So what do you think my problem is?

[Crimson]

I've been tinkering around with someone's computer. It's a 750mhz Duron with windows 98. Really cheap and old everything else.

Anyway, here's what's going on.

Within 5 minutes of boot (can always get to windows) the computer always does one of the following:
1)locks up
2)auto shutsdown
3)bsods with VxD errors or 0E329489832 (some number) errors

It's not overheating and the hard drive appears to be good.
I swapped out ram, power supply and video card(his video card didn't have a heatsink or fan on the chip so I thought maybe it was overheating) with some of my left over hardware and problem still happened.

I'm thinking it's either:
1)corrupt OS
2)dying proc
3)potential dying motherboard?

Oh, supposedly, the problem started happening about a week ago. At first the problems didn't happen until an hour+ or so of operation. But, the lock ups, bsods etc have gotten worse and worse and now happen within minutes if not seconds of getting into windows.

I'm really trying to avoid a format because this guy has a bunch of software and such on there that he has little clue where the install CDs are to.

thoughts?
Crimson

[Cypher]

Seems you've gone through all the normal steps. I would back up ant needed data and reformat at that point myself.

[Massa]

Have you run Memtest86 for posterities sake? I would look at the ram since it my have just recently crapped out.

[zooner]

bsods with VxD errors are caused by that wierd thing in win98se.

you have the change the default from 4 to 12 in the (something).ini

someone help me remember, it's been awhile since I've used win98se. however, this has cleared this problem multiple times.