computer hang on bootup and low memory

[faiz]

Need Help !!

My config is -:
operating system Win 98 ( 4.10.1998)
AMD K62 450
M/b asus P5Ab
384 mb ram ( 256 mb/ 128 mb chips )
asus 50x cd rom drive
8.4 gb hdd (equal partition c drive / d drive)
Voodoo 3 3000 agp

Now about the problem : At boot up the memory has started to show 320 or 256 instead of 384 , after the boot screen it freezes and hangs, on pressing reset it sometimes shows the ram correctly and prompts for safe mode, after the computer boots up on safe mode it loads windows correctly. In safe mode when I go into system properties instead of showing the normal " your system is configured for optimal performance " it shows a big white box and it says that " ms dos compatibility paging system
and each drive ie A,C , D has a line saying that it is using ms dos compatibility. When I reboot it starts up allright
I ran msconfig and the config .sys, autoexec .bat and winstart .bat is all grayed out.
The surprising part is that everytime I boot its always SOMETHING DIFFERENT, either the system hangs on some screen before it reaches the desktop or the ram shows different numbers the last time it booted correctly, but ram showed 320 mb and the performance shows that the system is configured for optimal performance at couple of times it even showed the error hard disk diagnosis fail and when I rebooted it wouldn't show the error again.Things just come and go . This has been happening since the past 2 days

Need help soon

 

[Lurker1]

Hi faiz

Sounds like memory problems to me. Try reseating both dimms and if that doesn't help try removing one dimm at a time and running the system to find the failing one.

 

[slipe]

Such a deal! A $100 value Free for a limited time – you gotta get this even if you don’t need it: http://www.simmtester.com/PAGE/products/doc/docinfo.asp

It will run stress tests on your RAM by booting from the program floppy. Looks good for what you have.

 

[Davey7549]

Just a caution....Simtester and Norton both are not 100%. Take a look at this thread.
http://forums.techguy.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58764
Dave

 

[faiz]

Its good to get so many responses , anyway I tried swapping the ram modules, and even did all the mix and match , the problem seems to continue . I don't know if this will help but at one point of time during bootup the system hung and I waited since the hdd light was still on and after a couple of minutes I got a message saying " While initializing device shell : Cannot find or load required file KRNL 386.exe.
The system now always hangs on first boot and after you go into safe mode and reboot it startsup alright. The Ram memory reading now seems to be alright but I suppose the problem still lives.
Please advise

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Could be this one?

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q197/6/85.asp

Compatibilty Mode is normal in safe mode, but not normal in normal mode, by the way.