couple of errors I can't figure out

hi all,

trying to setup an old machine, I inherited it, it's got an older
socket7 ASUS P5A-B motherboard, I upgraded the bios to 1010, (the
latest for it) and installed win98se.

It worked okay for a while, but just let it sitting and it eventually
died - black screen, wouldn't reboot. Let it sit for a couple of
weeks and am back at it now.

I pulled all the cards, and replaced the AGP video card with an older
2M PCI card, it booted up just fine.

reinstalled the modem (ISA) a NIC card (PCI) a pci sound card, and all
was working.... then began not working, got blue screen with the
following error:

FATAL Exceptoin has occurred at 0167:00000015, application will be
termionated.

I tried to run scandisk, thorough, but at about 97% I got a squealing
and an error saying:

"Expression: idxSTART nMemBLOCKS
Source, line 264 of msprintf.c write this error message down and
contact MS."

I am suspicious of the motherboard as the guy I got this from was
messing with it for a few months as it progressively got worse.... he
eventually bought a new computer.. so I thought I'd try to fix this
one. I had changed video cards for him at one point and it worked for
about 3 months before I heard from him again about it. I don't have a
spare motherboard, but do have spares of all other hardware.

so I'm just wondering if these error ring any bells with anyone, or
would indicate a specific problem with hardware. I did put 2 old hard
drives in here, both were tested good.. a Western Digital 1.2G (C
and a Maxtor 2.1G (D

Every once in a while I get a Boot Disk Failure notice telling me to
insert a boot disk and start again. Not sure if that indicates a bad
HD or something in the bios so it's not seeing the drive. ????

Any thoughts would be welcome,

thanks,
niteowl

niteowl wrote:

Every once in a while I get a Boot Disk Failure notice telling me to
insert a boot disk and start again. Not sure if that indicates a bad
HD or something in the bios so it's not seeing the drive. ????

I've seen that occasional boot disk failure message about 3 times over
the years and in all cases it presaged a drive about to die. Certainly
seems to be associated with the drive - I assume you've done the usual
.... switched the HD power connector for one of the others (swap power
supplies if you have a spare around), check the signal cable seating
at both ends, swapped signal cable, check drive select jumper is
correctly located and making good contact.