Peculiar Behavior (W98)

[mjking55]

I have a problem with a puter adding hardware that it already has and then putting the yellow exclaimations next to it, it don't seem to bother anything,,but it's got me baffled as to why it does it. I have had this happen on several machines in the past,so would like to know the cause and prevention. thank

How can I become so smart and still feel dumb when it comes to IT.

[Andy-S]

Post the detail of what the device is and what the error is in device manager. Sounds like the driver is not installed properly and that's why Windows keeps trying to re-install.

Cheers
Andy

[mjking55]

it has double everything,,keyboard,mouse,system timer,ect....

How can I become so smart and still feel dumb when it comes to IT.

[Andy-S]

I searched several other forums and although this issue has been seen by multiple people therehas been no explanation as to why it occurs. Deleting the duplicate entries doesn't help as they are re-created on boot up. In all the cases I read the only fix was to re-install Windows.

If it is not causing you any problems in the meantime I would leave it as is in case someone else can provide an explanation.

Cheers
Andy

[mjking55]

that is exactly what i have been doing,,but it's one of them deals,,you'd just like to know why? thanks for the input.

How can I become so smart and still feel dumb when it comes to IT.

[gangsta]

most likely the motherboard drivers that have been installed by/or/on(manually) windows are not compatible or current for your motherboard & bios combination.

I have talked to some experts and they tell me it happens like this:
1 the BIOS looks at the hardware bus from the ISA bridge and finds say device a,b,c,d,e,f
2 the BIOS scans next from the PCI bus and for some reason sees the same devices from the other side (like looking at the same thing from 2 opposite sides).
3 the BIOS then reports them to Windows as additional devices (duplicates of the same one).

I do not know if this happens with AGP but the behaviour has been seen with PCI & ISA bridges..

In most cases the fix reconfiguring the BIOS for the devices manually or in the worst case reprogramming the BIOS with a fixed version /or/ updating the Windows hardware drivers with fixed ones from the board manufacturer (in most cases Intel or VIA etc..).

[mjking55]

Thanks,,that's the kind of answer I was looking for,,I have had this happen to me at least a half dozen times on as many puters,,and i fixed it on one,,but don't remember quite how it happened,,but i'm thinking i did a format, clean install. But I mainly deal with via chip boards so this is starting to explain it. Again, Thanks.

How can I become so smart and still feel dumb when it comes to IT.

[Andy-S]

In response to Gangsta's last post, if it was a BIOS issue then a re-install would probably not fix it. The BIOS is just a piece of code that is run every time you boot the system and if it is broken then it will stay broken.

The devices you have listed are all non-plug and play (legacy) devices. These are only detected/set up during Windows installation and when the add new hardware wizard is run (not on every boot).

This is not a common issue and as you have seen it more than usual it may be related to the way you are building the PC's. Do you use a standard Windows 98 image or do you do a clean install on every unit?

What are the contents of the following registry key on a failing system:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\Bios

Windows 98 also creates a file called detlog.txt when detecting legacy devices. You may want to check this file to see if there are any conflicts.

Hopefully this will help you get closer to determining the actual root cause.

Cheers
Andy