"apres le deluge ..."

Win98SE. 512 RAM (2*256). Gigabyte GA-6VXE7+ mobo.

Recently had all sorts of apps crashing with invalid page faults. I
made the mistake of running scandisk, which found and "fixed" numerous
errors - cross-linked files typically.

Long story investigation, memtest86+ revealed a squillion errors with
the RAM sticks in the default bank 0 and bank1. (There's nothing in
the mobo user manual about having to populate bank 0). Tried one
(256M) stick at a time in each of the three slots in turn, no errors.
Tried both sticks and discovered that if bank 0 and bank 1 were both
used, errors returned. Presumed a mobo issue between those slots, so
bank 1 and bank 2 were chosen and no errors.

Post-recovery, Firefox (2.0.0.20) still occasionally locked up or
IPF-ed. So I did an over-the-top reinstall and it seems much better
but far from the pre-event behaviour.

Also post-recovery, the desktop icons now take a fair time to be
established, with multiple glitches and twitches before settling down.
More significantly, any time I swith from an app back to the desktop,
they still take over a second to re-establish.

Yes, I have a lot of desktop icons because that's how I work. The grid
is 13*10 and I have 115 of those 130 positions occupied.

Are there any key settings (eg MaxIconCache) that may have altered and
contribute to this behaviour? I'm just concerned that the desktop
behaviour may be symptomatic of something more serious.

who where wrote:
Win98SE. 512 RAM (2*256). Gigabyte GA-6VXE7+ mobo.

Recently had all sorts of apps crashing with invalid page faults. I
made the mistake of running scandisk, which found and "fixed" numerous
errors - cross-linked files typically.

Long story investigation, memtest86+ revealed a squillion errors with
the RAM sticks in the default bank 0 and bank1. (There's nothing in
the mobo user manual about having to populate bank 0). Tried one
(256M) stick at a time in each of the three slots in turn, no errors.
Tried both sticks and discovered that if bank 0 and bank 1 were both
used, errors returned. Presumed a mobo issue between those slots, so
bank 1 and bank 2 were chosen and no errors.

Post-recovery, Firefox (2.0.0.20) still occasionally locked up or
IPF-ed. So I did an over-the-top reinstall and it seems much better
but far from the pre-event behaviour.

Also post-recovery, the desktop icons now take a fair time to be
established, with multiple glitches and twitches before settling down.
More significantly, any time I swith from an app back to the desktop,
they still take over a second to re-establish.

Yes, I have a lot of desktop icons because that's how I work. The grid
is 13*10 and I have 115 of those 130 positions occupied.

Are there any key settings (eg MaxIconCache) that may have altered and
contribute to this behaviour? I'm just concerned that the desktop
behaviour may be symptomatic of something more serious.

One thing you might consider is deleting ShellIconCache, and letting the
cache rebuild itself with newly rebuilt icons. It may take a few reboots
to get this to be rebuilt, at least as I recall.

On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 23:02:52 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote:

who where wrote:
Win98SE. 512 RAM (2*256). Gigabyte GA-6VXE7+ mobo.

Recently had all sorts of apps crashing with invalid page faults. I
made the mistake of running scandisk, which found and "fixed" numerous
errors - cross-linked files typically.

Long story investigation, memtest86+ revealed a squillion errors with
the RAM sticks in the default bank 0 and bank1. (There's nothing in
the mobo user manual about having to populate bank 0). Tried one
(256M) stick at a time in each of the three slots in turn, no errors.
Tried both sticks and discovered that if bank 0 and bank 1 were both
used, errors returned. Presumed a mobo issue between those slots, so
bank 1 and bank 2 were chosen and no errors.

Post-recovery, Firefox (2.0.0.20) still occasionally locked up or
IPF-ed. So I did an over-the-top reinstall and it seems much better
but far from the pre-event behaviour.

Also post-recovery, the desktop icons now take a fair time to be
established, with multiple glitches and twitches before settling down.
More significantly, any time I swith from an app back to the desktop,
they still take over a second to re-establish.

Yes, I have a lot of desktop icons because that's how I work. The grid
is 13*10 and I have 115 of those 130 positions occupied.

Are there any key settings (eg MaxIconCache) that may have altered and
contribute to this behaviour? I'm just concerned that the desktop
behaviour may be symptomatic of something more serious.

One thing you might consider is deleting ShellIconCache, and letting the
cache rebuild itself with newly rebuilt icons. It may take a few reboots
to get this to be rebuilt, at least as I recall.

Found the culprit! Active desktop, ticked as "view as web page".
Cleared that, and desktop is back to playing nice/fast. Tnx.