Ben, Clint, Argus, Hugh, and Dr. Watson, I thank y'all but not having the patience and thinking that all responses were in, I sent the following to the group a few days ago. But for some reason it didn't get to you (Marlene tells me that it was because I used the word, "h*ck" and I don't mean heck, hick, or hock) and here you are giving me all these excellent ideas ... changing hardware, a driver, or BIOS setting (eight years with a computer and I never saw a BIOS); googling "shutdown BSOD 98;" unseating and refixing the RAM chips; and enlisting the help of Dr. Watson. Here's what I sent.
(HP computer and Wndows 98) ... Thank you Clint and Ben. ORIGINAL PROBLEM Every time I go to *shut down* the computer, I get an illegal whatever message on the desktop, I click OK, the screen goes black, then on a blue background I get the following message "A fatal exception 0D has occurred at 2837:000029E. Press Ctrl/Alt/Del to restart the computer. Press any key to continue (blinking cursor)." After that, neither Ctrl/Alt/Del works nor does pressing any key do anything. I then get a white hour hand, which, by the way, is able to be moved. All that's left to do is shut down and give a cold reboot. SUGGESTIONS CLINT suggested closing any programs working in the background to see what happens. Good idea, Clint (as Ben says, "it's worth a try), but it didn't help BEN writes "Fatal exceptions are really hard to troubleshoot. If it wasn't something easy like a resident software program causing it, it may well be hardware related, either a driver that is corrupt or even a physical fault in your computer memory. Have you upgraded any drivers recently? Have you deleted any driver type files or driver registry entries recently? Here are a couple of links; http://aumha.org/win4/kbefe.php http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=150314 There used to be an article in the MS knowledge base on OD errors but it's gone. You'll see a link for it on one of the above pages and when you click on it, it's no longer there. Figures. I think the best thing to do is to live with it. If want to avoid it and shutdown, just reboot and when the computer begins to start again, push and hold your power switch until it shuts off. And yes Harold, [regarding your 5 year old computer and Windows 98] we were and are smiling." THANK YOU, BEN. I bookmarked those links and when I'm in a learning mood (or mode), I'll read them. I'm drowning with a problem and you're sitting in the lifeguard's chair smiling. I suppose if it's a choice of sink or swim, one learns to swim. HOW IT WAS FIXED For any people in the group new to computers, here's an example of how a problem can be fixed and we never know the exact cause of that problem. It got to a point where even restarting the computer froze the system (except for that hour glass that remained on a black background and was movable with the mouse). What did I do short of completely reformatting the entire system? I didn't want to completely reformat the system so I used the System Recovery CD's that Hewlett Packard supplies and ONLY restored the original files. This resulted in all files on the desktop remaining there, and the Program Files folder remaining with all the programs I had installed before taking this action. Since everything except the rebooting worked well, and I had all the configurations the way I wanted them, I backed up the entire registry naming it "Registry Old" . thinking that the problem might not be in the Registry and I might be able to use it again. How to back it up was discussed earlier PCWorks where I claimed that using the "export" way worked (there were different opinions on that). And it did work because when I went to restore the Registry to the old format, all the old configurations were there in place; for example, 1) I was still connected to the Internet, and 2) the Display properties Appearance features of the computer were the same. In other words, the old Registry again reflected what programs were still in or remained in the Program Files folder. Just in case the old Registry would be giving any problems, I backed up the new Registry and replaced it with the old one (with each change I made, I made sure the rebooting process still worked). And now with the old Registry, all is working fine. All I had to do then was install one program that is found in the Windows directory (the upgrade of Notepad where I use Notepad Plus), and I had to re-upgrade from Internet Explorer 5 to IE 6 The upgrade to IE 6 puzzled me as I know I had IE 6 in the system and if I'm not mistaken, the original install is IE 2 (this computer is 5 years old) ... but here I might be mistaken. All that was required now was a little h*cking of the Registry to remove certain features in the lower part of the Start menu, deleting many of the programs preinstalled with the Recovery CD's, and the job was done; maybe taking with some fine-tuning, two hours. My only concern was that whatever problem was causing this "fatal error," I was worried that the rebooting problem would start up again with my putting everything back to the way it was. And that's the mystery; putting everything back the way it was and the problem is no longer there. My conclusion is that some file in the Windows directory (or one of the sub-directories (I wish I knew what it was) was either missing or corrupted and after reinstalling all the original files, with little interruption in the computer's configurations, the problem disappeared. What does it all mean? I had a good time working each step, everything is working fine now, and seeing success was a great source of joy ... and that's good enought. --- Harold ============= PCWorks Mailing List ================= Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines & make sure you've followed proper posting procedures, http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com =====================================================
