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Windows ME Problem

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by whamii 3 views

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Awhile back I had a customer bring me a computer that was running Win Me. She complained of a problem that stated that the Pc was shutting down becasue it was overheating. I proceeded to check the BIOS to see what it was reporting as the current temp. The temp was well within the specs. So I rebooted and recieved the same message (note: it was a message generated by win me). I then physically checked the CPU heatsink and it was cold, fan was running, and nothing else seemed out of place. After pulling my hair, cursing, and all but beating up the PC I fdisked, formatted, and reloaded Win ME. The instal went fine, no errors or stalls. When I rebooted from the install the message reappeared. So I installed win 98se with success. No message about overheating or the such. My question is why would ME do this? How else could I have fixed without switching OS's? May it have been a problem with the mobo?

16 replies

by whamii

I forgot to also state that I did replace the battery. The customer supplied one but I went and bought a new one, after checking the mobo manufacturer's website to insure it was the correct battery.

by ghimpe--

In Win ME, the application that reports overheating should have some way to tweak the temperatures that it reports as hot. Maybe these temps are set to low, change them and see what happens ;)

GooD LucK! :D

by willcomp

I believe ghimpe is on the right track. As far as I know temperature monitoring is not incorporated into Me. It would be from a mobo utility or from a BIOS setting, not from Me itself.

Dis you install mobo utilities after clean install of Me? Was one a mobo monitoring program?

These programs have configurable settings and sometimes the default is rather low.

Otherwise, would have been shutdown temperature setting in BIOS. Although that should affect 98SE as well.

What was make and model of motherboard?

Dalton

by whamii

I did not install any other programs besides ME. If there were a setting in ME I couldn't get to it because when ME boots it get as far as just before the desktop and then displays the message and shuts down immediately. I did check the mobo setting and it was set low but I tweaked it to a very high setting, just for troubleshooting purposes.

by ghimpe--

" I did check the mobo setting and it was set low but I tweaked it to a very high setting, just for troubleshooting purposes."

Could it be that you forgat to save the changes you've made and it is still set to a low value??

BTW, please give us detailed information of your CPU.

by sgt_shultz

wait - the heatsink is staying *cold* to the touch? have you check to see that it is seated on the processor and has some heat sink compound in there?

by abolante

SW-related issue: The problem was WinME itself. WinME was unstable and a poorly designed OS, and M$ knew that the minute they released it publicly. That's why M$ was so quick to release Win2K Pro, which more or less solved its predecessor's problems. M$ makes their money off of OS upgrades. HW-related issue: There are a number of laptops that are infamous for having poor cooling systems. Maybe the one you were working with was a lemon. Best to check the OEM support site.

by husp1

Have to agree with several others that the issue sound more like a hardware problem. I been using ME for 2 yrs. now and altho it is rather unstable I have never had any cooling issues. Perhaps you should look at installing 98 and running a hardware diagnostic program. if the temp is high after you get a succesful install you should try installing a copy of "Rain" or "Waterfall" since these programs are used mainly for overclocking most of the pre XP windows OS do not have these. From what I understand XP has "waterfall" built in. GOOD LUCK!!!

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