Another Win98 Problem

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Just got a call from Zial Wireless...I've done some contract work for them. One of their customers is having a problem with the computer that runs their HVAC system. Guess it runs the cameras in their building. Anyway, someone decided to clean up the files on this computer and may have deleted something. It was running Windows 95 and they upgraded it to Windows 98. Now the computer periodically locks up. They think it's missing some OS files but that doesn't make sense if they upgraded to 98. I know nothing about the application. They also think that maybe they need more RAM. It was supposedly running fine before this character...the building engineer got his hot little hands on the computer.

About the only thing I can recommend is to wipe the hard drive and do a clean install of the OS and reload all the apps. Other than that, they just might benefit from a new computer running XP. Ideas?

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi Trip,

I know if its been a clean Win98 install you can do the equivalent of a repair install over the top (basically just re-wrties the Windows folder).

Not too sure how that would work for a 95->98 upgrade, though :hhhmmm

 

Actually, I talked to the building engineer who had a whole bunch more info. The machine in question is an old P2 that's been around awhile. Apparently, it monitors the heating and cooling for 100,000 sq ft building downtown. It had been running Windows 95 but recently, when they've been trying to print out reports, they've been getting an error that says "insufficient memory". For some bizarre reason, the vendor that maintains the monitoring software said they should upgrade to Windows 98. After the upgrade, the problems started. The building engineer uses PC Anywhere to access the system over the Internet from home at 5 a.m. but the system locks up. He can go to the machine physically and reboot it, clearing it up then can monitor the system. The vendor says it's a problem of insufficient RAM.

I am beginning to think that he's right. Frankly, I think upgrading to Windows 98 didn't have any helpful effect at all. If 98 uses any more resources than 95, it probably hurt. I think that the machine hums along more or less ok until someone asks it to do too much, then it locks up.

My short term solution would be to throw in another stick of RAM but that's just a temporary fix. I think they really need a new, more powerful machine, running Windows 2000 or XP. As I mentioned, the machine is a P2 with 256 MB of RAM and a 2 GB HDD. I think it's outlived its usefulness.

The assistant to the building manager said she'll talk to her boss tomorrow about my recommendations and she what the (cheap, old skinflint) thinks.

 

I would say that at 256Mb RAM this machine has enough memory, It may just be worth trying a clean install of Win98 and a reload of all the applications as a "hail-mary pass" before spending sums of meney on a new machine.