Hi, I have been having problems with my computr for about a week so far. I've been trying to install windows 98 SE from DOS because i had to clear my hard drive. So anyways after I ext win98 file then I attempted to go to setup. Here I encountered WIN98setup caused a general protection fault in module KRNL386.EXE at 0001:440E and another after that GDI.EXE at 0001:1893. If anyone can help I'd appreciate it.

When you install windows 98 after booting from a bootdisk, you're installing it from dos. The a:\> prompt is a dos prompt.

If you mean you've installed an older version of dos on the hard drive and now want to install 98, you need to reformat the drive to get rid of the old dos. This assumes of course that there's nothing on the drive you want to save.

Boot from a 98 bootdisk and at the a:\> prompt type:

format c:

and enter. When it's done, reboot with the 98 bootdisk and choose the option to install windows or, if that option is not listed, choose to start the computer with cdrom support. Then at the a:\> prompt and with the 98 cd in the cdrom type:

d:\setup

and enter, where d: is your cdrom drive letter. It may be e: as some bootdisks create a temporary ramdrive as d:. You'll just have to see what works for you.

If you have an upgrade cd instead of a full version of 98, you'll need to have the win 3.1 disks or win95 cd/disks so the installation process can verify you have an older version.

Ok now after i typed E:\setup the windows setup works until i get to copying windows files. Here it starts goin really slow and seems as if it just stalled out or something. Then an error poped up only after 5% of it was finished saying that SUwin caused a general protection fault in module KRNL386.EXE at 0001:001D and 0001:9285 and another error at USERS.EXE at 0001:40B6.I still don't have a clue why these errors are happening. I did exactly what A:\help told me to do to install windows( fdisk,format,and extract). If anyone could help I'd appreciate it.

Those errors are often caused by bad ram. If you can, swap it out with other memory.

Also make sure cache memory is enabled in cmos and that any virus protection is turned off in cmos.

You said you did everything 'help' told you to do, fdisk, format and extract. What exactly did you extract?

Well it said to extract win98 so i typed in ext then E:\win98 then *.* then C:\. Was this the wrong thing to do? I have been having different errors and crashes all week so I have just bout tried everything. Before I could get into windows but just momentarily before in crashed, explorer had an error or another error occured. So after that I tried to reinstall windows and start the process over again... I am confused and out of my league. Before it told me when I clicked on setup that its copyin win98 files then when back to DOS and now for some reason its telling me to insert a disk with a batch file on it and i have been using my bootdisk this hole time and it went to DOS before. wow this machine seems messed up or I am messing it up worse. If you have any comments or advice please help.

If you have a different way to install windows from dos please tell me or just tell me the process I should do? Maybe I am just doing it wrong. Thanks for your patience and help.

Oh My! Go for it, DAVEINCAPS. We need to completely start over again. Hang in there TIMKELL, we'll get you there.

With a regular bootdisk and a regular 98 cd you don't need to extract anything. Possibly it was coping the cab files to your drive. That's not necessary and can make things more complicated if you're not used to doing it that way.

Check as much as you can of what I recommended in #3 above. Then go ahead and reformat to get rid of whatever is on the HD now--just follow directions in my first post--and try to reinstall windows again with doing an extract.

. . . withOUT doing an extract. Sorry.

Ok I will but how do you swap ram like you said in #3.

Well with 32 ram I assume you've got 4 sticks of 8 meg. First edition will install with 16 meg, in which case you could have taken 2 out. If you got the error with the 2 left, you could have swapped them with the 2 you took out. The idea being that all 4 sticks probably weren't bad and that would be a way to isolate the bad one(s).

But SE needs 24 ram, as I recall, and you usually can't take out 1 stick as most of the time the motherboard requires they be in pairs. So you might not be able to do anything about that unless you have some other memory lying around. (I've got about 20 pounds of old 4 and 8 meg sticks here, but that doesn't do you any good.)

You might want to take the memory out and make sure the slots are free of dust and lint and then reinsert them, making sure they're in tight.

OK well i did Fdisk, and format then I went to setup and first off it skips skandisk and second off it says
Please wait while setup initializes...
Scanning system Registry...
Copying files needed for windows setup...

E:\>
Ther it stops... I didn't change anything and now it just seems to stop for no apparent reson. To what you said before about the memory chips I am sure I have some around here but I just dont know how to put them in I'll probably get my friend to do that for me. As for the setup errors I am stumped. Any info is helpful. Thank you for your help.

I'm not sure what it could be either. Post back after you've tried different RAM.

Ok woo hoo I am getting further lol. Ok I installed 2 new big chips and added 2 lil ones and now it seems to be at least working smoother. Before this though I had copied win98 files to get through the setup and that worked but jammed again. However now with the new installed chips it didn't jam. I finished the setup successfully but when I restarted it stopped at verifying DMI Pool....
Now I am hoping if I can get past this my computer problems will be solved. Thanks for your help and hopefully I can get done with these problem.

That sounds like a hardware problem and not associated with installing 98. Try booting from a bootdisk and see if it still hangs. It probably will. If so, recheck the hard drive settings in cmos.

If it still hangs, let it hang for several minutes and see if an error message comes up. Sometimes hard drive messages take awhile to come up.

OK now something happened that it didn't like. I put in the bootdisk and it went to the A:\ prompt so then I took it out and tried the other way. Here it began to run hardwared info or whatever and it said this
A fatal exception 0Ehas occurred at 0028c003bd1e
0D has occured at 16e7014775b6, 0002014f391c, 16e7014775b6 020201478861, 02020147096, 0646014747fb, 028701478861

So if you have any predictions on what is happening to this machine I'd once more appreciate it.

I'm not sure. Since it's a fresh installation you might want to start over. Boot with the bootdisk and format c: again and then reinstall the way you did before.

Also make sure any virus protection is turned off in cmos setup.

What is your CPU and speed?

Ok I don't quite know if one of these arewhat you want but here they are.

AMD-k6(tm)-2/400CPU found

NVIDIA TNT2 Model 64 VGA Bios

As for the format and the setup I encountered another error. I dont know whats going on but it seems as if its a problem either with the processor or hard drive.

Yeah, I was looking for the AMD K6-400. I just wanted to make sure your CPU was capable of running 98. It is.

One thing about those AMD chips is that they get real hot. Make sure the cooling fan on the cpu is running good. A cpu running too hot can cause weird errors like that to come up.

Yah my fan has been really stiff and rigid lately.I have tryied putting some WD 40 on it but it still has a hard time. So should i just replace the hard drive (the big box). Because honestly throughout this entire couple of weeks i have changed, modem, video card, and those memory chips. If I do have to replace the hard drive could you tell me kinda what to do? Thanks for the help once more.

Get a good cooling fan and heatsink assembly for that cpu. Your problems might clear up once you do that. Usually overheating doesn't cause permanent cpu damage.

A fan made to fit socket 7, supersocket 7 or socket 370 will probably work. You can probably get one for $10 - $15. The bigger the heatsink and fan is the better.

Some of the AMD's had the heatsink glued to the cpu. If that's the case you're better off trying to replace just the fan. I've broken cpu's trying to pry a glued heatsink off. You may need to buy a heatsink and fan assembly and take the fan off.

If it's not glued on and you can replace both the heatsink and fan, either don't use any heatsink paste or use very little. Some people goop on a bunch of it and defeat the purpose. A metal to metal contact is the best way to dissipate heat.

Ok I was talking about the other fan not the one inside the tower but the one inside the hard drive. That one hardly moves the one in the tower works fine.