solops
September 23rd, 2004, 05:07 PM
DATA:
I have three PCs at home connected to the internet (cable) via a wireless router. One of the computers has suddenly become quite ill, failing to boot and exhibiting a "page fault error" on a black screen with no references to modules or programs, only saying that I need to reboot.
The PC in question is a Dell Dimension 4100 running Windows 98SE. There have been no new additions of software or hardware recently, only the daily updates to security software. The PC runs Spysweeper, Norton AV and ZoneAlarm (free version). All programs a updated.
The network is not set up to allow any sharing, only internet access. All default passwords and settings were customised upon installation. All of the other PCs work fine.
ANALYSIS AND WORK SO FAR::
The PC will boot to and operate in Windows safe mode. In that mode I did a step by step boot, getting through most of the preliminaries including the config.sys and autoexec files. The failure occurred after the drivers for the modem (no longer used in the network) came up. I was unsure if these drivers, which in the pre-network days worked fine, were the problem or not, so I rebooted and disallowed their loading. The same boot failure occurred. At that point I uninstalled the modem (not physically). This resulted in the same boot failure yet again.
Next, I tried to run a full scandisk with corrections (disk surface inspection) in safe mode. The Scandisk failed 10 times in a row, finally telling me that the failure was due to another program trying to access the disk, thus interrupting the Scandisk. I checked the Program Monitor (Ctrl-alt-Del) and found no programs running except Explorer. I had disabled the screensaver prior to running Scandisk. At this point I re-ran Scandisk without the surface inspection and it ran successfully, showing no bad sectors.
And still no successful boot.
Does anyone have any advice what the problem is or how to fix it? I am not anxious to re-install Windows. I did a disk format and re-installation last February,
I have three PCs at home connected to the internet (cable) via a wireless router. One of the computers has suddenly become quite ill, failing to boot and exhibiting a "page fault error" on a black screen with no references to modules or programs, only saying that I need to reboot.
The PC in question is a Dell Dimension 4100 running Windows 98SE. There have been no new additions of software or hardware recently, only the daily updates to security software. The PC runs Spysweeper, Norton AV and ZoneAlarm (free version). All programs a updated.
The network is not set up to allow any sharing, only internet access. All default passwords and settings were customised upon installation. All of the other PCs work fine.
ANALYSIS AND WORK SO FAR::
The PC will boot to and operate in Windows safe mode. In that mode I did a step by step boot, getting through most of the preliminaries including the config.sys and autoexec files. The failure occurred after the drivers for the modem (no longer used in the network) came up. I was unsure if these drivers, which in the pre-network days worked fine, were the problem or not, so I rebooted and disallowed their loading. The same boot failure occurred. At that point I uninstalled the modem (not physically). This resulted in the same boot failure yet again.
Next, I tried to run a full scandisk with corrections (disk surface inspection) in safe mode. The Scandisk failed 10 times in a row, finally telling me that the failure was due to another program trying to access the disk, thus interrupting the Scandisk. I checked the Program Monitor (Ctrl-alt-Del) and found no programs running except Explorer. I had disabled the screensaver prior to running Scandisk. At this point I re-ran Scandisk without the surface inspection and it ran successfully, showing no bad sectors.
And still no successful boot.
Does anyone have any advice what the problem is or how to fix it? I am not anxious to re-install Windows. I did a disk format and re-installation last February,