Hi,
First off, I am relieved to find this board, and hoping someone out there can help me out!
I have a Windows 98 SE, which truthfully has been working decently so far. Recently however I seem to have run into a host of problems. I suffer from the occasional 'fatal exception' blue screen and the computer hangs and I have to restart. But recently new things have been happening:
A week ago I started computer and it automatically went into Safe Mode. I had not added any hardware or software recently. I did a scan disk and defrag and it was up and running.
The next day again it went into Safe mode, this time scan disk and defrag didn't help. I checked the Microsoft website and they suggested a number of things:
1. Go into msdos.sys and delete 'bootsafe=1' line. When I went into msdos.sys I didn't have a bootsafe line
2. Go into msconfig, chose selective startup and try a combination of startup options. None of these worked
3. Use system file checker to check for damaged or corrupted files. I did this and found setupx.dll to be corrupted. But system still started in safe mode after repair.
4. Check whether driver is being loaded from autoexec.bat or config.sys tab in msconfig, well my config.sys tab was unselectable.
5. Disable devices and recheck them one by one. Did that and even turning all devices off did not yield a normal startup.
Ultimately I did a scanreg/restore and selected a previous day when startup had been normal and everythign was working fine.
So for 5 days computer starting normally, no sign of safe mode, until today when again in the morning computer starts off in safe mode. Again had to use the scanreg/restore option to get up and running.
Now I want to know why this is happening. I feel I have managed to start my computer but have not fixed the problem. I also have been trying to recall what other problems may have been occuring which I persistently ignored, as far as I can remember these are:
1. Computer freezes, when I press Ctrl+Alt+Del , it shows that OSD is not responding, when I end task that, everything runs fine.
2. Sometimes at shutdown the computer refuses to shut down and the light dims for a second and then is back up. Don't know how to shut down so end up using the main power control.
3. As mentioned earlier get the blue screens 'system is busy' and 'fatal exception has occurred'.
As far as I can remember that's it. Oh one other thing last week when computer had really gotten stuck in safe mode my heat sink fan was making this strange brrrr sound. I opened up my computer, just jiggled a few wires to make sure nothing was touching the fan and the sound was gone.
I know this sounds like alot, and maybe my computer was trying to give me hints which I kept ignoring, but really when it's behaving weeks go by without any problems. And recently I have lots of other people using my computer (mainly for websurfing only) so I attributed problems to too many hands on.
Any advice would be hugely appreciated!!!!
First off, I am relieved to find this board, and hoping someone out there can help me out!
I have a Windows 98 SE, which truthfully has been working decently so far. Recently however I seem to have run into a host of problems. I suffer from the occasional 'fatal exception' blue screen and the computer hangs and I have to restart. But recently new things have been happening:
A week ago I started computer and it automatically went into Safe Mode. I had not added any hardware or software recently. I did a scan disk and defrag and it was up and running.
The next day again it went into Safe mode, this time scan disk and defrag didn't help. I checked the Microsoft website and they suggested a number of things:
1. Go into msdos.sys and delete 'bootsafe=1' line. When I went into msdos.sys I didn't have a bootsafe line
2. Go into msconfig, chose selective startup and try a combination of startup options. None of these worked
3. Use system file checker to check for damaged or corrupted files. I did this and found setupx.dll to be corrupted. But system still started in safe mode after repair.
4. Check whether driver is being loaded from autoexec.bat or config.sys tab in msconfig, well my config.sys tab was unselectable.
5. Disable devices and recheck them one by one. Did that and even turning all devices off did not yield a normal startup.
Ultimately I did a scanreg/restore and selected a previous day when startup had been normal and everythign was working fine.
So for 5 days computer starting normally, no sign of safe mode, until today when again in the morning computer starts off in safe mode. Again had to use the scanreg/restore option to get up and running.
Now I want to know why this is happening. I feel I have managed to start my computer but have not fixed the problem. I also have been trying to recall what other problems may have been occuring which I persistently ignored, as far as I can remember these are:
1. Computer freezes, when I press Ctrl+Alt+Del , it shows that OSD is not responding, when I end task that, everything runs fine.
2. Sometimes at shutdown the computer refuses to shut down and the light dims for a second and then is back up. Don't know how to shut down so end up using the main power control.
3. As mentioned earlier get the blue screens 'system is busy' and 'fatal exception has occurred'.
As far as I can remember that's it. Oh one other thing last week when computer had really gotten stuck in safe mode my heat sink fan was making this strange brrrr sound. I opened up my computer, just jiggled a few wires to make sure nothing was touching the fan and the sound was gone.
I know this sounds like alot, and maybe my computer was trying to give me hints which I kept ignoring, but really when it's behaving weeks go by without any problems. And recently I have lots of other people using my computer (mainly for websurfing only) so I attributed problems to too many hands on.
Any advice would be hugely appreciated!!!!
ialer.XD No disinfected 
