Clean install on IBM Aptiva - gotchas?

[cbs604]

A friends IBM Aptiva (P133, 96Mb ram) had become more and more unstable over a period of time to the point it would not function at all. I offered (the fool I am) to start afresh with a clean install of 98se, and taking all the IBM stuff including the APM and rapid resume out of the bios.

All went really well; had to find a video driver on the IBM utility CD, but apart from that, no problems. Loaded up applications, a/v, printer, scanner - still OK. Installed an external modem using the standard modem and still all's well. Found the correct driver for the modem and installed it, and that's about when all my trouble started. On re-boot I got a exception 0E in VxD VMM. Went through several blue screens, re-boots followed by scandisks, de-install and re-install of modem driver until finally it co-operated and now is working fine.

Then turned my attention to the a/v software which wasn't updating properly. Same thing. Download an update and it would hang at the end. Only option to re-start which would prompt another blue screen similar to the above but sometimes in IFSMGR. Now sometimes getting white screen on startup compaling about Msmsgr32.

Sorry this a bit long-winded, but I am about to drop-kick this thing clear into mext week. Researching the above error messages on the net has not helped much. I would like to get on with life, re-aquaint myself with my wife etc.

So my question is there anything special about IBM machines and doing a clean install from a Windows 98SE CD. And if it should be just a routine thing, then what should I be looking out for? memory issues maybe?





Cheers,
Brodie

 

[micker377]

You say a "clean install". Did you fdisk and format?

 

[cbs604]

It came with a 13G single partition drive using Ontrack to access the full capacity. So no fdisk, but yes, formatted.



Cheers,
Brodie

 

[mattjurado]

Does Msmsgr32 or Msmsgr32.exe exist on the system? What folder is it in? Do you know what it is? If not, right click on it and hit properties... Look through the tabs, see who makes this program, description, etc...

Also, if its an external modem, it should work fine with the standard modem driver, if this is true, I would reinstall the modem as a standard, and see how the system does.

If you formatted and it ran fine until you altered this driver, then that is where I would start looking, not the IBM itself.

Matt J.

Please always take the time to backup any and all data before performing any actions suggested for ANY problem, regardless of how minor a change it might seem. Also test the backup to make sure it is intact.