Intermittent Win98se Start Up Issues

From time to time I get the following error when booting up my Win98SE machine: "Fatal Exception at 018F:BFF83BFC ".

I've tried individually disabling all the things that startup when my machine boots, scan for viruses regularly, run Ad-Aware 6 and SpySweeper too.

Sometimes it seems I've made headway and isolated the problem, but then it'll just return. It might take 4 or 5 boots to get my machine to come up at times. Then maybe for a week or so, it'll come right up without any issues. Really wierd.

I usually get this BSOD once Windows has about half way loaded.

I have noticed that the address listed in the fatal exception is the same 99% of the time (018F:BFF83BFC). Seems there has to be some significance to that don't it?

I thought that it might be a RAM problem, but every utility I've used to test my RAM indicates no trouble found.

Could this be a hard drive issue? I'm frazzled.

 

This may be a sign of a dying HDD or Vidio card - maybe move
the thread to Hardware ?
regards

 

you'll probably find a full format and reinstalllation will do the trick - we used to get that a lot a few years ago when we used 98.

failing that it is likely to be a hardware prob.

 

Address Significance?

I'm still kinda stuck of the fact that the same address location of 018F:BFF83BFC is indicated 99% of the time when the problem occurs. Seems there's gotta be some significance there.

Is that a RAM memory location being indicated, or a hard drive sector?

What's that mean?

Thanks.

 

Just guessing here obviously, but since you've run the memory tests and come up empty and because of the fact that software is much more apt to cause problems than hardware, I'd also recommend that you reformat and reload Windows 98. If you set up two partitions with all your valuable data on D:, it makes this much easier to do. And if you Ghost your install image of C: and store it on D:, it approaches the proverbial "piece of cake ".

With Win98, I'd recommend a reformat/reload at least (and I mean at least ) once a year. I used to be a completely dedicated fan of Win98SE as I kept a very "clean" machine and never had trouble with that OS until recently when I got inexplicable erratic behavior. At that point I decided to go to XP which has worked flawlessly so far.

One of my core "axioms" about using PCs is that all the time you spend on trying to troubleshoot some incredibly obscure problem will eventually dwarf the amount of time it takes you to reformat/reload your OS. And chances are you'll end up with a better running machine to boot.

P.S. Run a full surface scan on your hard drive before you do anything though. But what you're getting is not typically the symptom you get with a problematic hard drive.

 

Hi Stevereno- a couple of thoughts. Try a step by step confirmation while booting up (press F8 key while booting to get a startup menu) to see if we can find out where the error is happening. I would check in the CMOS setup to make sure that your motherboard bus and RAM speeds are correctly configured. Also, try swapping out the RAM for a known good stick. Different combinations, different banks etc. Last thing to check before executing Chiles' post instructions is the power supply but that is a remote possibility as you have indicated a repeating address in the error message. That should keep you busy for a bit. Post back with the results if you can. Clydeo22

 

OK. I've got my work cutout for me.

Thanks for all the advice. I'll try the ram swap around thing first. My power supply was just replaced about 6 months ago, so although it still could be the culprit as well, I'll go for that as a last resort.

If the ram swap around won't cure things, I've got a friend that'll let me use an identical 60 gig drive for awhile. Since I've got a Drive Image of my machine from about a month back, I can restore that drive to my present configuration. I'll try that second.

If both of those don't work I'm probably gonna give XP Pro upgrade a try instead of jumping to reload 98se. I'd really hate to have to start from scratch reloading 98se as I've got so many applications it'd be a very time consuming endeavor.

Thanks again for all the help and I'll be sure to post back my results.