feline...I'm a Powerdesk Pro 5 user....have used Powerdesk for Eons....as many LiteSTEPpers do....you may be having 'issues' with the built-in viewer 'Quickview'.....be sure to check for recent updates [though there hasn't been any for quite a while....and I question Pdesk's true compatability with XP].

In fact, last system lockups that I have had were Powerdesk related.....usually the process pdexplo.exe would refuse to die...

Other than that, I'd be questioning 2 other things....just how 'good' your BIOS flashing really was...and, as kona mentioned earlier...your mobo itself.....'dry joints' do still happen.....though these days it's more likely to be actual board flexing breaking delicate printed circuits.

Possible verification there?....try a different OS....and eliminate XP as the culprit...

Given the current circumstances, I would recommend staying away from Ebay. I bought a "new" mobo from there and it was doa. Really should buy from a reputable seller that has a warranty. At least this time so poor Feline can get this critter fixed.

yrag2 fears feline fell into the abyss.......

*sigh* wincust just ate my rather long post.
so, the short version:

Jafo, i am also a long time powerdesk user. i have the latest (and only) patch 4.0.12.1 since the only problem it seems to fix (long file names when using view -> large icons) is one i run into a lot.

i am not aware of any stability problems, but when deleting files (if i havent deleted any for a while) powerdesk *stops* dead for maybe 60 seconds or longer before suddenly waking up again and deleting the file. since this happens on both my work and home machines it isnt machine specific. if i simply leave powerdesk to do its thing it always comes back again.

as for your point about another OS, good idea! i already have win98 setup as a dual boot, so all i need to do is setup the net there. it will probably be a couple of days before i do that, since it is quite a fuss swaping the machines around, and sorting out all of the cables.

yrag - Glad to see you're holding up....I didn't see anywhere that you had re-flashed your Mobo bios.

the bios flash was a little over 1 month ago now, at the same time as the HD crash. at first everything was fine. then i discovered that i could no longer play DVD's. that is a known issue with the nvidia drivers (thanks to a kind soul in another thread i started here), which resulted in me changing drivers. it all started to get messy after that.

i will have to look into the bios flashing idea. there was one newer bios available, but i am going to have to be very careful to get the right one.

without a doubt

*deep sigh*

i am sure there is some saying that a wise man knows his limits. well, i have definetly reached the limits of my knowledge.

following the very sensible "try a different OS" suggestion from Jafo, earlier this evening i moved my ***** machine into here, and plugged in all the cables.

so, i booted up to winXP (drive D) so that i could copy the notepad document holding my ISP and outlook expresses settings over to drive C, so that i could copy and paste them into win98. so far so good.

i left the external modem turned on while i rebooted and booted into win98. now, please note that the winXP boot manager has no mouse support, so you need to use the keyboard (cursor keys and enter) to select win98 as the OS to boot.

win98 found the modem, but since the win98 CD wasnt in the CD drive, no drivers were installed. so, once win98 had booted i placed the win98 CD in the drive.

at this point i discovered the windows key on my keyboard would not open the start menu. i quickly found that the *only* thing on my keyboard that worked was ctrl_alt_del. yes, i really do mean that caps lock and num lock lights no longer worked.

i tried to shut down the machine, but it didnt work, so i had to do a hard reset

after the reset and the scan disk, the keyboard was working fine, and the modem was auto detected and installed fine. i then half setup outlook express - i deliberatelly gave it the wrong account name so no email could be downloaded, only sent - before going online.

now, this is with my external modem connected as usual to COM1. when i hit F5 in outlook express 5 i got:
* a dialog asking me for my correct account name and password
* i saw it upload / send an email

so, without touching any cables, i rebooted and loaded winXP pro. the modem was just as it was when win98 sent an email, i loaded outlook express. it is worth noting the email account info in winXP outlook express are wrong, just as they were under win98, to avoid spliting my incoming email across 2 machines.

and, as usual, i didnt get either of these effects in outlook. so, no email sending in winXP.

however, the email i sent from win98 proves that the modem works (given i am posting this via this modem, this isnt a surprise).

normally i would think "lets format to fix this", but i have already done this!

plus, in 4 boots of win98 i have had 2 total *******'s, both of which left win98 totally unusable and me stairing at a scan disk "you didnt shut down your machine properly" message.

so, that ******* machine is in the other room, and is not even plugged in. basically, it is unusable, and i have no idea of where to go from here.

if removing the partition, recreating it and formatting it before the new install of winXP wasnt enough to "clean" install, then what the hell is???

so, back to emailing my hardware expert. he seems to be hiding somewhere, which isnt normal. normally he always around, which is good.

*basic summary*
i have a 1.4gig, 512 meg of ram paper weight
and my 400mhz machine is reminding me why i upgraded over 1 year ago.

Just because the modem works OK in Win98 doesn't mean anything...except that the modem driver in XP could be a problem....but when you get to 512meg of ram you'll find 98 and XP handling the ram differently....and possibly even XP accessing a fault address, where 98 didn't get to.

Even without a Bios which supports booting from CD you don't need to install 98 first to get to XP....you can do it from a Dos prompt, provided a cd-rom driver is loaded eg via Win98 boot disk.

In the XP CD, go to /i386/ and run winnt.exe...bit slower...[memory limitations]...but it'll work.

Failing all this...if you can't get it to run properly, how about taking it to someone you know who's a little more computer-savvy and buy them a beer 'if' they get it sorted...

I find that threatening recalcitrant computers with a jug of water helps.....

yrag - for what it's worth...XP has no USB mouse support...if you want a mouse use an adapter and plug into Mobo.

feline re-reads this for the 4th time
i have a USB (microsoft optical blue) mouse, and it works fine under both win98 and winXP. so, i presume you mean the boot manager has no mouse support? that doesnt bother me, and it has no PS2 mouse support either.

Jafo - Just because the modem works OK in Win98 doesn't mean anything...except that the modem driver in XP could be a problem

true. however it does seem to show that the hardware "works"

yep, definetly time for major hardware games.

time for a minor update.

the man who does my hardware has finally returned, and has leant me a 3DFX voodoo 3 AGP video card to try in place of mine.

so, earlier this evening i opened up the machine, and swapped the video cards over. now, it is very interesting to note that i had no problems placing this 3DFX video card into my machine. it booted fine straight away. so, i still dont know what i was doing wrong the day i took out my nvidia card and put it back in again.

win98 booted fine a couple of times, but it also booted fine a couple of times before i opened up the case to uninstall the nvidia drivers prior to removing the card. so, no real evidence either way there.

seeing that things had been going quite well so far, i decided to see if this would make any difference to the winXP internet problems. it didnt. so, the next step is to reformat D drive, and see how a clean install of winXP works.

it will probably be a couple of days until i do that, since work is rather manic at the moment, and i have some holiday starting in 2 days time. so, i will wait until then to jump through the format and reinstall hoops.

more news as and when it develops.

Any more updates, feline ?

feline....sounds like you need to NOT use an updated driver. My wife's comp crashes to BSOD even when trying to preview one of the standard screensavers in XP...because it has a Viper 770 card which has no 'specific' XP drivers and I've used the Detonator drivers [which live up to their name].

The comp is fine....until it's called upon to draw in DirectX....then bang...

turned out i wasn't putting it in correctly, but i have no idea what i was doing wrong. even the man who put it in correctly agreed that i seemed to have it in the slot correctly.

Don't ever trust the man...

feline, sorry to hear that your having problems, but this thread is very helpful to those who might see this in the future on there computer. I think this is on of the better threads I have seen in a while. This one is going on my favorites list.