P166, 128 Mb RAM, Win98SE -- giving enormous problems!
1. Floppy drive
The problems started with intermittent floppy drive failure - sometimes it
worked, then all of a sudden, in Dos it would give a "drive unavailable"
message, or in Windows the whole machine would crash. On next boot-up,
often after I had fiddled with the connections inside the machine,
sometimes everything would be OK and the drive would become accessible -
then frequently fail again. I assumed either poor connections or a
defective drive.
I took the drive out and tested it extensively on another
machine - no problems. Then I turned the ribbon cable connector round so
the end to the motherboard went to the floppy and vice versa. Now it seems
to work again on the rogue machine. But could there be something wrong with
the floppy controller on the mobo? Device Manager shows everything working
properly. I am mystified.
2. Memory (an even more serious problem)
Then one day after finding the machine terribly sluggish in Windows, I
discovered that the memory had gone down to 64MB instead of 128MB. On next
boot-up it was back up to 128 MB. I noticed then that on occasions, during
the initial memory test, it only went up to 64 MB. Again I pushed down the
memory modules, assuming poor connectivity, and then it would sometimes
work again. The problem was intermittent. Then I started getting "memory
test fail" messages at boot-up. If by some chance this didn't happen and I
managed to get into Windows (with difficulty, as it would sometimes just
refuse to load ...), the machine would often spontaneously reboot, or crash
with all sorts of different, usually fatal, error messages, such as ...
"A fatal exception 0E has occurred at 0000:00000000. The current
application will be terminated"
I don't know too much about memory addresses, but this all-zero address
sounds pretty horrific :-(
Having pulled the guts out of the machine, I proceeded to test the memory
modules (2 x 64 MB DIMMs). Each worked individually, even when changing the
slots, showing up as 64 Mb. Unfortunately I have no other machine with DIMM
slots so can't test them on another system. Now, I can't ascertain whether
one or both modules are defective, but only intermittently, or whether
there's something wrong with the memory slots or indeed the motherboard
itself.
Do any of you think the problem might be with my motherboard?? (Micronics
Twister AT - April 1997). Do mobos just "conk out", or parts of them stop
functioning?
I have tried everything I know to troubleshoot these problems (short of
investing in a new system). It's the intermittent nature of the events that
gets me mystified. If there were total failure I could write the system off
as kaput, but because I can still occasionally get a successful boot-up
(despite the constant possibility of spontaneous re-boot and error
messages) I feel there must be a solution somewhere.
Sorry for the long posting -- I'm sure someone can help.
Virginia
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