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From: js@dukee.egr.duke.edu (Jeffrey A. Shorey)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Can Windows damage hardware (RAM)?
Message-ID: <1332@cameron.egr.duke.edu>
Date: 14 Feb 91 21:14:57 GMT
References: <1991Feb12.220834.1991@syssoft.com>
Sender: news@egr.duke.edu
Lines: 23

From article <1991Feb12.220834.1991@syssoft.com>, by tom@syssoft.com (Rodentia):
> Ever since I was a little hacklet, I had been told software
> cannot damage hardware (walking disk drives excluded).  Imagine
> my surprise when my next door neighbor installed windows on his
> 2.5Mbyte 16MHz 386, ran notepad, and POOF!  He got a crash, and
> whenever he boots, the RAM test fails after 512K (the point 
> where it starts accessing the 2Mbyte expansion slot RAM).
> 
> Thomas Roden                                      | tom@syssoft.com

I had this happen on my CompuAdd with other programs that crashed.  Sometimes,
even resetting the CMOS settings didn't help...one time the step rate on my
harddrive table was set to something random, and the setup program was unable
to change it for some reason.  What I had to do was take the batteries out of
the computer and let it sit for a day while the CMOS discharges (tech support
said an hour or two - that never did it for me).  Then I reinstalled the 
batteries, ran setup, and it was fixed.

You would think the designers would put some kind of safeguard on the CMOS
so that it wouldn't get randomly trashed like that...it would save them a
lot of tech support time.

- Jeff Shorey