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Windows 98SE install problem

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First post, by ratfink

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I'm hoping someone can help here. I have tried searching the web but I don't really know what to search for.

My system: Abit AN7, Athlon XP3000, 1GB ram, 2x160GB hard drives, Ti4800SE, Santa Cruz, RTL8139.

Runs Windows 2000 fine. Also had Windows 98 on it, from a previous motherboard, but a lot of unidentified devices as 98 does not support nforce2.

So... I got a puykka copy of 98SE and managed to convince that to install [it was full version and didn't want to be used as an upgrade]. And I got the Abit drivers and all devices got recognised.

Then today I decided to rationalise all the detritus and downloads that have built up over the past 3-4 years. And eventually - partly because the user files became such a mess (five of us use this machine), I decided to wipe the Win 98 partitions, reformat and then install 98se from scratch. Ho ho ho, that has been a complete failure so far.

Basically, it will seem to install. Then when I boot, it can't find the mouse [though the mouse worked during install], and it reports graphics problem. I have tried installing the Unofficial 98SE Service Pack, does not seem to help. I have used msconfig to limit RAM to 512MB. And I have disabled all startup options. Basically when starting I get the Win98 screen then it goes black and the monitor turns off.

Trying to do selective driver loading doesn't help.

It seems as though loading an extra driver causes this sometimes - it seemed to work at first, byt the USB2.0 device had a questionmark, so I installed the driver... and got these problems. But I have wiped and reinstalled a few times, and still get the problems.

Any ideas?

Reply 1 of 5, by swaaye

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Oh dear. This sounds like a pain in the rear. I'm thinking that 98 is having some problems sorting IRQs or something. It has problems with that sometimes, even on boards from the days of 98SE.

Did you install the NV nForce2 98 drivers? http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_win9x_4.27.html

The unofficial 98SE SP2 is a good idea, yeah... There are also unofficial 98SE USB drivers that are nice for flash drives.
http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php

Reply 3 of 5, by swaaye

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You could try forcing 98SE to install in non-ACPI mode. It is probably running ACPI on there. That can be troublesome. Obviously Windows 98's ACPI is rather crusty and it could be an issue with newer boards.... It was an issue with some boards back then because of BIOS flaws.

Run "setup /p i". I'm fairly sure that's how you do it. I've never actually bothered to do this though.

This will make the CPU run hotter than usual while idling. Normally 98SE in ACPI mode will send the HLT command to the CPU when idle (like NT does), but it won't when it's in APM mode instead of ACPI. You can run a CPU idle program like Rain to replace this function however.

Last edited by swaaye on 2009-02-26, 21:10. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 5, by ratfink

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Thanks, I'll bear that in mind - now you mention it I had problems with ACPI on some other machine - but it looks like the problem is now solved. Lucky the system installs 98 so fast.

Seems to have been because I had not installed directx. The nforce2 driver said something or other would not work properly without directx, but it sounded like it was just a control panel so I assumed it could be ignored.

I have now re-wiped and re-installed... 98SE, directx, nforce driver, sound card, NIC and finally USB2 device. For good measure I had disabled the printer port and didn't bother with the RAID driver. But the nforce driver visibly installed [nvidia screens etc] instead of pretty much disappearing without trace when I ran it as it had previously [though that is how the USB2 driver behaves].

All devices found, everything seems to work. Weird.

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