Tommy

Welcome to MSFN! It's a great place to hang out and geek out so I hope you enjoy it!

It's been a while since I've logged in here so I'm glad to see you're still posting. I really hope that you and the family are doing well and that some sort of comfort is starting to set in. Rudy's death really hit hard for me for several reasons. One of them because even though I wouldn't consider him a great friend, I still considered him a friend and I really respected him. But also, because of what led him to passing away. Heart problems run in my family. I'm 30 going on 31 in a few months and I'm also extremely overweight. I was literally in a race car speeding towards heart problems and other awful stuff. Since his passing, I started eating healthier and a lot less. I stopped binging all together and no longer have the desire to stuff myself full of sweets. I also joined the local gym and I work out four to five times a week now. Since the end of September I'm down 22 pounds and I'm feeling great! My knee no longer hurts when I walk and I'm not completely wiped out after walking only four blocks. I still have a super long journey ahead of me but considering how hard life was getting for me and then Rudy's unfortunate passing, it really started clicking that I needed to do something otherwise it won't be long and I'd end up joining him. So while this is really for me in the end, I want to dedicate a part of this to Rudy's memory, a great man taken from us way too early.

I can assure you that tone won't help you develop a positive rapport in the community. You are right, it is your problem. MSFN is built around helping people as best as we can and I understand your frustrations, especially when you are under pressure and I know first hand that sometimes you really cannot find what you need online and that Google isn't always your friend. But you also need to realize that we all have personal lives outside the forum and cannot always accommodate time sensitive topics. I'm not saying anything to be mean or nasty, but it's the honest truth.

