Trouble times two

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lil' Abner
  • Start date Start date
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Lil' Abner

I have two machines that dual boot Windows 98 SE and XP Pro. No problem
with either running XP. But if I leave either one of them run in Windows
98 until after the 15 minute power-off for the monitor, they crash.

Machine A - PC Chips PC 266 motherboard with on board SiS video. Processor
is Athlon 1600+. At present it has 256 Mb ram.
After the screen blanks, moving the mouse will bring it up to a black
screen with the following text in the upper left corner:
Sis 730 AGP True Color Graphics and Video Accelerator (this in yellow)
16M Bytes Video Memory. BIOS Version 2.00.50 (in white)
Support Vesa BIOS Extension Ver 3.0 (also in white)
It looks something like what you sometimes see when you first boot a
computer. The drivers are off the motherboard CD.
At this point, it's done. Although it detected the mouse movement to bring
the video back up, there's no response to any keyboard activity. Power down
is the only way out.

Machine B - Syntax SV266A with Athlon XP-2400+ processor. 512 Mb ram.
Has NVidia Riva TNT2 Model 64 AGP video adapter. Drivers were originally
from CD that came with the adapter. However I did download the latest
driver and installed it. It may have been the same driver. After the 15
minute time out, moving the mouse brings up a light yellowish screen with
fine vertical lines in it with a hard to describe little off color square
in it. This square isn't always in the same place. From there on out, it's
the same as the other machine. Power off to reboot.
Machine A originally had 512 Mb Ram also, but I took out half of it
thinking the problem might have something to do with too much memory in
Windows 98.
If I set the monitor to never turn off, either will run forever with no
problem. No screensaver on either, by the way.
I'm stumped. Any ideas?
 
I have two machines that dual boot Windows 98 SE and XP Pro. No problem
with either running XP. But if I leave either one of them run in Windows
98 until after the 15 minute power-off for the monitor, they crash.
Click to expand...

<snip>

Update both board's bios and use newest drivers for both boards,
and other components like the video. The TNT2 card should use
nVidia's reference "Detonator" driver.

If all else fails, try different power management settings, in
windows and in the bios.
 
If I set the monitor to never turn off, either will run forever with no
problem.
Click to expand...

As yer findin' out, not all things are possible with computers. What
you want to do is probably just not possible.

Things I'd try, though...

Make sure you have all the updates for 98. There was a fix re: power
settings...but I don't remember what it was about.

Try different monitors...different video cards...updated video
drivers...proper monitor drivers, etc.

But I doubt if any of that will work. 98 simply wasn't always good at
doin' those kinda things.

Good luck.


Have a nice week...

Trent©

Follow Joan Rivers' example --- get pre-embalmed!
 
"Lil" Abner......

I feel your pain !!

My only solution to this same problem was to disable all
power management settings in the motherboards' BIOS,
not let any thing power down and keep the monitor on as
you have done. I tried downloading some of the "fixes" as
mentioned on the MS Knowledge Base site but in most
cases, it caused more harm than good.

ray
 
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