Last night my system crashed shortly after it booted up. I rec'vd a fatal exception error and when I rebooted most of my drivers and access to programs were geone (video & sound card stopped working). After some tinkering I reinstalled windows and now i can get either the video or sound to work but not both. I still can not access many of my programs. I want to reinstall them but the Add/Remove software tab in control panel is blank other then Windows 98 being there. My virsu scan (Norton 2001) can not initialize the def file but I was able to run a scan from the CD but those defs are old. Any thoughts to a solution? Also I have two hard drives C: programs and D: Files. Can I reformat C and still keep D and my data intack?

I'm running:
Wind98SE
768Ram
800Mh Athlon
C: 80 G WD
D: 40 G WD
HP9100I CDR
Generic DVD
PNY GEforce4 MX440
Hercules GameTheater XP

Where ever you go, there you are.

I'd start by removing 256MB of your RAM. W98SE won't use more than 512MB.

D: will be fine if you format C:, as long as they don't rely on C: programs to run.

Perhaps an IRQ issue, as they don't work at the same time. Maybe they're sharing resources.

<b><font color=blue>~ BIOS SETTINGS: Fast, Hot, Unstable...That ought to work. ~</font color=blue></b>

Since you have such a good investment in DRAM it wouldn't be a bad idea to switch to W2k or XP. Both these OS's can manage large amounts of memory and is stabler than Win 98. Win 98 like Camie said just can't manage the DRAM over 512 MB <A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q253912" target="_new">Q253912</A>. So, to just set aside 256 MB of DRAM seems inefficent. Just a recommendation.

<font color=purple><b>An average human brain weights aprox. 3lbs., but a thought weights a load.</font color=purple></b>

I had no problems with 512MB of memory in WIndows 98SE. Try <A HREF="http://www.outertech.com/product.php?product=3&PHPSESSID=75af365f0bbcb36fea13967d5bbd74f6" target="_new">Cacheman</A> free from <A HREF="http://www.outertech.com" target="_new">OuterTech</A>.

...why not try reinstalling Win 98 on the C: drive...although I agree that an upgrade to Win XP would probably be a better overall strategy...

Wingding - Tom's official Forum Pervert

Yep. Better idea from jc14all.

<b><font color=blue>~ BIOS SETTINGS: Fast, Hot, Unstable...That ought to work. ~</font color=blue></b>

ok put any files you want to keep ither on disk,cd or on drive d:

format c by typing format c: /s
and do a clean install of win98se,

next install each programe one by one,get the cd go in there and find the setup or install file,

for your virus scanner goto www.symantec.com for the lastest virus updates,

once installed everything update windows such as security updates and service packs,

also get a firewall to protect your system from www.zonelabs.com

cut any fat from your system such as screen savers, screen saving features and quick lunch bar's witch slow your system,

remember to install the lastest drivers for your vid card,
from www.nvidia.com

also get the latest via 4 in 1's from your mother boards home web site,

it may seem over your head the first time you repair your system, but trust me,

after my many 100's of times repairing systems its like i can do it with my eyes shut.

<font color=red>im a boring old fart and a drunkin bum. </font color=red>