Tag Archives: disk drive

windows 98 with a large disk drive

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer seems to have had many strange problems (over the years), with his windows 98 pc.

He has had an F: drive appear mysteriously (zero size & 100% full), not able to properly install windows onto his 60Gb drive (he can only create a 2gb partition)… anything larger will work for a while & then “dissapear”. He has had viruses & spyware in the past, but he has fixed up those problems himself. The PC also has a SCSI CD-writer…

He is starting to think that there is a malicious “entity” on the internet, which will attack his computer as soon as he goes online.

He has also had many “experts” work on his computer, reccomending lots of different things (upgrade the motherboard, get a larger hard drive, a faster video card, reformat & reinstall windows).

I take a look & see a 2gb fat16 partition, and about 58GB of unpartitioned space. So after a quick look at the system, I partition up the remaining 58GB… and then format the partition, which give me a 58Gb D: drive.

I restart the PC & the 58GB drive is unreadable…windows allocates it to the D: drive letter, but gives an error when trying to look at the contents…

Some research shows that fat16 is limited to 2 GB max. Fat32 is more confusing: it can support drives up to 125 GB, but windows 98se can only safely make use of 32Gb! but applying a microsoft “patch”, allows it to use 62Gb… and maybe 125Gb (if the wind is NWW & the moon is full 😉 .

I try out the patch, re-partition the 58Gb, re-format & re-create the D: drive, & everything works just fine, even after multiple restarts.

I talk to the customer, & he is happy for me to re-format the whole drive (as long as I backup his data… it all fits onto 1 CD: easy)

So using microsofts “improved” fdisk, I create a single 60Gb fat32 partition, boot from floppy, install windows 98, Install antivir & anti-spyware measures. Install a network card, connect to the internet, and I just get the usual (occasional)windows 98 freeze, otherwise it runs just fine.

No bizzare behaviour, so I give it back to the customer & ask him to try it & let me know if anything unusual starts happening.

Win98 lockups (due to disk dma)

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer calls with a PC that is freezing (at random… every few minutes, with no apparent correlation to a possible cause, except she replaced a faulty monitor a few days prior to this problem starting).

I thing its possibly a heat issue, as I have seen a few PCs struggle with Brisbane’s summer heat & poor air circulation due to dust & poor case design.

I cannot make the PC freeze (windows 98 running an amd athlon 750Mhz in a HP case), so I open it up & clean out the dust (it’s not overly dustly), but I cannot cause a lockup… I try running an openGL screensaver, but still no lockup.

I suspect it should all be fine, but while on my way home, the customer calls & says it has locked up again… and given that she needs it for the weekend, I return with a few spare power supplies & an old spare PC.

Changing the power supply doesn’t help, so I start to suspect the motherboard (the PC is about 8 years old).

So I place the HDD into the spare PC that I took with me & fire up win98… after windows “discovers” all the new hardware, it’s back up & running… at this point (after over 2 hours of working on cramped PC cases, I suddenly remember one of the windows98 mistakes I made many many years ago: activating the DMA setting in the device manager properties for the disk drive often causes random lock-ups).

I check it out, and: yes, DMA is activated… I switch it off & ask the customer if anyone with technical knowledge has used the PC (answer is no)… Given that the PC is running, I decide not to waste too much more time tracking the exact cause of the problem.

Customer assures me she will call if the PC gives any more problems.