RAM/BIOS issue

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riscbroker

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Help, please guys.
I'm trying to resurrect an elderly Celeron box. Main issue was random restarts, so I've formatted the drive and reloaded Win98SE. It's a MSI 6368 board, I've d/loaded chipset, video and audio drivers from the MSI site and installed them. I still get random restarts and BSOD with error message: Fatal exception OE 0028:CO299739 in VxD.
Suspecting dodgy RAM, I've run Memtest, no issues with RAM. I've swapped out known good RAM from another box, still get restarts.
I've tried the UBCD diagnostics for processor and RAM, again no issues.
I've uninstalled video drivers and chipset drivers in case of driver conflict.
I've looked for funny stuff in the BIOS and set BIOS to fail safe
I've reseated the RAM and cleaned up heatsink and fan
I got very bored and tried to load XP pro, I get a BSOD with a Stop error
Eiishhh.
What next? Hammer?
 
Remove all unecessary peripherals to absolute minimum to get the machine booting
including HD, try boot it with a linux live CD.
Also you can try another PSU.
 
Drake2007 said:
Remove all unecessary peripherals to absolute minimum to get the machine booting
including HD, try boot it with a linux live CD.
Also you can try another PSU.
Click to expand...
Boots fine off a live CD, I'd load Linux on it and leave it at that but there is one required app. that is Windows only.
 
riscbroker said:
Boots fine off a live CD, I'd load Linux on it and leave it at that but there is one required app. that is Windows only.
Click to expand...

Actually, I booted it off a live CD to format the HDD and the machine locked up at one point so I restarted it and did the format. Maybe PSU is the culprit?
 
I've had machines with dodgy PSUs that did that too (PS overheating).

You could try your WinApp in a VirtualBox under Linux, but not sure how the Celeron would handle it.
 
Drake2007 said:
Remove all unecessary peripherals to absolute minimum to get the machine booting
including HD, try boot it with a linux live CD.
Also you can try another PSU.
Click to expand...
OK I swapped out the PSU for a known good PSU, machine now cannot even boot a live Linux CD, hangs during boot.
What is of interest though is that the PSU swap revealed some swollen caps on the MB, with a bit of 'rust' on the tops of them. Assuming these caps are faulty on perhaps an intermittent basis, would this account for the trouble I'm having?
 
riscbroker said:
OK I swapped out the PSU for a known good PSU, machine now cannot even boot a live Linux CD, hangs during boot.
What is of interest though is that the PSU swap revealed some swollen caps on the MB, with a bit of 'rust' on the tops of them. Assuming these caps are faulty on perhaps an intermittent basis, would this account for the trouble I'm having?
Click to expand...

Yes, get the axe.
 
I was thinking CPU or motherboard when you said you seemed to have ruled out most of the other things.

You could try cleaning up the rust board with some Meth's( It wont get rid of it, but could remove most of it), But its usually more trouble than its work

Another thing I used to do as well.. was drop it :D Not hard enough to break, but just to shake things up abit as it could be a dry joint somewhere.
 
Kalvaer said:
I was thinking CPU or motherboard when you said you seemed to have ruled out most of the other things.

You could try cleaning up the rust board with some Meth's( It wont get rid of it, but could remove most of it), But its usually more trouble than its work

Another thing I used to do as well.. was drop it :D Not hard enough to break, but just to shake things up abit as it could be a dry joint somewhere.
Click to expand...

There's no rust on the board, only what looks like rust on the tops of some of the caps. Wiki has some good info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Fits the symptoms perfectly
 
OK, how old is this computer ?
Does it have the latest version of its BIOS installed ?
When you BSOD in XP installs it could be because the BIOS is not set to a plug and play OS or that XP is attempting to use ACPI on an older BIOS that does not fully comply with ACPI. Linux tends to avoid using ACPI on BIOSes that are pre Y2K.
 
Rouxenator said:
OK, how old is this computer ?
Does it have the latest version of its BIOS installed ?
When you BSOD in XP installs it could be because the BIOS is not set to a plug and play OS or that XP is attempting to use ACPI on an older BIOS that does not fully comply with ACPI. Linux tends to avoid using ACPI on BIOSes that are pre Y2K.
Click to expand...

Machine and BIOS are 2001

I have to suspect the capacitors. I can't even boot Mepis 3.1 live CD that usually boots on pre Y2K machines
 
Definitely sounds like the capacitors. We've had many issues like that, especially if the cap that was swollen was in the region of the IDE Controller, or around the CPU. Also had issues with twisted IDE cables. Replaced the cable it worked fine. But most likely buggered caps
 
So, had the dodgy caps replaced this morning, loaded up Win 98, runs perfectly........
 
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