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Presario 5365/Win98SE - inexplicable shutdowns to a blinking cursor
In article , Mediamon
wrote: "Rod Speed" wrote in : Mediamon wrote: I'm helping a friend with his Compaq Presario 5365 running Win98SE on AMD K6-3D Cpu (400MHZ I think). Mobo manufacturer unknown with SIS 530 chipset. Friend reports PC was acting sluggish and sometimes locking up. Says it possibly began after a Windows Update was cancelled in the middle of download. Much more likely to be a coincidence. At the same time he syas Norton Anti-Virus 2003 Pro was acting funky, as NAV would not lauch from the system tray. Worth trying a different anti virus, some viruses molest NAV. Will try another AV app out. Discovered the original 64MB RAM in PC (PC-100), was upgraded with two additional 256MB PC-133 SDRAM mods. But Windows only reports 444MB (whereas 576MB=256+256+64 total was installed). That may well be important. Likely some is lost to the onboard video, but the numbers still dont add up. I assume the system board just does not support more than 444MB? Very unlikely. Anywya I awapped in and out different combos of RAM modules, and re-ordering mods in sockets with no positive results. What happened with the total reported ? With just 64MB installed OS reported correctly. With just 256MB installed OS reported correctly. With 64MB + 256 MB installed OS repoted corectly With 256MB + 256MB installed OS reported incorrectly (380MB). With 64MB + 256MB + 256MB installed OS reported incorrectly. (444MB) Now from the numbers above I am suspecting one of the 256MB modules is actually a 128MB module. Didn't notice that before. snip Woody http://www.upgradememory.com/categor...solution=5221& "Maximum Memory: 384 MB" The processor could be a K6-with external L2 cache. The K6-3D was renamed to K6-2, according to one web page. This is as close as I can get to the chipset. According to this, the memory controller can handle chip densities larger than the ones you list. The kicker is the thing about cacheable area, limited to 256MB. Even those claims are sometimes wrong. But perhaps the listed limits for the chipset, on memory upgrade pages, are related to cacheable memory space, and not total memory space. Uncacheable memory is slow as molasses, but would still work. (The L2 cache is on the Northbridge, and the cache memory is usually some external chips on the side of the Northbridge.) http://web.archive.org/web/200112050...ocket7/530.htm Win98SE is totally trouble free, with 512MB or less of memory. From 512MB to 1GB, you have to set something in system.ini and that setting frees up some more address space. Even so, I had trouble at 768MB of memory present, even when using that hack. On the system I was testing, returning to 512MB restored everything to normal stable operation. The fact that all your memory is not registering, is probably a bonus from the OSes perspective. Later OSes like Win2K or WinXP would not have that limit. (vcache, system.ini, MaxFileCache) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/108079/EN-US/ (maxphyspage, system.ini, makes excess memory invisible) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/181862/en-us I would test with less memory installed, and see if it runs longer. But the shutdown probably has nothing to do with the memory, no matter how messed up the memory seems. The fact that the cursor is blinking, means it hasn't crashed. At least, I doubt the hardware alone would be clever enough to clear the screen and place a blinking cursor in one corner of the screen. It still sounds like it is under program control. Tests I would run: 1) If the OS will stay running long enough, get some info on the RAM from CPUZ. http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php There is even an option to dump the SPD (timing info) contents of each memory stick. In the dumped text file, see "Dump Module #1" etc, for the raw data about the RAM. 2) memtest86+ from memtest.org (allow to run for two full passes, there should be no errors listed). Take note of the total memory size listed as being tested. Memtest86+ either formats a boot floppy for you, or there is a version you can burn to a bootable CD. 3) If you have a spare hard drive, try a clean install of Win98SE on it. Does it still do the shutdown thing ? That will tell you, to what extent the current boot image is responsible for the problems. 4) Boot an alternate OS. Knoppix from knopper.net, is a read-only Linux distro. You burn a CD with the 700MB iso download. So far, I've been able to boot my home computers with the image I downloaded. If there is a problem, there is more likely to be a text message on the screen, or desktop applications vanish (like when overclocking too far). You don't even need a hard drive connected, but you do need a working CD drive. If the computer has enough memory, like 1GB or preferably 1.5GB, you can actually coax the whole CD to live inside RAM, and then the CD can be ejected safely. Otherwise, as long as Knoppix is running, the CD stays in the tray. When you select shutdown, Knoppix will prompt you to remove the CD from the tray. HTH, Paul |
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