i am having a serious problem with my system and i need help. i think it is (gulp) related to the motherboard though i'm not much of a hardware guy.
first, the system: piii 550, win98, bx chipset, 128mb pc100 sdram, common peripherals and cards, not networked, minimal software installs (having pared down the system due to recent difficulties).
second, the problem: when using a mouse the system will hang almost immediately upon finishing booting up. by hang i mean everything freezes in place. monitor will then refresh and "catch up" to whatever point in the process we should be. after several minutes of this the mouse will freeze for good. however, the keyboard still works for about 5 more minutes. then all is frozen and the computer needs to be restarted by interrupting the power supply. no bsod, no error messages (though i will address this again in a minute).
things i have learned: 1)nuts&bolts (useless) diagnostic tools told me there were errors in the physical ram so i swapped with a new 128mb. nothing changed. further diagnostics using the same program failed to work at all. no error, just couldn't do anything with the ram. windows diagnostics seem to think everything is just peachy. 2)tried floppy boot diagnostic (memtest-86) and lo and behold there is nothing wrong with the ram. 3)via advice from a friend i tried using mousekeys. bingo--everything is fine, just a big pain in the ass. so, for most of today i have been working away just fine, using keyboard shortcuts and the numeric keypad to move the pointer.
red herring (?):a couple of times during the power down/reboot nightmare i briefly (as in msecs) saw black screen with light blue type in upper lefthand corner which my brain has remembered as containing the words "pci," "bus," and "error." and once at power down i saw bsod which said parity error.
i haven't the slightest clue what is going on or what to do at this point. does anyone have any suggestions that don't include buying a new system?
first, the system: piii 550, win98, bx chipset, 128mb pc100 sdram, common peripherals and cards, not networked, minimal software installs (having pared down the system due to recent difficulties).
second, the problem: when using a mouse the system will hang almost immediately upon finishing booting up. by hang i mean everything freezes in place. monitor will then refresh and "catch up" to whatever point in the process we should be. after several minutes of this the mouse will freeze for good. however, the keyboard still works for about 5 more minutes. then all is frozen and the computer needs to be restarted by interrupting the power supply. no bsod, no error messages (though i will address this again in a minute).
things i have learned: 1)nuts&bolts (useless) diagnostic tools told me there were errors in the physical ram so i swapped with a new 128mb. nothing changed. further diagnostics using the same program failed to work at all. no error, just couldn't do anything with the ram. windows diagnostics seem to think everything is just peachy. 2)tried floppy boot diagnostic (memtest-86) and lo and behold there is nothing wrong with the ram. 3)via advice from a friend i tried using mousekeys. bingo--everything is fine, just a big pain in the ass. so, for most of today i have been working away just fine, using keyboard shortcuts and the numeric keypad to move the pointer.
red herring (?):a couple of times during the power down/reboot nightmare i briefly (as in msecs) saw black screen with light blue type in upper lefthand corner which my brain has remembered as containing the words "pci," "bus," and "error." and once at power down i saw bsod which said parity error.
i haven't the slightest clue what is going on or what to do at this point. does anyone have any suggestions that don't include buying a new system?
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