Trouble down at t'mill.

[catgate]

So my labours of the last few days have been in vain. I am still ‘in trouble’. I was getting odd malfunctions that seemed to be unconnected e.g prolonged pauses during an operation - such as moving from one directory to another; ”Spool32 has performed an illegal function”; sudden lock-up-only freed by hitting ‘reset’ button; lock up whilst reading WF (or other) internet pages in both Firefox and IE, sometimes resolved by ctrl/alt/del route and termination of running prog., other times by reset button.

I reloaded W98SE but it made no difference. I needed to reinstall my USB2 PCI card…but I couldn’t. It would not install the driver. Since reinstalling W98SE I am having trouble with the monitor. I am getting odd patches of 16 colour rendition in areas of 24 bit True Colour. Additionally sometimes curser and other movements are ‘jerky’.

It seems to me as though some of these latter problems point to the AGP card but what about some of the earlier ones? Could they too be connected to faulty AGP card?

As usual any help would be more than appreciated.

After casting the runes I have in fact ordered a new AGP (but purely on blind faith of course).

Edit:-

I have, of course, run "a squared", "Ccleaner","Spybot","Spyware blaster", "Ad-aware" and I run AVG on scheduled daily checks and also have Zone Alarm running.

[djohn]

Yes, they could have been catgate, and I think you are on the right track. It would have been nice if you had a spare or could have borrowed one to test before committing to buying, but I think its the graphic card causing the problems. :)

PS: Just noticed pops is on board, he will be able to confirm or otherwise.

[-pops-]

I'm here!!!!!!

Spool 32 in W98 is the spooler for printing and I remember it was notorious for poking its nose in where it wasn't appropriate - which I think is what is happening here.

I agree with djohn that it is possibly a graphics card problem. When you re-installed Windows, did you re-install the graphics card drivers as well? That could explain some of the odd goings on. If you did re-install then it seems that the card may be well on its way to the great computer dumping ground in the sky. Graphics cards do work hard and can get very hot - which, of course, components don't like. What happens is that instead of failing completely, they tantalise us by giving silly effects - like those you are experiencing now.

I feel you've done the right thing by getting a new card.

[catgate]

Thank you, gentlemen, for your help. I now await the postman's delivery with mouth akimbo and legs agog.