Windows - not




I have assembled a clone PC with an IBM 586 CPU on a PCI motherboard, an S3 Trio32 VGA card, 8Mb RAM and a 200Mb hard drive. After formatting & partitioning the disk, DOS 6.2 & Windows 3.11 were installed, apparently OK. Following the restart of Windows, the title screen showed for a few seconds, then it crashed back to the DOS prompt, without any error messages. After much ado, I have found that Windows 3.11 (or 3.1) will run quite nicely in enhanced mode as long as EMM386.EXE is not loaded. As soon as EMM386.EXE is reloaded, Windows crashes.
If EMM386.EXE is loaded, Windows will only run in "safe" mode (win /d:t). Of course, the problem with this setup is that it leaves too little conventional memory for DOS programs, especially games, to run. I have tried many different command line arguments, such as NOEMS, RAM, AUTO, etc. DOS programs run fine with EMM386.EXE loaded, with NOEMS, or RAM set. I think I have ruled out hardware as a cause, by trying a different CPU, RAM, & VGA card (and combinations of) with the same result. I have installed the Windows 95 versions of HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE, to no avail. Even installing QEMM has the same result. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.
- Leo Weston


A common source of hardware problems that cause Windows to crash is the motherboard, the one part of your computer that you have not yet tried replacing (is Murphy's law at work here?). On motherboards there are two common sources of problems. One is cache memory. This can be easily tested by turning off external caching in the system BIOS settings (internal caching is on the processor itself while external caching is on the motherboard). If the system no longer crashes the motherboard should be replaced. The other common problem is where the BIOS settings are incorrectly set. Check the current settings against the settings in the motherboard's manual. Before you make any changes keep a record of the current settings. If you don't know what you?re doing and the settings are different it is better to take the motherboard back to the supplier.
- Roy Chambers


Category: Hardware, Windows 3.x
Issue: Feb 1997
Pages: 162

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