Windows 98 long load times? \ VOGONS

Windows 98 long load times?

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First post, by digitalx

Posted on 2018-09-10, 20:37

digitalx Offline

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I'm tinkering with an old PC I bought. It has two hard drives and it's currently booting/trying to boot off the 40GB Maxtor IDE ( I can get the model if you need it.)

I borked it once installing chipset drivers and then rebooting after it was stuck or seemingly so for 30 mins, then it would only boot in safe mode. I booted it just now and selected Normal Startup in MSCONFIG. After rebooting normally it has been on the initial Windows 98 boot screen with the scrolling bar at the bottom for at least 5 minutes now, almost 10. Is there anything I can do or try for faster times?

It has been a long time since I properly used Win98, I was in my teens.

This is the specs going off the eBay listing:

HP D530 - Celeron 2.60GHz 512MB RAM 2 x 40GB IDE.

I believe both are Maxtor IDE drives.

Reply 1 of 7, by mrau

Posted on 2018-09-10, 21:10

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either network not getting an address or hardisk without dma?

Reply 2 of 7, by digitalx

Posted on 2018-09-10, 21:15

digitalx Offline

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As for the first part, it's not online if you meant network in that sense.

"Hardisk without dma" no idea, what do you mean? What is DMA?

Reply 3 of 7, by Cobra42898

Posted on 2018-09-10, 21:43

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If you can get into device manager, does it have any conflicts?

Searching for Epson Actiontower 3000 486 PC.

Reply 4 of 7, by bjwil1991

Posted on 2018-09-10, 21:50

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digitalx wrote:
As for the first part, it's not online if you meant network in that sense.

"Hardisk without dma" no idea, what do you mean? What is DMA?

DMA, or Direct Memory Access, makes the hard drive and optical drives get faster access times for opening up programs, files, and other items listed on the hard drive(s). I have that enabled on my 60GB Maxtor HDD (when they bought out Quantum in 2001), my LG CD burner, and Samsung DVD drive. This is on a Socket 754 (AMD Athlon 64 3000+) PCChips motherboard with 256MB DDR400, and it's pretty darn fast.

What I would do is check for resource conflicts and disable certain items in the BIOS that you don't need, such as USB, on-board Ethernet, and so on. Press Ctrl+F11 when the PC is turning on to get to the advanced features of the BIOS (yes, HP did get those features hidden on their motherboards, even though they are ASUS branded boards in most cases).

Last edited by bjwil1991 on 2018-09-10, 21:52. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 5 of 7, by digitalx

Posted on 2018-09-10, 21:52

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Thank you. I have a bootlog.txt now and at the bottom is Verdana, Webdings showing up.. How can I solve this? I'm guessing it can't find/load whatever, the fonts or .tif files.

So I think I have found the culprit on the normal mode boot problem. I have the legit windows 98 discs but not sure where the serial sticker is now. I want to reinstall. If needs be.

Reply 6 of 7, by RetroBoogie

Posted on 2018-09-10, 22:29

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As far as the network idea, I can say that when I installed my NIC drivers it increased my boot time substantially (looking for an IP address), but not 10-30 minutes.

Reply 7 of 7, by digitalx

Posted on 2018-09-11, 01:28

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I just reinstalled Windows and can boot as normal, thanks guys.

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