So, in the past few months I have been dealing with a whole range of issues on my K6 SS7 system. The system resides in my parents' place, so I only get a couple of days a month on average to tinker with it, that's why things drag out for so long.

The system has Win98 SE installed; It has been rather stable in DOS, but under Windows I would experience: (a) random lockups, (b) some games flat out refusing to run complaining about corrupt files, (c) some games glitching out back to desktop after a while. In both (b) and (c) these are games that have worked before.

The board is a DFI K6XV3+/66, and the CPU has recently been upgraded from the K6-II that has been there from the start to a K6-2+. Thought maybe something is wrong with the CPU or there is a compatibility issue, but, nope - still the same problems after putting the old CPU back. Memory has also been tested and no errors found with Memtest86, but just in case, I took one DIMM out, reducing RAM from 256MB to 128MB - still glitches.

Started suspecting motherboard, since these frequently fail (it already seemingly has a bad ISA slot, 1 out of 3). Found a rare, reasonably priced AX59 Pro online, but that one came DOA (wouldn't POST with any combination of CPU, GPU and RAM). Seller refunded me and I got to keep the board - who knows - if I'm ever so desperate (not yet), I may try to revive it.

So back to the K6XV3+. I finally thought - hey, maybe it's the Windows installation that's corrupted. It's been there for ages (I think the current install is from 2007, judging by the file dates, and I can't remember all the patches installed, settings customized, etc.), so I've decided to give it a try with a fresh start. Just in case, I decided to take a snapshot using Acronis True Image, and that's when I noticed a few things previously overlooked.

First of all, a deep Scandisk on all drives found a bunch of cross-linked files and other file system errors. Strange that the default scan running after improper shutdowns never found them; maybe it's too superficial? I spent a few hours running surface scans and found no bad sectors (not bad for a IBM Deskstar from 2002, *knock-on-wood*). After all the scans and file system repairs were complete, Windows booted up and complained about corrupt system files which were restored from a recent backup. Sounds good? Well, partially.

Apparently the "recent backup" was almost as recent as the fresh install, as most drivers were lost, including the Voodoo 3000 driver. After reinstalling it, some issues went away (apparently cross-linked files can cause corruption even if you copy over the file, as it does not resolve the cross-link). Awesome, but the system still locks up every once in a while and complains about file access problems. Turned off DMA mode on the hard drive, just in case it is the issue, but for the love of God I could not restore Wifi functionality - drivers are installed, connection is working, but the TCP/IP stack seems broken is somehow and the adapter gets no IP. Well, screw that; it's time for that reinstall.

Completed the reinstall, and for whatever reason, I decided that the best thing to do next would be to install the Via IDE driver, so that DMA is enabled. Well, it was. Except then it started to complain that half the files and directories on the drive is corrupt. Scary stuff. In DOS everything works fine; in Windows Scandisk finds a bunch of errors (even after DMA is disabled). Apparently the driver is wrong or I did something wrong installing it. Fortunately I wasn't stupid enough to let Scandisk "repair" my drive and actually corrupt my files. Instead I decided to play it safe, take the drive out, connect to another PC, copy everything over, and the reinstall 98SE again. Conveniently, the Pentium 4 desktop was within reach. But the whole thing took so long, that I will have to wait until the next visit to complete the process, and next time I will properly install the Via 4-in-1 driver from Phil's site.

I think this hard drive had not left the case, since it was first installed 17 years ago, until yesterday:

Attached to the P4 system for the file transfer: