New Build with Problems

[philjonz]

System boots up fine, no problems with playing games, Internet access is slow but here are the main concerns. These parts are brand new and were just acquired within the last couple of months.

BIOS only recognizes 137 GB of the 250 SATA HD. This is a system that came with SATA plug-ins on the MB and SATA wiring.

System came with 528 RAM. I added 1 GB. System only recognizes the 1GB. I tried placing them in different slots and still the 528 is ignored. Both sticks are seated properly.

Internet access is slow but downloading and movement within the net is extremely slow. PC Pitstop measures my download speed at 18 KBits/sec (I have dial up service). My other and much older PC is a speed demon compare to this one while on the Internet.

I tried to defrag the HD and got the message "not enough memory."

Windows 98-SE, IE 6;
Motherboard: Abit KV7-V Socket A; CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2900+ Socket A 400FSB Barton Core; PSU: Ultra 500W Standard; NEC ND-3550 16x DVD Burner; NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 256MB AGP video card; Seagate 250GB Serial ATA
HD 7200/8MB/S-ATA-150; USR 5660A 56K V.92 PCI Modem.

RAM is Kingston 1042MB PC3200 DDR 400 MHz and Ultra 512MB PC 3200 DDR 400 MHz CL3

[Alaron]

Windows 98SE has a 137GB limitation on hard drives. Back when it came out, no one had the large drives we have today, and it simply was not programmed for anything larger. You can get around this with a PCI Controller card for the system, or upgrading to Windows 2000 or XP.

Most likely the system doesn't recognize your 512 stick of RAM because it is Ultra. This is a generic type of ram which is usually low quality. Kingston is much better. If you want more ram, send back the Ultra for a better brand like Kingston, Crucial or Corsair.

Hope this helps.

[philjonz]

I was under the impression that the limitation on the HD size was related to the BIOS and not the Windows version. Am I wrong?

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by philjonz I was under the impression that the limitation on the HD size was related to the BIOS and not the Windows version. Am I wrong?

HDD size limitation is determined by both the BIOS and the OS. As Alaron has stated, Win98SE has a HDD limit of 137GB. It also has a problem if you have more than 512MB of RAM installed...Use of Memory Configurations Greater than 512MB in Windows 95, 98 and Windows Millennium Edition

Cricket

[glc]

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/di.../os/win98.html

[philjonz]

Very good folks. I appreciate the help. Thanks

[myrgo_31]

yea, just go ahead and get 2000. i like 2000, and it is a very good OS. Nothing is wrong with it. You can get it for, I think cheaper than XP Home.

[glc]

Not really - 2000 is a professional OS - unless you find some shady deal it's almost as much as XP Pro. ME was the parallel home OS to 2000 and you do NOT want that. With that system's specs it should run XP Home just fine. Much as I like 98SE, it's time to move on when you start using hardware too new for proper support. I personally use 2000 and am very happy with it, but it too has issues with large hard drives without the latest service pack.