What now?

[eskimo2]

What now?
I'm redoing my pc in order to get AH working.
- Lots of CTDs, was running Win Me, so I decided to format the HDD and install Win 98.

I reformatted my hard drive, then tried installing Win 98 - lots of error messages, Win 98 never finished installing. Reformatted and tried again, same result.

So I figured either my HDD is bad or my Win 98 CD is porked (it looks OK though).

As a test, I tried installing Win Me again (to see if the HDD could handle an OS installation at all). I got one error message and Me installed, but it starts in Safe Mode, kind of. It says "You are using theSelective Startup for troubleshooting your system." It's in 16 bit color, and looks and acts like safe mode.

Should I just buy a new hard drive? Or might it be OK?

eskimo

[AKDejaVu]

What are your system specs?

[Dingbat]

What Dejavu said. Also could be memory failing.  If you have more than one stick take one out and try again.  If it still happens then it's probably not memory.  Did you fdisk?

[llyr68]

1. I'd avoid WinME like the plague
2. After formatting the disk, did you do a scandisk to check for bad sectors on the drive?

From a DOS prompt,

"C:\scandisk /surface" will get you going IIRC
if not scandisk /? will list the command switches available

HTH

[eskimo2]

Originally posted by AKDejaVu
What are your system specs?

AMD Athlon processor 1400MHz, K7AMA Release 05/15/2001
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200

256 MB of RAM
File system 32 bit
Virtual Memory 32 bit

Sec Slave drive ATAPI Incompatible (press F1 to resume, I gotta do this every time on start up.)

new power supply

Hitache DVD/CD

40 GB AT Fireball Hard drive

eskimo

[eskimo2]

Originally posted by Dingbat
What Dejavu said. Also could be memory failing.  If you have more than one stick take one out and try again.  If it still happens then it's probably not memory.  Did you fdisk?

It's got 1 256 memory stick.

What's fdisk/

eskimo

[eskimo2]

Originally posted by llyr68
1. I'd avoid WinME like the plague
2. After formatting the disk, did you do a scandisk to check for bad sectors on the drive?

From a DOS prompt,

"C:\scandisk /surface" will get you going IIRC
if not scandisk /? will list the command switches available

HTH

Windows 98 has been loaded for the 3rd time.
On start up it just did a scandisk and this warning came up:

"msgsrv32
This program ..ilegal op... shut down
If the prob... bla bla ..vendor."

Click on details and I get
"MSGS followed by a gazillion squares and a few Ss.

Then all I can get is a blue screen.

eskimo

[Dingbat]

Fdisk is a partitioning utility provided by microsoft.

As far as the error message does this help Q222629

[AKDejaVu]

Do the basics Eskimo....

Make sure your vid card is seated.  Make sure your memory is seated.

Remove all peripherals except vid card.  Try again.
If that fails, try finding a spare vid card to try.
If it works, install the peripherals one at a time.

Hope you figure it out.

AKDejaVu

[Dingbat]

Please make sure you follow the link I sent you, it has to do with the Onboard sound that you may have.

[eskimo2]

Thanks guys, will try.

eskimo