Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

I just built a new PC this weekend. I went from a P233MMX to an Athlon 1ghz... what a difference!!! (for the record: ASUS K7M Slot A motherboard with Athlon 1ghz processor and 256mb PC100 SDRAM.)

Anyway, I'm having 2 annoying problems that i can't seem to lick. I've been all through the MS Knowledgebase and have contacted the MB mfg as well as the people I bought the motherboard from.

First problem: the initial boot always hangs. As soon as the desktop starts to appear, the machine locks up. The mouse pointer is still moveable but no icons appear, etc. The 3 finger salute (Ctrl-Alt-Del) restarts it just fine. Puzzling... I found something about an incompatability between v5.x of McAfee VirusScan which I've disabled and removed but it didn't help.

The second problem is even stranger. When shutting down, I get the "Wait while Windows shuts down..." screen and then the machine powers off (just like it's supposed to). The kicker is that 3 seconds later, it restarts all by itself! No matter what i do, this auto-restart keeps happening. I've got the BIOS power management disabled and the power switch set to On/Off. Win98SE power management is set to Always On.

The closest I've come to finding anything about either of these problems was something about the ACPI interface. However, none of the fixes I found have solcved the problem.

I'm hoping some of you hardware guru's out there might be able to shed some light for me...

__________________

God bless America, my home sweet home...

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 638

Hmm.. I just bought that same motherboard, and it's in the mail. I hope that I don't have those problems when I get it. I think that you're boot times might have something more to do with the hard drive, and not the MB, but that's only oppinion.

BEN

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Chandler, AZ
Posts: 289

If your using the same install of windows, this might have a lot to do with it .. I have seen these types of problems when upgrading the motherboard .. unfortunately, the only fix I know of is doing a reinstall of Windows..

Joe

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: New York, New York
Posts: 560

Mark,

Video Card? Not that I have any tips, but I tried installing a GeForce II (creative) and it did the same thing. I removed it.

The Shutdown is a common problem with 98. Have you tried the Windows Update page? There was a patch there for this.

__________________
Felipe Garcia
Happy Treo 600 user, so far. Thanx Cingular for having an unlocked phone.

My Treo 600 is my phone, my PDA, my watch, and my MP3 player. Oh yeah, I take a picture once in a while with it. Convergence is such a great thing.

Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Rochester, NY
Posts: 284

quote:

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First problem: the initial boot always hangs. As soon as the desktop starts to appear, the machine locks up. The mouse pointer is still moveable but no icons appear, etc. The 3 finger salute (Ctrl-Alt-Del) restarts it just fine. Puzzling... I found something about an incompatability between v5.x of McAfee VirusScan which I've disabled and removed but it didn't help.

---

A buddy of mine had a problem like this with ME and a Duron system. He claimed it was something to do with the Duron architecture. Of course, this is also the guy that claimed he didn't believe warm air rises (this is not a joke, either).

quote:

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The second problem is even stranger. When shutting down, I get the "Wait while Windows shuts down..." screen and then the machine powers off (just like it's supposed to). The kicker is that 3 seconds later, it restarts all by itself! No matter what i do, this auto-restart keeps happening. I've got the BIOS power management disabled and the power switch set to On/Off. Win98SE power management is set to Always On.

---

I get something similar with another Asus motherboard (K6-2 system running W2K). I seem to remember something about a fix to the BIOS, but the recollection's fuzzy. I usually just power off using the soft-power button, then turn off the hard-power button on the power supply.

You might want to check Tom's Hardware to see if there's anything on these motherboards (Sorry, don't have the URL handy). Other than that, I agree with Cerulean: reinstall.

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It's gotta be weather balloons. It's always weather balloons. Big, fiery, exploding weather balloons.
-- ComaVN (from Slashdot)

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

quote:

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Originally posted by MarkEagle
The second problem is even stranger. When shutting down, I get the "Wait while Windows shuts down..." screen and then the machine powers off (just like it's supposed to). The kicker is that 3 seconds later, it restarts all by itself!

---

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James Hromadka
Old Friend

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

Thanks for all the suggestions. I seem to have licked the boot problem by installing the MS USB driver fix (something about a timing issue with AMD processors over 350mhz).

As for the auto-off/restart, it's still happening. I've flashed the latest available BIOS from ASUS but it didn't help. I'll keep looking for an answer...

All in all, this is an awesome system. What a difference from that old 233!

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God bless America, my home sweet home...

Registered: Apr 2000
Location: St Petersburg Fla
Posts: 224

Good links for hardware jockeys

Sites I found very usefull when I put a system together:
www.maximumpc.com
www.pcmech.com

Registered: Jan 2000
Location: Lawrence, NY, USA
Posts: 148

Is this thread displayed funny for anyone else besides me? Something wrong w/ the upgraded forum software...

