows a little bit about puters." That happens to be us here in our dinky town. We're getting quite a bit of "word of mouth" business too. Everyone here is a bit poor, so we are on the barter system. Husband has received squash cake, an ancient motorcycle to restore (no, alas, not a Harley), a hot tub..and various other things in exchange for puter parts and repair.

All kidding aside..yeah, me too on the battery idea cuz this puter wasn't keeping time at the beginning. Hauled it back to ABQ, and tech replaced battery (okay, but we were BRAND new to puters at that point). A month later, had to haul it back again and tech wiped and started over. No problems since...so it seems possible to me that something so small might actually hinder a clean install. Pretty sure RAM set on the 100 stuff, but will ask.

mjc : I asked beloved about odd "tunking" noises last week. He said different brands of hard drives make different noises. Should be able to use the drive check utility off Maxtor's website to check the HD first, right? Or might be on either the floppy or CD included with the drive. But will definitely check it out. The return policy I had seen good customer reviews on was the main reason for buying a Maxtor in the first place.

ranchdog : First, I asked husband about the latency stuff and he said he is pretty sure he checked it and it was on 3..but we'll check again before beginning anew. Secondly, yes, was using driver CD that came with mobo. I didn't really think about that being old..because we just bought the mobo from newegg in February of this year. (By the way, husband read article listed above and pointed out that was different mobo and two years old on the article. He said that the same way you say things like "but that was the pioneer days." I am always surprised by how fast puter things are obsolete.) On the video adaptor part..I agree with just not using it, and suggested that..but husband says you can't get to the 16 bit color and higher resolution without a video adaptor. I need that for picture work...so, is he mistaken about that?

No rush. We're taking a few days off. Got outside chores to do, and were getting awfully close to the BFH, so gathering data and "thinking it over" first before beginning again. I DO appreciate you guys straining your brains over this...thank you very much.

[BigBlue66]

[quote]Originally posted by kayofcircles:
we are on the barter system
[quote]

Hehe, built a one gigger Athlon system for a co-worker over two months ago. This co-worker's better half is a pro cook. She cooks soups every week for the elderly, kind of like "meals on wheels."

I have been getting big containers of all different kinds of soups every week ever since I delivered the new computer. Last night I had some homemade chicken vegetable soup. Hmmmm, soup.

Well Kay, hurry up and get that thing fixed 'cause I want to know what the problem is.

MSI boards are great and can be rock solid stable. You just have to find the sweet spot first.


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