On  9 Oct 98 at 17:17, Ed Richardson wrote:

> Some things I have noticed is that the RAM count at start up is
> inconsistent, sometimes 32768 like it is supposed to be but other
> times @ 1/2 that amount or around 20000 etc., just not consistent,

  This is a bad sign.  It could be that you have some RAM that is
unreliable, or perhaps a problem in the motherboard chipset.  Do you
have other memory that you can swap around and try to associate the
problem with a specific SIMM/DIMM?  [Or confirm that it is the
motherboard that has the problem.]

> also  it says checking NV RAM instead of SD like it's supposed to
> be? What is NV?

  NVRAM is "Non-Volatile" RAM -- memory that keeps its contents when
the system power is shut off.  This is a generic term which could
refer to flash RAM or some other technologies, but it also applies to
the setup configuration RAM (generally CMOS), and some makers prefer
to use this term in case someday some technology other than CMOS is
used to hold the configuration data.

> Anyway, the main problems begin as Win. is restarting and checking
> for installed hardware,(I have installed successfully from this
> W95CD in the past) sometimes it will freeze at this point and I
> will have no choice but to reset,and it wants to run scan disk and
> it finds a varying amount of data on drive c: that may be "one or
> more lost files or directories but are probably just taking up
> space", but I don't think so at this point. Then if I can get it
> through the first time Windows 95 has been run and to the desk top
> screen quite often the program menu is empty etc., it's just not
> loading correctly. Then the "Blue screens of death" start, some
> examples of the errors are "a fatal exception OE has occurred at
> 0028:c0004a64 in VXD VMM(01)=00003a64, current app will be
> terminated" and another was can't access DLL at 003:00007089 and
> so on.

  Windows seems to push memory a little harder than DOS or POST do,
so if your memory is a bit flaky, you may be able to boot and run DOS
but fail in Windows.  This is pretty consistent with the theory that
your RAM is unreliable.

> The system consists of Quantum 2.5 Big Foot, 32MEG SDRAM, 200MX
> Cyrix processor, 24x CDROM  and Mitsumi 3 1/2 drive.

  Is that the Cyrix 200 that runs at 2.0x75?  It could be that your
DIMM is okay for 66 MHz motherboard speed, but too slow for 75 MHz.
[If you are trying to run at 3.0x66=200, you are overclocking the
CPU, and it apparently doesn't want to run that fast.
  [Cyrix rates their CPUs by "PR-rating" -- according to their PR
department, how fast you would have to run an Intel Pentium to get
equivalent integer performance.  The actual clock rate specced for
the CPU is somewhat less.]

David G

                                  -----
                PCBUILD mailing list -  http://nospin.com
         Bob Wright:[log in to unmask] - Drew Dunn:[log in to unmask]