dph
Topic Starter
I just finished troubleshooting a Gateway running 98SE.
Symptoms: The email program, Netscape Messenger (yeah, I know…), would crash immediately upon opening. By "crash", I mean there'd be a click, the monitor would shut off and the hardware would hang (as far as I could tell with no monitor). Absolutely nothing shy of a reset would bring the system up again. I tried virus scanning, but as soon as a certain file was reached ("Inbox" with no extension in a folder called "Mail") the same crash/lockup occurred. SCANDISK found no problems. I installed a second hard drive and tried using XXCOPY to "clone" the system to the second drive (the main reason for the visit was a drive upgrade). When XXCOPY reached that particular file… SCREECH! …the same lockup. Even trying a simple cut and paste of that "Inbox" file caused the crash. Safe Mode made no difference.
I finally booted to "Command Prompt", snuck up on the "Mail" folder and deleted "Inbox". Everything worked like a charm after that – no lockups with XXCOPY, etc.
I've never run across a file that was so defiant. I was just wondering if anyone had seen this behavior before.
–Don