drewking12 wrote on 2025-05-13, 19:43:

Sometimes when booting the hard drive never turns on and i get stuck in limbo. Sometimes it actually does post and crashes midway through loading windows 98. And sometimes it boots without issue and runs games like a champ. I noticed that if i been using it for a couple hours and try to restart it, it gets stuck. But if i come back after a few hours and boot it again, i get into windows no problem. This is a similar issue on a 166mhz windows 95 build I have and i wonder if im doing something wrong here. I’m guessing it’s the old hard drive but I really have no idea. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Sounds like a combo of a failing HD and something Overheating. Suggest first measuring the voltages from the PSU while computer is running, make sure they are in spec.
The HD is new enough to have SMART tech and there are apps to read that data, could show a drive issue.

Horun wrote on 2025-05-14, 01:54:

drewking12 wrote on 2025-05-13, 19:43:

Sometimes when booting the hard drive never turns on and i get stuck in limbo. Sometimes it actually does post and crashes midway through loading windows 98. And sometimes it boots without issue and runs games like a champ. I noticed that if i been using it for a couple hours and try to restart it, it gets stuck. But if i come back after a few hours and boot it again, i get into windows no problem. This is a similar issue on a 166mhz windows 95 build I have and i wonder if im doing something wrong here. I’m guessing it’s the old hard drive but I really have no idea. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Sounds like a combo of a failing HD and something Overheating. Suggest first measuring the voltages from the PSU while computer is running, make sure they are in spec.
The HD is new enough to have SMART tech and there are apps to read that data, could show a drive issue.

I am getting a western digital expert from ebay soon so hopefully that will fix the problem. I thought about overheating but it wouldn't make sense why the pc runs fine on games for hours and only crashes when I'm trying to startup. I certainty hope its not the PSU though l0l.

Not sure about the Compaq keyboard been attached to a IBM computer. Pretty sure that goes against some international law (although I'm also guilty of this)

Seriously though Nice looking setup even with a CRT sitting on top. To give an ideal of how fast things moved back then I got a new computer Jan 99, while not top of the range it cost $3k AUD from Gateway.
PII 400, 64MB Ram, 10GB HDD, 16MB TNT, onboard PCI SB64.

Agree sounds like the HDD is on the way out. SpinRite was a popular testing stress test tool which is pretty easy to find 😉