At 11:33 AM 9/9/1998 LORI A SAPILEWSKI wrote:
>
>I have a Pentium 100 with 32 mg of ram running WIN 98. I tried to
>install a four year old Sound blaster 16 card.   When I booted back
>up got the message that ' file VMM32.vxd is required to run Windows.
>
>I f-disked and formatted the drive and reinstalled Windows. . . .
>
>I wonder if this could be a bad hard drive???
>
>This computer was bought used and has a no return policy but if any
>part goes bad during the first month it will be replaced without cost.
>


Adele:

What is the make, model and age of your hard drive? And what
sort of RAM are you using? Also, what is the BIOS version you
are using?

If the hard drive is more than 5 years old, I would low level format
the drive, using the manufacturer's software. After about 5 or 6
years the low level format may begin to lose reliability. Also, low
level formatting will remove any corrupted partitions and overlays,
non-FAT file systems, non-DOS partitions and operating systems,
lingering artifacts and viruses. VMM handles virtual memory and
an imperfect hard drive may cause issues.

If you have an older BIOS, you may have issues which may be
resolved by a BIOS upgrade. A bug in the code may cause these
kind of problems. You might also go into CMOS and change the
settings to more conservative ones. You should write down the
original settings and note all your changes. Slow the RAM timing,
increase the refresh rate, check the IDE settings.

Might as well take a look at your RAM. Do you have an odd mix
of SIMMs, slow RAM chips, unreliable RAM, poorly seated SIMMs
or anything unusual? You might try swapping the RAM with known
good SIMMs.

I would recommend you complain to the seller and ask him to correct
the problem.

Regards,

John Chin

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