I have never gotten so PO'd at a computer in my life, but that has changed with this board in my main rig. Here's what I got in it, which doesn't make much difference but the information is here for the sake of completeness. E3-1220 Xeon Processor 120GB Samsung SSD 250GB WD Blue SSD 1TB WD HDD EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 24GBs of RAM 2-4GB Hynix and 2-8GB Samsung EVGA 500w 80+ PSU The only thing I have not tested is the PSU, but I do not (think) it's the issue. So here's what is going on. It starts acting peculiar when restarting from Windows. Yes, I said restarting. The computer will actually turn off for about 3-5 seconds and automatically turn itself back on. It will then start to POST as if I had restarted the computer. With Award BIOS based motherboards, it will generally skip the processor information and single beep upon a simple reboot, at least that's been my experience with how Gigabyte boards act. Now this is where it starts getting poopy. Most of the time, if it's going to do the reboot loop thing, it usually stops when it is time to detect the RAM. It will hang for a few seconds and then shut off. After 3-5 seconds, it will turn itself back on but this time it will beep once and display everything as if I did a cold startup. Then there's a 50 to 80% chance it will stop at the memtest area again and repeat the turn off and turn back on boot loop. Although there are times that it won't reach the memtest and it will get stuck again and then just power off and power back on. So while I'm not going to say it can't be the RAM because one of the things I have tried is taking out all sticks of RAM except for one and I have also swapped different sticks out, no difference. Although, sometimes it will boot just fine while taking no action, but this is where it gets strange again. Windows 2000 will boot just fine 100% of the time. Once POST is done and control is handed off to the bootloader, it will never turn itself back off on its own. However, Windows 7 most of the time will not boot properly and will freeze on the boot screen just before control is handed off to the operating system. If I start it in safe mode, it will boot into the GUI. No problem! Normal mode, will not though. I did get it to boot into normal mode once. I tried system restore but it had failed. I also ran the Windows 7 memory tester and it didn't seem to find any issues with the RAM. I haven't tried memtest yet but I may just to thoroughly test out the RAM just to be certain something isn't going on with all the sticks for some reason. So Windows 2000 is fine and I can run it under load and nothing weird happens, I don't get any blue screens, no random restarts or shut downs, it just works like nothing was wrong. Now, here are all the things I have tried so far. Disconnected all hard drives from motherboard, no difference. Swapped RAM modules and tested in different slots, no difference. Swapped video cards, no difference. Removed video card all together, beeps 4 times and then shuts off by itself after about 10 seconds and turns itself back on again, so no difference apparently. I reseated all power connectors on motherboard, no difference. Although if it were a power/supply issue, I'm pretty sure this behavior would be much more consistent or be a problem even during normal operation within Windows. I did not do anything with the CPU, but again, I think if it were a CPU issue, it would be apparent during normal operation and not just during POST. It's not an overheating issue either as I do monitor that closely and my heatsink is huge along with the fan. It's actually the coolest (running) system I've ever built, no pun intended. I reflashed the BIOS with the latest version (which it was already running but I flashed it again just to be sure there wasn't something weird going on with it), no difference. I've replaced the CMOS battery, which the original was fine anyway since I tested it with a multimeter and it was reading 3 volts. But this is where things got a bit weirder, but more on that in a minute. I've even used a can of air to blow out the system, just in case a piece of dirt was causing issues in shorting something out, no change there either. I've also switched between loading fail-safe and optimized defaults in the BIOS, neither makes a difference. I've also took the CMOS battery out, left it out, killed power to the system to force settings to go back to factory defaults, no difference. This is where it gets even weirder yet. Apparently, it doesn't like being turned on without a battery. I would turn on the system, the green LED would flick on just a bit and go right back off again and sometimes even trying to turn it back on wouldn't do a thing at all, I would have to kill power at the power supply itself, turn it back on, and then it would do the same thing where the green light would flick on and then go right back out again. Put a battery back in, turns on like it should but will still do the boot loop thing half to most of the time. Going back to swapping video cards, I put my older PNY NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT Energy Efficient card in, which doesn't require separate power and with this card, it will show card information before the POST screen for a few seconds and sometimes it would freeze on that screen before even getting to POST and then do the boot loop thing, which is why again, I'm thinking it's not the RAM. It did not originally do this when I assembled the system. We did have a brief power outage the other day caused by heavy wind and it was out for about 10 seconds. Both my computer and router (I'm hard-wired into it) have power protecting surge protectors (they aren't just cheap power strips), but the router itself is fine and displays no issues so I don't think that would cause an issue as I would think if there was a fault on either end, both devices would be affected in some way or another but the internet works fine and when I get into Windows on the affected PC, the internet works fine. So now I'm at a complete loss. I have no clue what else to try. I've read that others have had issues with the z68 based Gigabyte boards but some act as though they know what they're talking about when others describe this problem. There's a massive thread over on overclockers.net about the P67/Z68 reboot loop, but nobody has really come up with an actual answer on why this happens. I don't overclock anyway, but I did try a few of the suggestions listed in the thread and none of it made a difference. Anyone else think of something I'm missing? I'm going out of my mind with this issue and 8 years later, I'd think someone would have the answer to this problem. I'd like to think there's a solution otherwise I'm probably going to end up exorcising this board. While I'm on the subject, does anyone have any recommendations on a possible LGA1155 replacement? I've used Gigabyte since 2012 but I'm really thinking about switching to something else but I don't really have expertise in other board brands, but I'm open-minded to other brands. The only real requirements I have is that it needs to have 4 RAM slots and a PS/2 port. A parallel port would be nice but as long as I have a PCI slot, I can put an addon card in so it's not a huge deal. I'm just thinking the Gigabyte board is trash and I'm not willing to take another chance on any other z68 boards from them, regardless of model or revision number. Thanks for taking the time to read!

Wow, this is awesome! Thank you very much for this. It's certainly appreciated especially during this hard time for you. Don't feel obligated to rush things, take all the time you need. We're all just so glad that his "presence" didn't just go cold and nobody knows what happened to him so thank you for continuing to login and update us on things. I'm hoping that you've been able to find some sort of comfort in this difficult time considering tomorrow will be a month since your dad's passing. It's still hard on some of us, myself included, but we're getting through it. I'm just sorry I never got to talk to him and know him on more of a personal level.

I haven't been in the Win98 game for a little while now but I'm considering within the next week on getting parts from my previous main rig into a new case and install Win98 on it. Once I do that, I'll test out the new SSL protocol and report back with any findings I come up with.

