Almost 2 months ago I was screwing around with Video Driver updates and scambled my FAT32 tables. ALL was lost (via scandisk 'fixing' 8200 files into file-checks). I haven't even finished re-installing everything on drive 1 of 2. Before this I was getting the Black Screen Of Death (hangs+no ctl-alt-delete possible) and would get into this safemode loop. Now, with a fresh install of Win98 (and my Vue 4.0 plus others)i'm getting 'spontaneous reboots' the brother of the BSOD above. PC reboots and opens to the desktop like nothing happened. No safe mode at all. But Open GL is on in Vue. Although i'm not in Vue at the time. Yes, i'm going thru every troubleshooting method possible to find the root cause) Could this be related?

Possibly, although it shouldn't do it unless Vue is launched. This could have lots of causes; some issue with video should certainly be on the menu (what card, and what drivers? And what version of DirectX)? Win9x is hinky about the -order- in which you install things (for example, I tend to have best results with VIA chipsets if I install the Via 4-in-1 driver package, then Direct X, then the video card drivers). It could also be a sign of an impending failure. The fact that a presumably vanilla install of 98 isn't running scandisk and offering safemode after such an incident is indication that the OS install didn't go as smoothly as you thought.

Maybe hardware trouble : too high temperature processor are the main cause of failure. What you can do : If you are familiar with computer material (and only if), turn off power of PC, open your PC, remove your CPU Fan with a screw driver (particularly delicate part, beware !!!). See if there is a polysynthetic thermal compound between the cooler and the cpu (look like chewing gum). IF there is no material here, stop your PC. Try to find high thermal conductivity thermal compound (with silver or copper) : only cost 2 euros/dollars approximately (You can also buy a new cooler, which has thermal compound with it, easier to find). Place a small quantity of this material between the CPU and the cooler. Replace cooler (not easy), close your computer, turn on power. If you are afraid of that, you could bring your PC to a specialized store which will do that for you. Not expensive... Lot of the "computer freezing with Vue d'Esprit" problems, and only with Vue, are due to this hot CPU: long calculations are heating the CPU causing errors. The other soft which required shorter calculations are not causing these errors. But even the blue screen (or black screen) problems without any reason (random reboot) can be due to that problem. Better to turn off PC before CPU failure. On some motherboard, there is a possibility to watch on CPU temperature, going inside the Bios. See if the temperature is below the normal (which depends of CPU type). You can find these normal operating temperatures on the web. I had exactly the same prob with win2K which was due to excessive temperatures. Hope it helps, Yves

Thanks for your help. I'm an old geek, and have spent weeks checking everything. CPU temp is fine, heatsink is fine. I've run 'sandra' and AIDA32, memory testers - nothing shows up. I've taken everything out, cleaned the contacts, checked the board for corrosion, and more. I've been to every Tech Forum I can think of. This same problem shows up on All Windows OS' and Solaris, FreeBSD and Linux. All my video drivers are correct for my OS. The safe-mode loop is well documented over at ViaArena, and Microsoft confirms it. But no fix has been found. Same with this reboot problem. I read that gamers are having this problem when Open GL is active. It could be OpenGL and Direct X... I'll keep working on it. Thanks for taking the time to help - it is appreciated.

I suppose you have checked for Viruses and Worms (sorry for that question) ?

Do I read that right: this happens under all OS's? Are you dual booting? Used to have similar problems running W2K and RedHat6.something. Uninstalled everything and went for removable drives in caddies. One OS per drive.

Have you tried

• swapping boards around in the slots
• fitting another graphics card
• flash upgrading the graphics card BIOS (or whatever)
• flash upgrading the MOBO BIOS or
• using MOBO BIOS safe or fail-safe setting?

If your MOBO has a setting called something like "AGP 4X Mode" disable it. I know it sounds screwy but it worked for a problem I had with an 8X card on an Asus dual PII board.

An outside possibility is a dry solder or broken solder somewhere on the board. In which case it's a trip to your local PC dealer. Hope you get it all sorted soon.

Cheers,
Mark

Have you explored the possibility that your OS/Mobo combination might require your hdds to be partitioned into smaller sections? I know mine had a weird@ssed woe where it refused to recognise my new 80gig drive with an 8mb buffer until it was partitioned into two... it might be worth considering? ~beck

WOW! You all are pretty smart! Just as smart as the techsperts. I adore all of you for your help! I have partitions on 2 82 gig drives (all the way to 'L') With CD as R and CDRW as W, Zip as Z. No dual boot (yet, LOL). Today i've spent 7 hours on my PC. First thing I did was disable Open GL in Vue only. Did not disable in nVidia. It broke my heart to do it, and I hate the wireframe view. I DIDN'T GET 1 REBOOT! (knocks wood real hard). Now, this could be Fool's Gold ya know. But I thought i'd mention it. 5 of those hours were spent in Vue 4.1 (scared to try the newest update). I didn't come exactly clean on the OS... I purchased Win98Lite about a month ago hoping that would solve the problem of BSOD. That ended that problem of Internet Explorer grief. It's so nice to have an OS that takes only 125 megs of space, and has 96% resources free 90% of the time. My main PC never sees the internet. I surf on a win95 (osr2) machine with anti-virus and all ports bound (i.e. Shields Up (.com) tells you how to do this). You all gave the best suggestions, and if I could award points, you'd all have 500 each.

