W98SE / CD drives

[catgate]

Here's a very odd business.

I have had one or two strange things on my W98 box just recently. Things like a sudden shut down or a screen that goes black and then suddenly reappears.. Having put in a new MB (ASROCK P4i65G) in a few weeks ago to try to cure it (apparently without success) it seemed the next port of call was RAM, so I replaced the RAM.

It is still being silly. So I decided to do a reload of W98SE.

I went into BiOS and made the floppy the Ist boot source, but my W98SE rescue disk would not fire up in the Floppy drive.

I then made a CD drive the primary boot source and that would not work.

I again went into BIOS, this time to have a look round, and found No CD drives recognised. This was confirmed by Belarc. They are there and the PSU wiring is securely attached, as is the ribbon cable, which I renewed as a precaution. They open and shut very nicely, but that is as far as their co-operation goes.

My immediate feeling is the BIOS is corrupted, but by what?

I am concerned that the new MB may not be totally happy with W98SE although it is mentioned a couple of times in the BIOS setting notes.

Any thoughts would be most appreciated.

[Boris]

Have you tried clearing/resetting the CMOS ?

[catgate]

No, I haven't Boris. Do you mean just swap the jumper over and back and then reboot?

Or is there something more esoteric that I need to know?

[Alan2273]

You can either swap the jumper over or take the battery out for 5 minutes and then replace it.

How old is the battery?.

[catgate]

You can either swap the jumper over or take the battery out for 5 minutes and then replace it.

How old is the battery?.

I had a look at the MB last night, Alan, and there are only two pins on the CMOS "jumper", and nothing jumping them. The MB manual just says "connect them using a jumper". Presumably any suitable insulated handled, non-magnetic piece of metal would suffice. I shall wrap some insulation tape round a short length of brass brazing rod, and short it across with that..

As far as the battery is concerned It was a new MB some time in the last few months, certainly within 6. How long it had been in stock at the supplier's I do not know. But unless there is something duff with the battery it should still have several years left.

[Boris]

Just use a screwdriver tip/paperclip :)

[catgate]

Just use a screwdriver tip/paperclip :)

Righty Ho.

I was not sure if it was a case of completing a circuit or just earthing it out. Presumably one of the pins is to chassis.

[catgate]

Well now. The setting back to default of the CMOS did the trick, as far as getting the CD drives and the floppy to be recognised was concerned, but alas all the rest of the nonsense continued. So I reformatted C: and started to reload W98SE. That was not without a few hiccups, with the odd "feral" black screen where there should not have been a black screen. It eventually appeared, on the face of it, to have reloaded, and so I loaded all the MB drivers and the unofficial W98SE SP1, However, partway through trying to set up my PCI wireless card I was told there was no ICMP.DLL. I reloaded the chunk of W98SE relating to communications, networks and the like, but I may just as well have gone fishing!.It was all still rubbish.

I think the next thing is to replace the MB battery and try again, but I fear that does not hold out much hope. I suspect if the battery were duff the CMOS would not have been able to revert. would it?

There seems to be no pattern to what causes the black screens. sometimes it seems like a mouse movement, other times it seems to be caused by what is going on in the box itself, There is also an apparent slowing down of functions, like the tardy appearance of icons on the desktop on boot up. Belarc says the HDD is "healthy", and Scandisk seems quite happy..

It seems a shame to go totally linux,because WF would then be "out of bounds" :(

[catgate]

It is easy for me to see how Linux is gradually taking a bigger share of the OS market.

After another disappointing battle with my W98SE box, and its little foibles, I decided to wipe the beast clean and load it up with Ubuntu 7.1 , to see if the problem lay with hardware or OS.

I had the machine up and running with no problem within the hour, and it happily did all I asked of it all the rest of the day. No shut downs, black screens or any other sort of tantrum.

So the following day, yesterday. I wiped Ubuntu off, formatted the HD and installed W98SE again. What a pantomime, compared to the Ubuntu set up!

W98SE itself took just a little longer than Ubuntu to load,but I then had to chase round through several CDs for drivers for the MB components, the video card, this, that and the other. I then had to load Office, whereas with the Ubuntu set up all the drivers were loaded in automatically from the CD, as was Open Office and lots of other goodies.

I played about with W98SE for much of the rest of the afternoon (it was afternoon before I finished setting it up) and it seemed quite happy to behave itself. So the problem was all down to "one of them" what ever they are.................I think!

I am beginning to think along the lines of "Linux to use....Windows to play with ".