myne: Can QEMM's MANIFEST scan memory? I have that. 😀 cyclone3d: I don't have access to the computer's inners, but, as it is a Pentium 4 computer, its power supply should be pretty new.

Harry Potter wrote on 2025-02-22, 17:40:

myne: Can QEMM's MANIFEST scan memory? I have that. 😀 cyclone3d: I don't have access to the computer's inners, but, as it is a Pentium 4 computer, its power supply should be pretty new.

Pentium 4.... Is it socket 423, 478, or LGA775.

If 478 or LGA775 you have a very good chance that a bunch of the capacitors have gone bad and are bulging, which would easily explain the problems you are having.

The other option is that the thermal compound has separated and you are getting hot spots on the CPU which can also cause random problems.

You need to open it up and take a look.

And if the power supply was not replaced in the last 5 years or so that could be suspect as well.

Definitely look for bulged capacitors on the motherboard first.

Also make sure to clean the dust out of the system unless that has been done recently. Canned air is ok, but a compressor with a spray nozzle or an electric duster is even better.

If no bulged capacitors, try reseating the RAM. If that doesn't help, download memtest86+ to test the RAM.

If that passes, reseat the CPU and replace the thermal compound between the CPU and cooler.

I'm mainly good with the software of the computer but not the hardware. 🙁 Maybe I should try eBay for a good motherboard. I'm familiar with FDISK and FORMAT and am willing to stuff the computer myself. I just need the hard drive installed, and all the other parts of my computer are working.

No time like the present to learn how to work on computer hardware.

Open it up and take a look. No sense in just shotgunning parts (trying random parts with no troubleshooting) to try to get it working.

I have good news! I'm back at my mother's house since this morning, and I finally got my Win98SE tower to work. 😀 I looked into its config files to disable everything but HIMEM.SYS and found something new: a line for setver.sys. Disabling everything got Windows to install, and reenabling everything but setver gave me a VFAT error or something. Disabling the DOS RAM drive got it to work completely. I was using the DOS RAM drive because a Windows one gave me problems with the graphics driver and one emulator. I had to reinstall DriveSpace and didn't realize that for a second and, while trying to mount a ZIP disk, DriveSpace wanted to restart, and, when restarting, the system complained that DriveSpace can't work with the drive. I had to manually restore the config files, and now, it works. 😀