Y-ellow Y'all.
        I'm new to this list. Usually I'd wait to see a few posts before making
one myself but I have an immediate and distressing problem.

To be honest I'm not 100% sure it's a hardware problem as such. Could be
the OS. (Win98) or it could be something in the system the OS doesn't like.
But I'm tending toward hardware as this is now a fresh virgin install.

I have an EPoX EP-6VBA2 Mo-bo. VIA chipset running a 600 meg coppermine
core 133 meg FSB proc. + 133 meg RAM. It tuned out to be the only mo-bo I
could lay my hands on that would actually support this config. And support
it, it does. The original system came up from A BX chipset however. The
first Mo-bo we got was An MSI (Microstar) BX board to upgrade from a
Celeron. However there was a problem.

As you'd expect the OS didn't take too kindly to having it's BX environment
shipped out from under it and replaced by a VIA chipsset. even so I managed
to rid it of all BX like things and replace it with VIA. What followed were
a string of random hangs. Usually when manipulating files using Explorer or
even just using the start menu. Often on boot from cold, it would report an
error finding the registry and try to replace it with the usual
non-existent or ancient backup. I'd simply reboot and it would be fine. I
then replaced all drivers with the latest. Replaced the network card,
replaced the pointing device (drivers) and re-installed the OS. Nothing
helped.

Realizing that there was probably an unavoidable legacy I got myself a
little 3 gig drive and began the arduous task or bringing up a virgin
system entirely from scratch. No easy task given the system in question.
However everything seemed to be coming up roses when I went to bed last night.

Imagine my surprise when I booted up this morning and as soon as it got
into the OS it reported that the reg was corrupt and it wanted to re-load a
backup. I rebooted immediately of course and after that it came up but I'm
really hoping for some advice on this.

On the face of it, it would seem that there is a controller problem of some
sort. Perhaps it doesn't like coming up  from cold but I fear that when I
start manipulating files again it will hang again. This level of anxiety I
could do without.

For succinctness, I've FLASHed the BIOS in this board with the latest. I've
 also loaded the latest MO-bo resource drivers. Everything is up to speed.
Perhaps there's some settings in the BIOS I'm overlooking.

All drives support UDMA. However only 1 is a 28 gig ATA66. This lives on
the secondary primary controller. Controller number 1 usually runs a 5.4
gig drive but a 3 gig drive is currently the only one running in the system.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

be absolutely Icebox.

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