Reformat and it commits suicide?

I haven't posted here in a long time so either I learned a lot or you guys fixed my puter well.

I have major problems after formatting my PIII 450.

The format and reinstallation of W98 goes well .... in fact I've done it three times in the last day. Then all the updates and installation of messenger programs seems fine too. But during this process the sound system boot text changes and shows as having an invalid resource, but the sound system still seems to work ok. During the constant reboot process for installation of software the computer suddenly discovers new hardware (IRQ Steering for PCI) and says it loads the drivers ...... this is the critical point of the problem...this process then kills the registry .... I try to restore to a good registry but cannot as the system has just been formatted and there are no good back ups. I tried scanreg /fix ... this appears to work till windows is loading and it discovers new hardware again and the process repeats ... I am about ready to throw the puter out of the nearest window has anybody had this problem?


VP

Did you add the mobo drivers before you did the updating?

thanks for replying Train, No I didn't load the mobo drivers before updating .... in fact through all the years I had that puter I have never loaded the mobo drivers after a format.

Since I posted here yesterday the machine has been formatted once again, this time it hasn't crashed the registry but is still showing an incorrect resource assignment on the sound card. The sound system still appears to be working fine so I haven't a clue what is going on there.

VP

Would you please give the info on your motherboard or the mfg and model of the computer? If it needs chipset drivers you might be supprised at the difference it makes.

boots

thanks for replying Boots.

The motherboard is PROplus-maTX-AUDIO_0.2.

The sound system with the problem is ESS Maestro-2 Audio Sub-system, and it is only the enumerator that seems to have a problem in the device manager. This has not stopped the sound system from working.

Since the last format the registry crashed once .... but this time I had a good registry backup to work with and it restored successfully.

VP

Registry Checker Continues to Detect Registry Damage

CAUSE
This problem can occur if there is defective memory in your computer. A defective memory chip may damage the registry in memory. The Windows-based (or protected-mode) version of Registry Checker (Scanregw.exe) scans the registry in memory for damage.

Thanks Steve, I'll check out the memory next.

VP