Win98se boot problems

My old win98se system has more or less behaved itself for years. Recently,
after a spell of odd system crashes, it refused to boot up in anything other
than safe mode.

After footering about for ages, I tried a windows re-install over the old
installation (not a good idea I know) which did at least get me up and
running again long enough to do all my backing up. The whole system was
horribly buggy however so I bit the bullet, reformatted and reinstalled
windows from scratch.

System worked fine for a few days apart from the occasional lockup when the
monitor powered down. It's always been prone to this since I got a flat
screen monitor and I normally disable the power saving option.

Anyway, last night, it had again frozen and once again it refuses to boot up
except in safe mode (which it does just fine).

If I go through step-by-step boot up, it gets to loading msmouse.vxd before
locking up. If I tell it *not* to load msmouse.vxd, it still locks up.
FWIW, my anti-virus stuff is fully up to date and I've done a full virus
scan with negative results.

Any ideas?

Tim

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Troubleshooting Windows 98 Startup Problems
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=188867

How to Perform Clean-Boot Troubleshooting for Windows 98
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=192926


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Regards

Ron Badour, MS MVP for W98
Tips: http://home.satx.rr.com/badour
Knowledge Base Info:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbinfo

"Tim Downie" wrote in message
...
My old win98se system has more or less behaved itself for years.
Recently,
after a spell of odd system crashes, it refused to boot up in anything
other
than safe mode.

After footering about for ages, I tried a windows re-install over the old
installation (not a good idea I know) which did at least get me up and
running again long enough to do all my backing up. The whole system was
horribly buggy however so I bit the bullet, reformatted and reinstalled
windows from scratch.

System worked fine for a few days apart from the occasional lockup when
the
monitor powered down. It's always been prone to this since I got a flat
screen monitor and I normally disable the power saving option.

Anyway, last night, it had again frozen and once again it refuses to boot
up
except in safe mode (which it does just fine).

If I go through step-by-step boot up, it gets to loading msmouse.vxd
before
locking up. If I tell it *not* to load msmouse.vxd, it still locks up.
FWIW, my anti-virus stuff is fully up to date and I've done a full virus
scan with negative results.

Any ideas?

Tim

--
Remove the *obvious* to reply by mail

Tim Downie wrote:

System worked fine for a few days

You don't say whether you're running a firewall. If not, that might
explain the problem reoccurring.

FWIW, my anti-virus stuff is fully up to date and I've done a full virus
scan with negative results.

Any ideas?

Might be a non-viral infection. Have you tried something like SpyBot S&D
or HiJackThis?

It could also be your HDD is dying. Make sure you're taking regular and
reliable backups.

--

Simon Elliott

"Simon Elliott" wrote in message
...
Tim Downie wrote:

System worked fine for a few days

You don't say whether you're running a firewall. If not, that might
explain the problem reoccurring.

FWIW, my anti-virus stuff is fully up to date and I've done a full virus
scan with negative results.

Any ideas?

Might be a non-viral infection. Have you tried something like SpyBot S&D
or HiJackThis?

It could also be your HDD is dying. Make sure you're taking regular and
reliable backups.

Thanks but I've found the problem now (I think). Having tried everything I
could think of I started ripping hardware out and unplugging everything that
was unnecessary. As soon as I removed a spare parallel port card, it
started booting normally again. The card's been redundant every since I got
a USB printer/scanner some time ago but for some reason, only chose to cause
serious problems recently.

Hopefully that's it fixed. Fingers crossed. ;-)

Tim

Them add-on parallel port cards can be booger-bears.
"Tim Downie" wrote in message
...

"Simon Elliott" wrote in message
...
Tim Downie wrote:

System worked fine for a few days

You don't say whether you're running a firewall. If not, that might
explain the problem reoccurring.

FWIW, my anti-virus stuff is fully up to date and I've done a full
virus
scan with negative results.

Any ideas?

Might be a non-viral infection. Have you tried something like SpyBot S&D
or HiJackThis?

It could also be your HDD is dying. Make sure you're taking regular and
reliable backups.

Thanks but I've found the problem now (I think). Having tried everything
I
could think of I started ripping hardware out and unplugging everything
that
was unnecessary. As soon as I removed a spare parallel port card, it
started booting normally again. The card's been redundant every since I
got
a USB printer/scanner some time ago but for some reason, only chose to
cause
serious problems recently.

Hopefully that's it fixed. Fingers crossed. ;-)

Tim