DescentBB

Hey folks, hope all is well. About a year ago I moved to Costa Rica. About 4 months after arriving I checked to see if my computer would work. It wouldn't boot and you all diagnosed the problem as a dead CMOS battery. I replaced the battery and it seemed to boot and work fine. When I replaced the battery I didn't clear CMOS. I put it back in storage and this week took it out to finally set it up in the office. It seemed to boot fine but after getting into Windows the screen went black and it rebooted. This has continued after every boot or reboot. It seems to occur either when the screen comes up saying windows is loading or after Windows comes up. It doesn't always happen at the same place in the boot process and sometmes not for a few minutes after I'm in Windows. I have a Pentium III 750mhz, Abit BE6II Rev 2, Voodoo 5 5500, Windows 98SE etc. I took everything out and reseated all. I reinstalled the video drivers. No change. I did notice 1 message during reboot from SAfe Mode stating "While initializing device IOS: Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer." There are no conflicts shown in Device Manager or when I run System Information. Is this a hardware or software problem? should I reinstall Windows? Clear CMOS? My son and I have a little LAN set up in the office and I really want to play some Descent. It's been sooooooooooo long.
This morning I traded video cards with my son, he has the same card. My card worked fine in his computer but had same problem with his card in mine, so it's not the card. I also found out this morning that if I switch to the Standard VGA driver the problem does not seem to occur but alas it's no good for Descent. Thanks much for any help!

Virus or power supply. I'd say virus though.

CDN_Merlin wrote:Virus of power supply. I'd say virus though.

Virus "OR" power supply...

Sounds like a virus. If you haven't kept up to date in your security patches and you connected to the internet without a firewall, you got a virus.

Buck wrote: I did notice 1 message during reboot from SAfe Mode stating "While initializing device IOS: Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer."

that message...."While initializing Device IOS: Windows Protection Error"

IOS of course is Input Output System

that points in the direction of could be a Virus, or a corrupted Win98SE installation.

Nah, he's using Win98, so he probably doesn't have one of those big worms. And why would VGA mode make a difference with a virus? Most viruses just delete files or spread through email. They don't concoct some devious scheme to randomly crash your PC at some point during boot-up or after you're already up, giving different error messages each time. Especially if they're trying to spread.

My go is with the PSU and that the system is more prone to crashing when the video card needs more power. The best way to tell though would be to unplug all unnecessary devices or swap power supplies though.

Jeff250 wrote:Nah, he's using Win98, so he probably doesn't have one of those big worms. And why would VGA mode make a difference with a virus? Most viruses just delete files or spread through email. They don't concoct some devious scheme to randomly crash your PC at some point during boot-up or after you're already up, giving different error messages each time. Especially if they're trying to spread.

i dont know why im stuck on Win98SE in my head. but alot of trojans, and some viruses will cause sporadic reboots. i know for a fact Sub7 can be setup on a host and randomly shutdown a infected user's PC.

I am thinking it's faulty RAM. How many sticks do you have installed? If more than 1 - remove one at a time and test again.

MEMTEST86 is your friend.

I used to have deep respect for Memtest86 until I was getting some crashes with my recent system due to... after much scouring of the internet... USB ports being enabled? In fact, I experimented, and the more USB ports enabled the more quickly the program crashed! I think this issue was only with my mobo though (Asus P4P800). It was certainly misleading at first.

I used memtest 86 on my system and found some memory errors, so I bumped the RAM voltage up from 2.6 to 2.7, they went away, now my system runs solid as a rock most of the time.

just wanted to say thanks for everyones help. I cleared the BIOS, checked the battery again, and reinstalled Windows. No change. Wah. Only thing left to try I guess is a new power supply. I'm going to take it out and reinstall it to see if that helps. Never know. Why does the power supply cause a reboot? I have my BIOS set not to reboot with power failure? Weird it only seems to occur in places that are not DOS in nature. Oh yeah, I found it did occur with the Standard VGA drivers. You folks still think it's the power supply?

You've eleminated everything but the power supply. Take a PS from another PC and try it on yours. If it doesn't reboot, then your PS is toast.

Another thing I've noticed is that the mouse pointer will occasionally scoot across the screen on its own. Does this point to anything in particular?

Buck wrote:Another thing I've noticed is that the mouse pointer will occasionally scoot across the screen on its own. Does this point to anything in particular?

a dirty mouse, clean out the mouse inside the case.

If it's an optical mouse, it's your mouse pad. Some optimice don't like colour transitions at ALL and go a bit mental.

Try the RatPadz GS gaming surface - it rocks.

i forgot to ask if it is a optical, if it is, mobi took the words right out my mouth

or there is a hair across the mouse's lense (happens to me)

Or if its an older optical mouse with a less-advanced optical engine. My old Logitech optical skips from time to time when i whip it around, but my newer MX300 never skips.

It's mechanical, I thought maybe the mouse problem might help calrify the reboot problem.

Any suggestions for a new power supply? Anything I need to be careful about?

Use an active PFC PSU with sufficient amperes on the +3.3V, +5V and +12V rails. be quiet PSUs are very good (and almost silent) ones.

You might want to put some power surge filter between your computer and the wall plug. I wonder whether Costa Rica has very stable power on their power lines (forgive me if some of my tech terms are wrong - I am German ).

Another problem might be humidity and/or heat. Try to keep your computer in a cool and dry place. Check CPU and case temperature in the BIOS after the computer has been turned on for a while (you need to reboot for that).

If your motherboard is pretty old (several years), the capacitors might also be damaged. Check them whether they have popped up or are stained at their tops. If they are, you need a new motherboard.

You might also want to try WinXP. It's really much better than Win98, and you can play Descent 1+2 using D1X or D2X on it. D3 works natively on WinXP.

I assume you have tried different ram as it was mantioned in another post above. It may not even be "bad" ram, just ram that is incompatable with your motherboard. I have had many problems similar to this and *finally* after usually a day or two of reinstalling and trying different things I swap out the ram and suddenly everything stablizes. I have learned to try that more often if I have problems.

Tried a new power supply and UPS. Ran a surface scan on the c drive. OK Took everything out, cleaned it and put it back together. Still reboots. Connected nothing but the c drive and video card and it still reboots. Tried another monitor, no change. Put my video card in another computer, works fine. Took out 1 stick of RAM at a time, same story. Wah! I guess it must be the motherboard. Any other ideas. Thanks for all your help. Oh, cleaned the mouse and it still skitters across the screen now and then.

Here is a shot in the dark. Are any of the capacitors on your motherboard leaking? I and a friend both had an ABIT-KA7 board (mine with an athlon 800, voodoo5) which had bad capacitors. His capacitors "exploded" and leaked all over his video card and other things, while mine just leaked a little.

My computer seemed to be getting more and more unstable. It would give me random blue screens in windows. Lucky I noticed it before it was too late.

Searching around I found out that a batch of capacitors with the "wrong" formula in them were sold to several motherboard manufacturers and ended up in many of the motherboards at the time. The liquid in these capasitors, when a charge was applied to them would produce a gas which had to escape. Therefore the capacitors would either slowly leak or explode.

You probably would have noticed though sence you have been messing around in there so much lately. Maybe this will help someone else at least.

So if I need a new motherboard, what do you suggest so that I can still use my Sidewinder 3d Pro. I'd like to be able to upgrade to a pentium 4 also and use the 3dfx voodoo 5? What operating system will allow me to use these items?