Wow, that is quite a timeline you have provided here. Let me first start out by saying thank you ever so much for posting this and giving those that "knew" him some closure. I know @LoneCrusader will probably appreciate seeing this post as well because he and your dad kept in contact a lot and worked on projects together. I'm glad it also helped to get it off your chest as well, so it benefited all of us in the end. I still feel very sad over the loss and in time we will all heal but it sounds like he was quite a trooper through the whole thing but unfortunately just wasn't strong enough to come through. But some of us truly liked your father and he was always welcome here. As a small token of our gratitude, we promoted his account that you're using to the patrons group which is reserved for those who have had a special impact here or retired staff members. We know it's not much but it's all we can really offer along with our most sincere condolences. While you may or may not have much use being here, please be aware that you're certainly most welcome in the community, even if you just want to talk to some of us who were close to your dad. Not a lot of people would have done what you did but I know myself and others will be more at peace with your dad's untimely passing. Again, thank you ever so much for the update!

Thank you for the update. I was aware of the compilation a few days ago but I wanted to hold off here until we had official confirmation on the family's wishes on his patches. Since we have gotten the word, we're allowing them to be posted publicly on here. Is there a way to add tags to help those find these easier? I noticed it has to be very specific, so is there a way to add rloew to the package so that if someone happened to search for rloew, it would bring them to the same directory?

First off, let me thank you ever so much for coming here to post an update, you have no idea how much it is appreciated. Second, I personally want to extend my sincerest condolences for your loss, to you and the rest of the family. We truly enjoyed having your dad as part of our community. Heh, my heart actually started racing when I saw his username had posted, thinking that somehow we got a bum steer and he was coming to tell us that he was still alive. But back to seriousness, we understand that it's probably a very busy time for you and the family and we want you to take all the time you need to grieve and take care of important business. But know that even though we didn't get to meet him personally, he was still a friend around here and we treasured the time we had with him. If I may ever be so brazen, was his passing expected or unexpected? You don't have to answer if you don't want to but it may help some of the hurt that some of us feel and give us some closure. Again, thank you so much for coming and posting this update for us! It really helps to keep up in the loop of things. I'm sure some of our users will greatly appreciate his work not being lost to the world, especially those who are as diehard Win9x users as your dad was.

That doesn't sound too good. Being an authorized reseller, you'd think they'd be quicker to respond. As I mentioned before, I wonder if Mr. Loew knew his time was coming and left specific instructions on his projects and website. Why would his website go down shortly after his passing? I just have that sneaking feeling he knew something was wrong and took care of some things before his demise. Again, that's just speculation but it's an educated speculation because if it was sudden, I'd think his website would still be active. We may need to try following some leads but I don't want to do it too soon because I want to make sure the family has proper grieving time before we start inquiring about his products. But I'm sure I feel the same way, we don't want his projects to become lost forever because that would indeed be a huge blow to the vintage computing community. Has anyone took a look at his LinkedIn profile? His credentials are very impressive if I do say so myself. He was indeed a very intelligent gentleman.

There has definitely been talk about his products. @Tripredacus has tried to contact C.C. Anderson but I do not know if he's been successful or not. I certainly hope we can get some sort of reply and shine light on the current state of his work. We're definitely not going to let his work be up for grabs on this forum unless one of his family members or C. C. Anderson says otherwise. Despite his passing, Rudolph Loew has put a lot of his time and work into making these products and we don't want to see anyone posting his stuff on here or links to his stuff unless his distributor or one of his family members gives the okay to/provides it themselves. We can't control what the net posts outside of MSFN but inside these walls, it's out of respect. It would be the same for the public to go into his house and just take all his belongings, which isn't right either! He does have a Facebook page which I won't link here but it's not hard to find, he does have a few friends on there which could possibly be leads to the questions we have.

Words to live by, I love it!

Looks to me like it's a transformation pack of some sort along with Advanced System Care installed due to the monitoring widget in the upper right hand corner.

This is extremely sad news indeed, I'm surprised more haven't replied to this thread already. He was certainly a genius when it came to figuring these things out. He'll always be a well respected developer and patron here. RIP rloew, we will all miss you. Thank you for all you've done for the diehard Win9x community.

Ask and you shall receive :3 But this won't cause issues if you integrate it into Extended Kernel? I'd hate to have continuing browser issues over it even if Explorer looks a lot nicer with it applied. Check out WinRAR without having it installed, the icons look horrible. lol W2kRP.zip