Congrats on your 7 hrs hun!! 98lite is awesome I have to agree, I can't wait till they iron out the 2k/xp version, then perhaps I'll be even more happy with it :D It's a pain in the petunia [no offence pet ;)] to have to turn off OpenGL in Vue, but if it gives you more stability and peace of mind, then its a necessary evil. re trying the new nvidia drivers..as long as the new ones arent the detonators 98lite allows you to go back one I think? particularly if you reapply the chubby or skinny patches again if the drivers messed you up? only suggestion I would make would be to recreate a new bootdisk before trying the drivers and making sure anything critical was backed up... I loathe murphy and would hate to risk him a'callin without a special invite take care ~b who hopes u is feelin loads better

Oh Rose? Hop on over to Shane Brooks site. 2kXPLite has gone gold. And look at the list of things that version 1.00 does.... :D

LOL Wicked news!! Thanks Dale. :D I was waiting for email notification from the team for some reason... ~b checking root system to ensure no blonde is creeping in

Attached Link: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win9x_30.82.html

Is Shane Brooks still going? I thought the project had folded as links to 98lite.com & .net are no longer valid. Anyhooo...

A possible quick win is to ignore all the latest updates on the nVidia site and use the drivers that came with your board.

Alternatively, have you tried the nVidia "reference" drivers (URL above)? In theory, these give the best chance of system stability. In theory.

Cheers,
Mark

Shane Brooks et al are still going strong. He is a really great guy to deal with too. His ideology with 98lite etc is nothing short of sheer brilliance in my humble opinion. It is great to see a fellow Australian recognised world wide for his efforts :D ditto on the non nVidia drivers. I get more joy going to my card's own site and getting 'their' specific drivers than I do getting the generic nVidia ones

At the risk of sounding really dumb, where can I find info about XPLite and so on. First time I've heard about the windows lite stuff. And Shane Brooks? More info, please. sounds interesting. Lin

www.lingriffin.com

http://www.litepc.com/ But I didn't knew that before! Maybe great for performance, but a little bit sad (XP without theme, Brrr). Win XP is awesomely stable, although Vue4/OpenGL do not like it as we can see on this forum ...

Lin; Shane Brooks is an Australian programmer and fellow geek who took rather severe exception to Bill Gates shoving IE under the hood of Windows, and all of the interconnectivity that has caused so much trojanviriiworm grief, so he set out to remedy it. His first brainchild was called IE Eradicator, and it ran within windows. A few more ideas, and he came up with 98lite. The Pro version is run after you format your HDD but before windows can install itself for you. Basically, what it does is break the assembly hash table in the 9X line, and turn =everything= into a removable option. The current version (4.7, I believe), works with 98, 98SE, and WinME. Probably the coolest feature is the shell swap. If you have a Win95 CD that is OSR2.1 or earlier (in other words, any but the very last release, where they had IE shoved under the hood), you can install the 95 shell, getting rid of the active desktop completely. It also installs the 95 windows explorer, which is a lot faster than any other version and has no web crap attached to it, and forces compatibity where needed. The only downside to the shell swap is that you can't run any of the animated desktop themes like the Cathy theme, as it needs the active desktop. My current system dual boots 98lite and Win2kPro. The 98lite comes up in less than 30 seconds. There's also a little desktop.ini file you can get that re-inserts one IE key into the top of the registry stack. This is the key that all those programs that swear they need IE5 or above to even install look for, and once found, they install without complaint. And guess what. 99% of those programs lied. -All- you lose is the html help files. For someone running a graphics program on 98, 98lite is mana from heaven. You lose next to -all- of the vulnerabilities once you yank IE, Outlook, Windows scripting, the address book, and the active desktop out. You regain maybe 10% of your system resources that were taken up by the mere presence of those programs and 'features'. And if you take care as to the order of installation of drivers, you get an OS that looks like 95, performs better than 98, and almost never throws BSOD. Anyone who is running Vue on 98 should look at this...

Dale B: Cool. Thanks for the info. Makes me wish I was running 98 again. It's definitely a concept whose time has come. Lin

www.lingriffin.com