98se boot problems

[Smoke24]

I am having problems getting 98se to boot. It will get to the desktop background and try to display an error message but it is ureadable and it locks up, no icons are shown. It started right after I went to Windows Update and downloaded a couple of small updates, I think to do with IE security. I started getting a rundll error and it would and still won't boot into Windows. It also eventually killed the motherboard so I have changed it out. Seemed to wipe out the bios and kill the power on it that ran all the fans. I was going to try reinstalling 98se but it also now will not read from the floppy drive or either CD drive even though I had them detected manually in the bios of the new board. It will boot to safe mode but no drives but the hard drive are displayed in My Computer. Could I have possibly killed the processor along with the other stuff on the old board? If so would it even attempt to boot? Anyone have any idea what is wrong?
It is a PIII 933 now running stock speed on an MSI 6153VA board, 45 gig IBM 256 meg (two 128's) PC133. The old board was a Soyo SY-7VCA2.

[Cricket]

Hi Smoke24,

Really sounds like virus activity. Have you scanned your hard drives for boot sector viruses?

Cricket

[Smoke24]

Yes, After it started acting crazy and just before it crashed for good, I updated my Norton Antivirus and ran it twice and nothing was found. That was this past Sunday. I kinda figured it to be one of the e-mail viruses that auto execute, without opening attachments or anythng. I never open them even if I know who sent them but these some of these new viruses can execute as soon as an e-mail hits your inbox and before you can delete it. All I can figure is that I somehow got a virus or some bad files along with the Windoze updates. It gave a couple of rundll error messages after the downloads but would still boot and run until after several bootups, then it started the locking up before reaching the full desktop. Now I can't get it to see and boot to the floppy or a CD drive to reformat it.

[GaryRouth]

Do you have another power supply around that you could try? If your fans stopped/slowed for any length of time, heat might have done the damage: seems like a bad power supply could do that.

Do the temps look OK in the Bios? (currently)

A floppy should show up in Safe Mode. Sounds like the Bios Setup might not be quite right. Just to help troubleshoot, try using the "Save Default Settings and Exit" option, and see if you can then still boot to Safe Mode, and try the floppy again.

Hmm - and double-check the cranky floppy cable - it might not be in quite right. [same for the CD cables] . . . even with a completely dead hard drive, if the motherboard's bios is OK, and the video card, memory, cpu, hs/fan are OK - you should be able to boot to either floppy or cd-rom.

Never a dull moment!
. . . Gary

[mike breck]

Are the Floppy Drive and CD-Rom drive detected during POST before Windows starts to install?

You might also want to try clearing the BIOS. See your mobo manual for specific instructions on how to do this.

After, you do this go straight in CMOS setup and set all your IDE devices to AUTO.

The old HD will have the old drivers on it from the SOYO mobo.

You should really boot into Safe Mode and remove the ENUM folder from the Registry

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9254

Read the entire thread before doing this.

[Smoke24]

I changed out the power supply first with a brand new 350 watt, still in there but wasn't the problem so I put my old mobo back in. The drives are detected in bios at the post screen but the CD's don't show in My Computer in safe mode. It shows the floppy there but it won't access it and I checked all cables and changed the one for the floppy. I have also cleared the bios back to defaults and reset what is required. I haven't thought about the drivers as both boards are Via chipsets but may require different drivers for the IDE and PCI buses. I'll check out the thread and give it a try but I may just try to remove those drivers in device manager first and see if it will install the correct ones. I used this MSI board with this processor before I got the Soyo along with the same hard drive and all other drives except I changed the burner a couple of months ago. Thanks for the suggestions.