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JAB3300
January 16th, 2006, 12:27 AM
Folks,
This has been driving me bonkers. I've got an old home built Pentium 3. It was freezing just before Windows finished loading. If I go into Safe Mode it will run all day with out issues.
I switched to a plain vanilla driver, no difference. I removed the fax modem and sound card. No change. In Device Mgr I removed all references to items I didn't have. No deal. With MSConfig I stopped everything else from loading. No dice.
I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled Win98. Same problem except now it has a brief message that if found unknown hardware and installed the software for it then. Immediately afterwards it freezes at the PnP Monitor dialogue box.
In safe mode I checked the Device Mgr and there were no issues noted.
What would you suggest my next step be besides making this a boat anchor.
I want to give this to my house bound brother in law and can't see investing a bunch of moola at the current price of computers.
Thanks
jim

Nosrep
January 16th, 2006, 02:44 AM
Well, if you've removed everything that is removable and booted that way and still had the problem, I would guess it's either video or BIOS related. What kind of video? Do you have another card you can stick in there as a test? What does your BIOS have as far as PNP settings and what are they set to? Something might be getting an IRQ set to it that it shouldn't.

-Dave
http://spyware.dugancom.com
http://www.ccallinfo.com

JAB3300
January 16th, 2006, 10:45 PM
It's an old Trident 3D card. That's a good idea. I don't have a spare card, but I'll see if I can pick one up to try it out. Thanks
Jim

JAB3300
January 19th, 2006, 02:23 PM
Well, I installed a new AGP card. It wouldn't let me into windows. It froze right where it was wanting the software for the newly found card. I can get into Safe mode, though I can't install the drivers for the new card without CD support. I'm not sure that makes a difference since I was using plain vanilla drivers anyway. What else can cause this issue?
Thanks
Jim

Nosrep
January 19th, 2006, 07:18 PM
Only other thing I can thin of is the BIOS settings. Have you looked in there yet?

-Dave
http://spyware.dugancom.com
http://www.ccallinfo.com

Idnew
January 19th, 2006, 11:10 PM
Try runing sfc and see if any files are missing or corrupted. You can do that from safe mode. Go to start/run and type in sfc

JAB3300
January 20th, 2006, 05:11 PM
Well, only to check the settings for the new video card. Anything in particular I should look for?

I tried sfc, nada. I checked the bios and I'm using the latest.

Thanks for your help,
Jim