Screen Goes Black

[J. P. Willis]

I am having a stability problem with Windows 98.

I keep getting fatal protection errors and the prgram goes into
shjuitdown a few minutes after windows starts. For one time out of
15, the screen goes black EXCEPT FOR THE START BUTTON, THE TRAY AND
ITEMS IN THE BOTTOM BAR.

Is this a video issue or should I look for the solution
elsewhere such as the ram module oe other?

 

[Mxsmanic]

Is this a video issue or should I look for the solution
elsewhere such as the ram module oe other?

It sounds like software.

RAM failures often manifest as hash or garbage on the screen. Video
hardware failures might produce something that looks more like what
you'd expect from a television, such as zooming patterns of noise or
part of the screen being visibly darker than other parts, or things like
that.

Your overall problems could be caused by hardware, though. Repeated
protection errors and all sorts of crashes in programs that have never
before given trouble can be a sign of a processor or motherboard
failure. I had similar symptoms this past week, after a fan failed and
the processor overheated. I got more and more segment violation crashes
in all sorts of normally-reliable programs; finally it got so bad that
the segment violations would occur within seconds after a boot, and
eventually it wouldn't boot at all.