Technical problem: computer crash after clean install

[Etienne Charland]

Hi, I have a computer to repair, but I can't figure out what's the problem.
The guy had WinME and installed an "internet accelerator" software (in fact
it was probably a virus). The computer started crashing shortly after that.
I tried installing Win98 from scratch, but it crashes right after setup
reboot!

I tested the RAM with TuffTest, and it appears to be OK. I tested the hard
drive surface with scandisk, and it appears to be OK. Before installing, I
deleted, recreated and formatted the partition. The Win98 setup goes without
any problem. It reboots, shortly after, I get a blue screen. If I try to
reboot, I get all kind of random weird errors, as if the RAM was damaged...

What could be the problem???

Thanks!

Etienne

 

[Etienne Charland]

Hi,

1) I've heard there are such things as Boot Sector
viruses, so you might want to use fdisk to completely
remove and recreate the disk partition.

I deleted the partition with Partition Magic. Does that leave boot sector
viruses?

2) Then install DOS 6.22 just to make sure the computer
boots. If your computer can't even boot DOS, then you've
probably got a disk problem or memory problem regardless
what Scandisk says. If you can get a hold of DISK DOCTOR,
you could try giving that a go to see what it says. (if
you have an IDE disk, then you can just swap disks no
problem; but if you have SCSI, then you need the help of a
real computer tech.)

If I would install DOS, it would boot for sure. Even Win98 almost boots;
after the setup blue screen, I could boot in safe mode, and it almost loaded
completly before crashing with strange errors.

3) After that, then go ahead and install Win 98 on top of
DOS. The advantage of installing Win 95 or Win 98 over
DOS is that you can boot DOS from a floppy and access your
hard drive. If you install Win 95/98 over an unformatted
disk, you can't access your hard drive from DOS booted
from a floppy (I know this from experience). Now, if you
can install DOS and it runs okay, but you can't install
Win 98 after all this, then there's probably something
incompatible between your computer hardware and Windoze.

When installing, I boot from a DOS floppy disk, copy the setup files to the
hard drive, then run setup. But no matter how it was installed, you'll
always be able to access the partition from DOS, as long it is a FAT16 or
FAT32 partition (Win98 only support these anyway).

Or, this may seem like an off-the-wall thought, but maybe
your friend's computer hardware was built specifically for
ME, and the BIOS or whatever isn't compatible with any
other version of Windoze. Granted, this is a little off
the wall, but it's a possibility I wouldn't rule out.
Call the manufacturer and ask...

Have you ever seen a 200mhz built for WinME? The BIOS is dated from 1997...
But I've been told by another guy that he installed WinME because everything
else failed, and WinME worked... does it make any sense? And the WinME CD is
unreadable

Hope this helps

BTW, you're Irish, aren't you???

No, I'm from Quebec

Etienne