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| Thread ID: 39224 | 2003-10-30 19:50:00 | Stacks setting | Chemical Ali (118) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 187968 | 2003-10-30 19:50:00 | I have just installed Win98 on an oldish 20GB hard drive that I thought was okay. When I started installing the relevent motherboard drivers I got the Blue crash screen with a message stating that there had been an error writing data to Drive C. Managed to finish installing drivers but having problems every time I boot the PC. Ran scandisk and checked for bad sectors (apparently none!). Get the following error message Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer. An internal stack flow has caused this session to be halted. Change the STACKS setting in your CONFIG.SYS file, and then try again. evry time I boot up. What to do -- reformat? Found the config.sys file but didn't know how to open it so couldn't look into it. |
Chemical Ali (118) | ||
| 187969 | 2003-10-30 21:24:00 | Chemical Ali, The CONFIG.SYS file is normally located in the boot partition e.g. C: in the top level directory: ie C:\Config.sys You can edit this file using NOTEPAD (it's only a text file after all). If you are in Windows Explorer you can highlight the file and use the right mouse click (button) and select Open With and select a program ... NOTEPAD If you are at a DOS prompt or boot from a WIN98 boot floppy use can use the EDIT command: EDIT C:\CONFIG.SYS to modify the file To solve the STACKS issue add the following entries (3 lines) into the Config.Sys file using Notepad (or another TEXT editor - NOT WORD or WORDPAD) When finished editing the file save it back STACKS=64,512 FILES=60 BUFFERS=40 Those three lines should help fix the problem, note the stacks values there are the maximums and if they are too large then note the following: The values for STACKS=n,s are: n Specifies the number of stacks. Valid values for n are 0 and numbers in the range 8 through 64. s Specifies the size (in bytes) of each stack. Valid values for s are 0 and numbers in the range 32 through 512. If you need further advice please post back Cheers, Babe. |
Babe Ruth (416) | ||
| 187970 | 2003-10-30 21:28:00 | Chemical Ali, Forgot to mention that the CONFIG.SYS file may have the ATTRIBUTES set to System/Hidden/Readonly. If so you need to change the attributes using the DOS command ATTRIB. So after booting (probably best using a Win98 boot floppy) ATTRIB -h -s -r C:\CONFIG.SYS then after editing the file and saving it reverse the attributes (put them back to what they were) ATTRIB +h +s +r C:\CONFIG.SYS Cheers, Babe. |
Babe Ruth (416) | ||
| 187971 | 2003-10-30 22:15:00 | Hi Thanks for the input but have had no luck. Tried editing the config.sys file both through Windows explorer and Dos but didn't seem to help the problem.... (in Safe Mode) When I edited the file there was no other text at all so I was simply just creating/adding the 3 lines you advised -- does that sound right? I can install WIN98SE okay -- problems seem to start occuring when I try installing the Motherboard drivers; it seemingly will install the first 3 drivers okay (audio, video, ?) but after installing the 4th (Ultra DMA/UMA I think?) things go awry. Can only then get back in under Safe Mode and notice I can no longer see my CD-Rom drive under My Computer. Is it simply a buggered hard drive or what?1 Any further suggestions/ideas gratefully appreciated. |
Chemical Ali (118) | ||
| 187972 | 2003-10-30 22:44:00 | Chemical Ali, Well that's a nuisance... In fact normally you don't need anything in the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files when using Win98 (most of the config.sys functions are included in the IO.SYS file as per: * HIMEM.SYS * IFSHLP.SYS * SETVER.EXE * DOS=HIGH,UMB * FILES=30 * BUFFERS=23 * FCBS=4 * LASTDRIVE=Z * STACKS=9,256 * SHELL=COMMAND.COM /P These settings will be overwritten by the entries you make in Config.sys. ) Only other suggestion is to get a later version of the motherboard drivers from the M/B manufacturers site. Download and burn to a cd on another pc (if available) then use those. The site usually has instructions to follow. HTH Cheers, Babe. |
Babe Ruth (416) | ||
| 187973 | 2003-10-30 23:05:00 | So it could mean that the Hard Drive is buggered? Seems strange that I can install WIN98 and yet it goes awry after that. Bad sectors in crucial place on drive?? |
Chemical Ali (118) | ||
| 187974 | 2003-10-30 23:11:00 | Chemical Ali, I'm not convinced the HDD is Toyota'd and still suspect the MB drivers etc. Cheers, Babe. |
Babe Ruth (416) | ||
| 187975 | 2003-10-31 01:21:00 | Can you remove some memory and try again. Stacks use pointers. Pointers are memory locations which point to memory locations. If the pointers are wrong (because of flakey memory) it all falls over. | Graham L (2) | ||
| 187976 | 2003-10-31 02:09:00 | That's an interesting observation Graham -- I did add in a RAM module prior to trying install! Have just managed to install Knoppix 3.3 Linux distro on said same hard drive so when I figure out how to remove that I'll take out the RAM module in question and try WIN98 install again! Will let you know how I get on Cheers for the tip! |
Chemical Ali (118) | ||
| 187977 | 2003-10-31 02:27:00 | Well, I've always said that installing OSs is the real test for memory. There's usually a lot of decompressing to be done: this requires the use of all the memory, and can't tolerate any errors. :D The other thing that makes me suspicious is that W98 isn't going to need any stack allocation over the defaults when it effectively isn't doing anything. Most of the time it still won't need a STACKS= blah line in CONFIG.SYS . How many people have a CONFIG.SYS in W98 (or even W95)? |
Graham L (2) | ||
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