Hi all, I have a windows98SE machine: PII 350Mhz, 300 Mb RAM, P2B motherboard. The system hangs when it tries to use USB devices, or the RS232 port, or the Ethernet card. One month ago everything was working ok; the same machine under Linux works ok till now. I suppose to have some "global" hardware driver damaged, but i don't know what/where to look for. The device manager seem ok (no esclamations marks or other messages). Any idea??? Help! Thank you very much Luigi

Go back to a good copy of the registry . Toggle F8 ( when , verifying DMA pool message comes on ) or Press Ctrl during bootup , depends on your computor . Select , Command prompt only . After the C prompt , type , scanreg /restore Follow the prompts and select a registry dated prior to the problems . This article describes how to restore a backup copy of the Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition (Me) registry scanreg /restore http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q221/5/12.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=scanreg/%20restore&rnk=3&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=W98 Start the System Restore Tool from a Command Prompt in Windows XP (Q304449) http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q304449 Restore Operation Failed (Q220878) The information in this article applies to: Microsoft Windows 98 Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q220878 --------------- To improve on the 5 days MS have on registry backups , use the Cabrest system below & get 14 days . http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/regback1.html For those that find the above site confusing , here is what to do . Alter MaxBackupCopies from 5 to 14 as per instructions at above site . Download the zipped copy of the Batch file from , http://www.pcnineoneone.com/downloads/cabrest.zip Unzip , copy & paste cabrest onto the top of C: in Windows Explorer . Delete zip file , or save it on floppy , if you want it for others or the future . Print the instructions below & stick on your comp in front of you , so when you have to go back to a good copy of the registry , you don't need to search for them . ------- Toggle F8 ( when , verifying DMA pool message comes on ) or Press Ctrl during bootup . Select , Command prompt only . Type in cabrest & press Enter , keep answering y & you will see a table , which will allow you to select which CAB file to restore from . So , for example , to restore from rb009 cab , you look at the table & see 09 corresponds to the letter j . You type j & Not the number . Follow instructions . Type win & press Enter to exit . If after following the instructions to Restore , things arn't working , go to an earlier date & try again .

Thanks John, but my registry is not old enought to restore something **before** the troubles: i've followed you suggestion and tried all the .cab files i have: no success :-((((( Moreover yesterday, trying &retrying i've noticed that the system sometimes hang also on logout. I know i'd be better to format&reinstall but i don't want to it please!!!! Still needing help Luigi