stubborn fatal exception in Win 98

Howdy all,

Here's the setup. I turn on the computer, it goes through its motions, displays the splash screen and everything. Then Windows 98 "starts". It brings up the Microsoft Network logon box, then cuts to the following blue screen o' death:

A fatal exception OE has occured at 0028:C15FBAPB in VXD mstr1xp(01) + 0003B83B. The current application will be terminated.

Hitting a key to continue brings up the background and the mouse pointer (controllable), but nothing else happens.

I've been uninstalling programs as of late to make room for new things, so I thought the registry might have been messed up and I tried a scanreg restore to get a working registry. No luck. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

 

if you can get into safe mode, try reinstalling windows over itself.

 

Try Safe Mode as suggested to get to the desktop. If you can, do a Find Files for:

mstr1xp

Right click on it and select Properties > Version and see if there is any copyright info. It's not a "windows" file.

Tap the f8 key repeatedly at the begining of the boot process to get the startup menu with safe mode.

See also:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q188867

 

FYI - 0028:C15FBAPB is an impossible address (there is no P in hex). Is it 0028:c15fbafb ?

 

I receive the same fatal error but address is 0028:[email protected] mstr1xp (01)

It's been there on and off for 3 years - I just keep tyring patiently and it sorts itself out. I don't know what's causing it.

 

I do PC Repair for a small ISP and may have come across this same error today. It was an intermittent Fatal Exception OE at 0028:C159587B in mstr1xp(01). After the error occcured, I could hit the any key and the wallpaper came back but the computer would not continue to load Windows 98. The only things that seemed to work were the mouse and Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

I eventually discovered that the Blue Screen did not occur when I had the onboard sound disabled in the BIOS.

The sound chip was an ESS Maestro-2, chip number ES1968MS. I booted into safe mode, deleted all sound devices from the Device Manager, and installed newer drivers from <http://www.esst.com/techsupp/drivers.shtm> and it seems to boot fine every time now.

The computer was a P-II Micron Millennia, in case anyone's wondering.