Lock-up on restart

[asm481]

A friends PC freezes with no error messages on restart. Shutdown works great and it boots up cold just fine. There are no obvious suspect problems in MSCONFIG; I have shut down virtually all startup programs with no fix. It is a PII NEC system, sorry little other stats on system. Running WIN98 a CDRW and CDROM drive. Have run scandisk-no errors. Only program running at startup is Norton v-scan. The lock-up occurs at the first splash screen and if I CTRL-ALT-DELETE it goes one step further to AUTO-EXEC but no more then I have to power down.

Also: No conflicts in device manager; occurs with programs running, as part of an install, safe mode, or with no programs running just for the heck of it!

[DonJ]

If you don't think it is anything in msconfig or software causing your problems then the next things to check are:
Power Supply voltages and CPU cooling fans. Assuming those check good, then check for defective RAM, bad PCI cards, etc. You might try removing unnecesary cards such as modems, NICs, sound cards, etc.
Also, just for grins, go ahead and disable NAV on bootup...it might be sucking up all or most of your resources if you don't have much RAM.
Just a couple of suggestions...let us know how it all ends up.

[King Grover]

i'd suggest revoming Norton for troubleshooting sake. It can be a bi of a hog especially on older systems like that. Give it a try and see what happens.

[NooNoo]

Norton is in the autoexec.bat? Try putting REM in front of the line for norton, see if it is causing the seizure.

[asm481]

NO NO NOO-Noo, Norton is not in auto-exec. lol It doesn't ever seem to run the autoexec, the freeze occurs almost instantly on the restart portion of restart---click restart, says shutting down, black screen, 98 splash screen,freeze at this screen. If I press ctrol-alt-del it goes to black screen where you see auto exec but it doesnt run, just the first screen...no curser etc.

[NooNoo]

This could be a shut down problem. Go through the m$kb

here. (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q238096&)

I still say uninstall Norton and see if it does it.

[asm481]

Might be a few days before I get in front of that PC but I will try it with out Norton.