What exactly is this PnP device?

[pjc30943]

I tried PMT Shoot from Microsoft to troubleshoot the suspend lately not working on my 600E: "Your computer cannot go on standby..."

PMTShoot shows the following in red, indicating that this is what causes the failure to suspend:

Device (C29AA610): PnP BIOS Extension
Friendly name: PnP BIOS Extension
Hardware ID: MCDHLP
Device ID: ROOT\MCDHLP\0000
Call: WM_DEVICECHANGE, DBT_DEVICEQUERYREMOVEFAILED


Isn't PnP the audio stuff? No resources are in conflict, that I could find.

What is MCDHLP?

[RWDPLZ]

PnP is short for Plug 'n Play

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-and-play

Did you install any new hardware recently?

[pjc30943]

Oh, P+P Well, the device manager always only shows PnP for the audio drivers.

No, no new hardware installed recently. However, at about the same time, every time the machine reboots, it does it's "new hardware" beep upon startup--where it beeps on restart, shuts down, and restarts with another beep.

So, presumably something new (and imaginary) is constantly being installed.

Too bad google has nothing on MCDHLP.

[rkawakami]

Perhaps it's Microsoft own software which is causing your problem? Taking a guess the MCDHLP is "MCD Help", I googled this:

"microsoft mcd media content"

(edit: Wild guess: Do you have some sort of removable storage media? Something like a USB thumb drive or network attached disk?)

[pjc30943]

Ray, that is awesome troubleshooting
Because a few weeks ago I did buy a new Kingston USB drive, which needed a driver to be installed (as I have 98SE).

I will try disabling the SafeEject software upon boot, and see if that solves it.


EDIT:

No, unfortunately that didn't change the status. Although that basically is the only thing, aside from playing around with dual screen expansion with a CRT, which is now disconnected and disabled as far as I know.

On the side note, I did hardware tests from the bios, and the system board did have the following error (I have no idea what this means):

DEV 001
ERR 41
FRU 1110

[rkawakami]

DEV 001
ERR 41
FRU 1110

The Hardware Maintenance Manual for the 600E shows that FRU 1110 is the modem. The DEV 001 is the motherboard (meaning the modem is installed on the motherboard I guess), not sure what the ERR 41 refers to, but the FRU 1110 is the modem. You might want to try temporarily disabling the modem and see what happens.

[pjc30943]

[quote="rkawakami"]
The Hardware Maintenance Manual for the 600E shows that FRU 1110 is the modem. The DEV 001 is the motherboard (meaning the modem is installed on the motherboard I guess), not sure what the ERR 41 refers to, but the FRU 1110 is the modem. You might want to try temporarily disabling the modem and see what happens.[/quote]


Ah, well the modem is disabled, so that explains that; Which should have no relation to the standby errors, dang it.

I've been fairly successful in causing all sorts of false alarms with these other issues...sorry about that, I thought they might be related.

Any other thoughts?

[rkawakami]

At the moment, sorry, no. I do know that when I place my Gateway laptop into my docking station at work that the hibernate mode will not enable due to a serial port conflict (which is not being used by the port; I've assumed that there is something wrong internally). The laptop works fine with an identical port at home. Also, if I have my network disk on-line (Ximeta Netdisk), the laptop will refuse to hibernate. In that case, I know that the problem is due to the drivers being used. In both cases it seems like some external device (or phantom) is causing Windows XP to object.

I haven't used W98 in such a long time on a laptop that I don't know if there is any inherent problems with standby or hibernation. Perhaps someone will jump in with more experience than me on that subject.

[Rob Mayercik]

... as I have 98SE ...

I'd agree with Ray - either Windows is the culprit, or it's a contributing factor.

I'm currently running 98SE on my 600, but am planning to upgrade to XP soon (due to security updates being discontinued now), and I've found suspend and hibernate modes to be troublesome with 98SE.

Generally, it's been my experience that they work fine when I'm just coming out of the gate with a clean install, but at some point along the line it just stops working (it'll go into those modes, but it won't come out). I have a feeling that it's either my virus scanner (AVG Free) or the network drivers (either for my wireless card or the wired card) that's getting the suspend and hibernate functions hung.

I've come to the conclusion that there's probably something being done inside the drivers for some of the newer hardware that Windows 98 just can't handle - after all, both the 600 series and W98SE are in the 7-8 year age bracket.

I did run XP on a partition I was setting aside for linux for the 30-day evaluation period, and it seemed to suspend and hibernate just fine. For 98SE, though, I gave up on suspending and hibernating a long time ago.

If suspending and hibernating are that important to you, you may have to consider moving to XP. Assuming your 600E is at least a PII-300 with 256MB or more RAM (placing it more or less on even footing with my 600), XP should run acceptably well.

Rob

[pjc30943]

It is 366MHz, 294Mb RAM. But, I actually like 98SE as oopposed to XP (which we use at work) despite XP being rock solid.

The high level of control microsoft has on each person's Xp computer is pretty annoying, whereas 98SE is nonexistent as far as microsoft is concerned.

So I'd like to keep this OS, so maybe I should do a repair--or heaven forbid --clean install. There's just so much on this computer, I'd not like to reformat or loose all my settings.

On the other hand, suspend is really important for me, because this 600E's fan is really loud, and almost always on, which makes it hard to get work done.
Shutting down every hour is a less desirable option
So far, suspending was the only way to get it quiet, yet have it resume in a few seconds when needed.

[Rob Mayercik]

I agree with your feelings on XP and would like to keep 98SE running on mine, but I've started to notice a falloff in the number of applications that still support it (Roxio no longer supports 98, but Nero still does). So far, I haven't run into a problem finding what I need.

That being said, you may want to save going "scorched earth" for a last resort for the moment. It sounds like the last change before the problem arose was installing the drivers for the USB drive. Since disabling it didn't seem to help, try uninstalling the drivers and see if that gets your suspend mode working.

Also, how long has the power-up behavior you mentioned been occuring?

[pjc30943]

Yes, there definitely are fewer applications that support 98SE, which makes things annoying at times. But especially when looking at what the new Vista will be able to do, sheesh, I'm never upgrading. Transition to a Mac first, I think, (which would not be fun, as this is my third TP) or just keep this OS and use the work computers for intensive, modern things.

The bootup issue (double beep) began roughly at the same time as the suspend issue...
I'll post back after removing the drivers.


EDIT:

(That's wierd...yesterday I posted the Edit shown below, but somehow it didn't show up in the message...even though it appeard when I came to edit again. Odd!)

USB drivers removed, with no apparent change unfortunately.
I realize this may not be a huge, exciting issue for y'all to troubleshoot ... however if anyone has further thoughts, please bring them up, no matter how far fetched.

[Rob Mayercik]

So until the powerup double beep thing appeared, was it suspending properly with the Kingston driver installed?

I'm attempting to narrow this down to a single variable (nothing worse than trying to chase one problem in two directions at once).