[eaglemike]

I am working on a Solo Pro 9300 running Win98.

User had an issue where as the Windows desktop should be appearing during boot up, it would blue screen out with a fatal exception 0D.

I had seen this happen two times in a row. First time we restarted the laptop, second time I hit the enter key to continue. I saw the desktop briefly and than got it with another blue screen exception 06.



Now, upon trying to restart, the system sits on the Gateway splash screen and I can read the message about hitting F2 for setup. Hitting F2 takes me no where and nothing else happens.

If I attempt to start up again and continue to tap the F2 key, the DOS writing shows up to the point where:

Mouse initialized

ATAPI Removable Drive

ATAPI CDROM



And once again I just sit here with nothing else happening on screen.



I tried putting a boot up disc and/or cd in the laptop with another reboot and get the same results.



Any idea on where to go next? At this point, I’m not worried about recovering data. I just want to get this laptop up and running again.



Thank you.

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Mike,

For some interesting reading on your problem, you may want to check out this site

http://aumha.org/win4/kbefe.php

It definitely sounds like a faulty video driver, or perhaps an antivirus program gone bad. The convergence of two problems at once could also be RAM going bad (even your non-replaceable system ram). It could also be RAM going bad.How you move ahead is up to you...sounds like you don't care to fart with it anymore.

The most obvious action to take is to reinstall windows over itself first. It will take an hour, but could solve all your problems. Simpley set the CD as the first boot device and use a windows cd to reinstall over the previous installation.

If that fails, I would take a boot floppy and rename the c:\program files and c:\windows directories, then install windows again. This will give you a brand new windows install, but you can go back and grab all your favorites, email, personal files.

I know you don't care about your data, as you said, but why not save if since it is so simple in Windows 98?

[gerryf]

Mike,

For some interesting reading on your problem, you may want to check out this site

http://aumha.org/win4/kbefe.php

It definitely sounds like a faulty video driver, or perhaps an antivirus program gone bad. The convergence of two problems at once could also be RAM going bad (even your non-replaceable system ram). It could also be RAM going bad.How you move ahead is up to you...sounds like you don't care to fart with it anymore.

The most obvious action to take is to reinstall windows over itself first. It will take an hour, but could solve all your problems. Simpley set the CD as the first boot device and use a windows cd to reinstall over the previous installation.

If that fails, I would take a boot floppy and rename the c:\program files and c:\windows directories, then install windows again. This will give you a brand new windows install, but you can go back and grab all your favorites, email, personal files.

I know you don't care about your data, as you said, but why not save if since it is so simple in Windows 98?

[eaglemike]

I would love to reinstall Windows again, but as I had entered earlier, the system freezes as if it never finished posting.
I can't get to the bios and I attempted placing a cd and a 3.5 in the laptop to see if they'd boot first with no results.
I did remove the hard drive and doing so allowed me to reach the bios, so now I'm thinking that the hard drive went bad.

[gerryf]

Perhaps, perhaps not. You might try to rededect your harddrive in bios now that it has posted once.

But you are probably right...the circuitry on the harddrive may may have gone south, preventing your motherboard from getting past harddrive detection.

You could, conceivably, manually set up your drive if your motherboard allows it and you can find the info for your drive.

You seem fairly technically savvy--did you place the drive in a different machine?

[eaglemike]

I used a convertor to go from 2.5 to 3.5" and hook the drive up to another machine. I wanted it to be a slave to the main drive, but I think the 2.5" wanted to be the main drive instead.
It was looking for a DHCP connection which normal didnt' happen during the boot up process, so I pulled the plug and figured that idea wasn't going to work.

[gerryf]

so, there is an issue still, or not?

[eaglemike]

Well, it's still not fixed, so yes, it's a bit of an issue.
I was just coming here for more ideas in case I was missing any other clues as to what it can be. I thought perhaps someone might have experienced the same symptoms in the past.

If I find a definative problem and solution for it, I'll come back and share it on the site. I think I may slap a new hard drive in this and see what happens.

Thanks for the effort and ideas.