My friend is interested in getting Linux onto his PC but seems to be experiencing a strange instability problem which has both of us at our wits end!

He has a Duron 900 running on a Jetway 867AS motherboard with a VIA KT-266 chipset, 256MB PC133 SDRAM, 40GB ATA/100 HD, PCI Sound and Firewire cards with an AGP NVidia GeForce2 MX400 video card.

I have spent hours checking over his system and as far as I can tell there are no hardware clashes. (e.g. every piece of hardware is on it's own interrupt)

He is running Win98 SE and the system runs for varying time periods but will suddenly lock up for no apparent reaon. There are no messages on screen to indicate a software problem, the machine just freezes.

The motherboard passed all the diagnostics tests in Norton Utilities but the memory chip failed. I took out what I thought was a bad chip and installed it onto my motherboard where it passed the same NU test! I then installed another identical memory chip (which I know is a good chip) onto his motherboard and it failed the NU test.

I am wondering if the fault is with the connector on the motherboard that you plug the memory chip into.

Any ideas/solutions much appreciated.

Regards, Alan.

Well, first of all, let me tell you that it doesn't take much to make Windoze crash. I bet you knew this already. I had Linux running with X for a week, (!!) 24 hours a day, without a kernel panic (yes a lot of stuff segfaulted, but the kernel held!!!).

Anyway... I am no hardware buff, but ounds to me like a weird motherboard. My motherboard works fine with 128MB SDRAM, but starts crashing like hell when I go over 128 megs. Go figure! I tried upgrading the BIOS to no avail. I think you can safely assume that it's either your motherboard or your BIOS.

My mobo refuses to boot if I put a stick in the middle slot but works fine with sticks in slots one and three........I'd say its most likely a dodgy motherboard.

Okay, not to be the snotty one here, but this machine runs nothing at all but Windows 98 SE and you think it may be a hardware problem? Honestly dude we're talking about a black box of bugs from the 8th dimension... slow downs followed by an eventual crash sound like typical windows bad task scheduling coupled with something filling memory like a nutted out pig. If you start taking tasks out of the background and just strip it down to the sys32 and explorer and those other 2-3 things it refuses to stop and then the problems go away, then one of the progs running previously in the background was bad; but please, please don't be ready to blame hardware, its much less likely to be the issue.

Also, for checking memory, Norton is pretty much pants because it relies on something else to run, so therefore that's going to be using memory and blah blah blah. If you really want to check the sticks again, try www.memtest86.com It boots off of a floppy, runs entirely in memory, and moves itself around so it can check the places where it was. There's nothing else running to futz up the test. Great little toy.

You could try coming by with a Linux distro pre-installed on an old hard drive, boot it up, configure X, start X and then leave it for a week. If its fine, that'll narrow the hardware out of the equation.

Luck,

Finegan

I'm running an Asus mobo, which I think are the best mobo's there are, with duel 600 and 2 256 chips, it's been running for 3 1/2 years with 0 problems. Just wanted to say this,

I had instability in windows with my Thunderbird 850 MHz, ELSA ERAZOR X GeForce256 video card on ABIT KT7-RAID mobo, changed configuration to K6 450MHz, no name mobo, TNT2 DImond Viper770 video card + different flavors of windows - same happened, all along these lines while I was in linux everything worked fine. So ever since, no offence to windows users whatsoever, I am completely converted to only linux OS user on my machines, recently I acquired PIII 500 for my dad and I put Mandy 8.2 on it - dad's happy with it.

maybe you can run a cdrom driven linux,
like knoppix or suse live evaluation.
It runs entirely from cdrom and in knoppix
you dont or (almost dont) have to configure
things.
And for hardware, except memory/mobo you
should check temperature of cpu and graph
card. And always good for random crashes
the power supply
good luck

Thanks for all the replies!

I know what you mean about the general instability of Win 98 (all versions!) but the same system was running fine with an earlier motherboard and Celeron chip. This problem only started when he put in the new Jetway motherboard and PC133 memory (running at 100 Mhz).

Sisoft Sandra reported the motherboard as running too hot but says this even when the machine has been left to stand overnight and has just been switched on with a total of 4 fans running!

I have deliberately minimised the background programs just in case this is causing a problem. I will try that memory utility mentioned by finegan to see if this reports any problems.

As a matter of interest the Jetway board supports both 168pin SDRam and 184 pin DDRam. If it is a dry joint that is causing the problem with the SDRam connector I was speculating on whether the M/B would be okay with a DDRam stick in one of the 184 pin slots?

Alan

If you can get hold of a stick then its worth a try.

My girlfriend's parents' K6_300 was always buggy and I kept it in the closet for a few years just thinking it was an old buggy board or CPU. About a month ago i decided to stick an A7V333 with XP2000+ and PC2700 CL2 RAM in the case and was concerned when it kept crashing after ~6 hours running a MATLAB job. At wit's end I tried another power supply, and now it has been running 12 days straight @ 100% CPU without a hiccup. Encouraged, I tried the K6_300 with another power supply; now that machine is solid too

It took me 3 years to figure out it was the power supply...

good luck,
-BP