__________________
Life's just a blast, just it's moving really fast, and you'd <BR>better stay on top or life'll kick you in the ass -Limp Bizkit

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: New York, New York
Posts: 560

quote:

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Originally posted by parb33
Is this thread displayed funny for anyone else besides me? Something wrong w/ the upgraded forum software...

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__________________
Felipe Garcia
Happy Treo 600 user, so far. Thanx Cingular for having an unlocked phone.

My Treo 600 is my phone, my PDA, my watch, and my MP3 player. Oh yeah, I take a picture once in a while with it. Convergence is such a great thing.

Registered: May 2000
Location: St. Paul, MN
Posts: 1429

BBBEEENN!

It's all BEN's fault...

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 638

Well, I dunno what I did, but I really screwed up this forum . YOU ARE ALL UNDER ME

BEN

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: New York, New York
Posts: 560

Re: BBBEEENN!

quote:

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Originally posted by miradu2000
It's all BEN's fault...

---

__________________
Felipe Garcia
Happy Treo 600 user, so far. Thanx Cingular for having an unlocked phone.

My Treo 600 is my phone, my PDA, my watch, and my MP3 player. Oh yeah, I take a picture once in a while with it. Convergence is such a great thing.

Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Manchester, England
Posts: 83

hmmmm

Mark: do a double check on the powerbuttons connectors, it might be something mis-connected. I build my PC about more than a year ago (nov.99) with asus k7v, athlon 500 (well it was soooooo fast then ), I still can get the 'sleep' button to work. I had the restart happened to me couple of times, it jus went away by itself(or maybe it didn't ). I don't know what was wrong with it. U probably could take off each card(PCI, AGP) a time and then start it seen what happens to that problem. Hope it works out. I remember how frustrating it was when I build my PC, jus couldn't get my soundblaster x-gamer to work. =P

BTW: this "under BEN" thing is happening somewhere else in the board as well, u guys might wanna check it out, sory can remember which thread. (not jus under Ben, someone else 2) =)

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Always have my Visor with me...... =)

Registered: May 2000
Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Posts: 163

Problem Viewing This Thread?

So how come no matter how many times I try, I can only see MarkEagle's post opening this thread, and none of the replies?

Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Alive and well on VisorCentral.com
Posts: 861

I'd reinstall windows over the old installation.. (all your old stuff should still be there, however, if you get any dialog boxes to replace files, you may to to replace the "newer" files with ones from the windows install set.. (just to be on the safe side)

Windows doesn't take well to massive hardware changes..

I have a buddy that insists on an FDISK high colonic in these cases.. I hate to kill the patient to cure the illness.


I have also seen some REALLY funky stuff with Windows ME, I run Atguard & Norton Antivirus 2000 here on most of my machines, and on my test ME machine it really crashed bad on the upgrade, I had to update the software to ME compatible versions, what's the morale of that story, disable ALL software & firewalls, virus scanners that's loaded upon bootup when upgrading or fiddling with windows setup... I'd even go so far as to uninstall them till all is happy.. I am not sure about windows 2000, but most windows have a tool you can run called MSCONFIG, from there you can fiddle will all kinds of system parameters, such as apps and services that are loaded at boot time.

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"One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no �them� out there. It�s just an awful lot of �us�." -- Douglas Adams

Registered: Apr 2000
Location: St Petersburg Fla
Posts: 224

Force Hardware Detection

This uses regedit to clear the ENUM part of the registry that keeps track of hardware and drivers.

Step 1. Restart your computer and hold down the Ctrl key during the power-on self test.
Step 2. In the Windows 98 Startup menu, choose the third menu item, Safe mode.
Step 3. Click Start, Run, type regedit, and press Enter.
Step 4. Navigate in your Registry to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, right-click the Enum folder, and click Delete. Close the Registry editor.

Now Restart and see if Windows picks up all the Hardware and drivers correctly.

Backup the Registry first so that it can be recovered if things go wrong.
Be prepared to re-install Windows because things can go horribly wrong when this technique is used. But 9 times out of 10, it should work.

Last edited by BudPritchard on 02-14-2001 at 09:20 PM

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

Ok, Ben's fixed. His signature had some incorrect HTML in it.

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James Hromadka
Old Friend

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 638

Hey, it fixed

Now I can post again
Thanks marcus or james.
BEN

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: New York, New York
Posts: 560

Mark,

Are you still having the shutdown problems?

Check this:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/...8se/default.asp

__________________
Felipe Garcia
Happy Treo 600 user, so far. Thanx Cingular for having an unlocked phone.

My Treo 600 is my phone, my PDA, my watch, and my MP3 player. Oh yeah, I take a picture once in a while with it. Convergence is such a great thing.