Windows 98 Reboots

**Shard92** · March 10th, 2004, 03:10 PM

Originally Posted by Mr_Miyagi

...especially if it will boot in safe mode...

I disagree... I've had a few problems were the hardware was messed up and yet the computer would boot to safe mode... Once it was a video card... would work ok at 640x480 at 16 colors ( no not bit ) but if you increased resolution or color depth it would either crap out after loading or sometimes ( especially if it had been on awhile ) fail to boot all together..

**NightRust** · March 11th, 2004, 08:12 AM

Check the mobo for blown/leaking caps.

Had a system with an Abit board with bulged caps. Same kind of behavior... even after a clean reinstall, it would boot into safe mode, but encounter spontaneous reboots as it tried to finish loading the OS.

**harvie_wahl-banghor** · March 12th, 2004, 12:05 AM

Originally Posted by paul.rowling

Could a virus still be present if the hard drive has been formatted?

I've found that sometimes the L2 cache will cause problems like this. Another source is the chipset on the motherboard is going bad and will overheat. Try disabling the L2 cache (and the L1 cache for that matter) and see if it boots. If either the cache or the chipset are bad, the machine is toast since Packard Hell is so proprietary.

**paul.rowling** · March 12th, 2004, 04:24 PM

Hi Guys,

Just to let you know that I changed the mobo and the machine is now running A OK. Thanks for all the posts!

Cheers

Paul

**drivers** · April 16th, 2004, 04:27 PM

Originally Posted by paul.rowling

Hi,

I've got a machine which will boot in safe mode OK and will remain up and running. If I boot it normally It gets as far as loading the volume control in the task bar and then it reboots. I have tried disabling everything that starts in msconfig, and I have tried different memory, but the problem still remains.

Can anyone help?

Cheers

Paul

Paul:

Open the case on your PC and inspect the motherboard... look for small cylinder-shaped cannisters on the board... those are capacitors... if you see one or many with swollen, rounded tops and/or leaking material or corroded... the capacitor(s) are bad....

Had a customer's Compaq in the shop doing exactly what you describe... I had disabled everything in MSCONFIG and the registry, checked for viruses and worms, etc... when I disabled all devices in the Device Manager except the video chipset (this board has integral SiS 530 video), then removed the video to attempt a driver reload... Windows booted right up to the "found new hardware" messaging referencing the SiS chipset, and bang... shutdown/reboot.... when I inspected the board, the capacitors near the SiS chipset were swollen....

The reason I think it can run in safe mode is because the higher-level video chip functions are not engaged because the driver isn't loaded... as soon as you try to run it in regular mode, the PC dies as it's trying to load the Windows desktop (which on this unit had a hi-res image on it)... likely some of the video ram is powered by the problematic capacitors.... that's my theory anyway...

This makes two Compaq's I've seen that did this, and both had bad caps in them...

Time for a new board or PC...

Kirk Demaree
[email protected]

**techs** · April 16th, 2004, 05:15 PM

Just wondering if you went into the bios and tried disabling just about everything? Com ports, printer ports, dma etc? Setting it to either pnp or via bios for escd? Don't forget to disconnect the cdrom when you try and bot also.I know Packard Bells don't give you many options but its worth try?

**Ronin** · April 16th, 2004, 05:57 PM

Well, if you're going to bite the bullet and reinstall, then may I suggest formatting the master boot record to give the drive a good taste of memory death.

At the DOS prompt, A:\fdisk /mbr

Out of curiosity, have you tried rolling back the registry with scanreg?