So before I rant since I know people will blame it on some of the below, here's the setups I've been using which 20+ times now […]
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So before I rant since I know people will blame it on some of the below, here's the setups I've been using which 20+ times now has failed to give me a 100% working Win 98 SE installation:
TLDR version is I've tried 3x different computers, 3x HDD's, 6+ Win98 ISO, etc. etc.
• 3x different Pentium III computers (Dell Dimension XPS T450, Dell T700r, one I built around 2000) - the highest used one has been on the Dell's, specifically the 700mhz one
• 2x brand new (as of ~3-4 weeks ago) 120gb SSD drives (Crucial and Kingston) + one old school IDE drive on the one I built from scratch (+ 2GB SD card + 2GB CF card)
• 3x different SATA to IDE adapters (2x different brands) (plus those SD and CF card, but those weren't used much)
• At least 6 different flavors of ISO's (including my ~20+ year old original) of Windows 98 Second Edition
--- Most ISO's burned 4x (which my new USB burners can't even do) on super nice Verbatim DataLife Plus CD-R's (this burner + media has worked PERFECT on everything, including 100+ console games)
--- tried custom, typical, etc. Windows installations numerous times
--- Tried installs with all cards pulled except video card, tried it with all cards in, tried it with 2x other older TNT2 cards
--- Tried installs with the Unofficial Service pack used afterwards (the newer one people think is bloated, and the older v2? one people like), tried it with the Windows Security Update CD/Feb 2004 which a mod on this forum (I think) highly recommended on several posts (just in cast any of these ways of updating Windows would get rid of my problems). Tried different versions of DirectX, different versions of GeForce drivers, tried the swapping in IE5.5 DLL's to get rid of the Explorer hang issue, etc. etc etc.
There are freeware disk partitoning formatting available for up to 3 TB disk partitons for FAT32 but if your windows system is not patched to support it always don't go over 128gb partitons even if it means an alphabet of drive letters or you will corrupt data and eventually cause bad clusters on your disk/s.
• ALL drivers are Windows 98 specific and sourced from ones Phil recommends, the people here recommend and are on Vogons Drivers... i.e. I'm cross referencing what the best to use is every time. If there's a MD5 hash I actually run it to make sure the download went correctly...
• Only constants (on the 2x Dell's) is the higher-end cards I bought for this specific build (GeForce 4 ti, then more recently 2x Voodoo2's, ESS EF1868F ISA sound card, Audigy 2 ZS PCI sound card).
So onto my rant. It's been about a month now and for one or two nights during the workweek, and literally 12+ hours each weekend day (hey, I'm off and the majority of that time is just things installing/loading and copying over at least 😉 I've been trying to get this to run correctly. I have over 200 different images and photos I've taken of this process and all the different issues I've had (and have posted here about a bunch of them). To refresh my memory I just went through my photos/videos and here's a sampling of the multiple types of issues:
Click here for my NUMEROUS woes...like so many it's kinda insane 🤣
Most common problems is the computer hanging...and I don't mean for like 5 or 10 seconds. I'm talking minutes then a whole bunch of things (i.e. places I was clicking) will pop-up all of the sudden....and usually crash afterwards. Not being able to restart because of mysterious processes it has to 'end task'/kill (with no name of that process in the blue header). The lovely repeating problem of Explorer freezing if I move, copy, or delete a lot of files (seems to be a fault of IE6). Disk initialization errors on brand new HDDs. VFAT errors, sound stuttering, font corruption while blue screening and on system pop-up windows, duplicate drivers for no reason, missing driver files not on Windows CD's (which they are there, I checked...), kernel errors, shutdown errors (with errors that can't be found on ALL of google/duckduckgo!), inability for registry edits to take, missing sections of graphics of windows like Explorer, showing 4x different windows when I only have one single instance open, stack overflows, runtime errors, the Windows Start button itself disappearing..., network password prompts magically popping up (I have no network setup, let alone a ethernet card...), Voodoo driver issues, CRT monitor blanking out numerous times after Voodoo drivers, etc. etc. etc.
To add insult to injury I did have one pretty perfect install....ALL drivers working. no glitches (yet). So I then backed it up with Norton Ghost 2003.... then the Voodoo2 drivers made my CRT loose sync upon boot-up multiple times in a row and killed that install....and when I restored with Norton I could no longer delete files with Explorer...so I had to reformat again and start from scratch....that was last night FYI).
Just an hour ago for instance, I install Windows 98 SE from scratch, again. I literally burned a brand new CD AND installed a brand new CD burner, and used a new IDE cable (I'm grasping at straws...but just in case either was bad/malfunctioning...). After it boots up I go to drag the misc icons from the desktop (like the folder with AOL links in it, the "connect to the Internet" shortcut, IE shortcut, etc.) and drag them into the trash and get an error that it can't be deleted. Reboot, delete those, system then takes 2 minutes to open Explorer. I try to reboot again, and it won't let me "the program is not responding" and do I want to "Wait" or "End Task" (which the program name is missing from the top blue bar so I don't even know what it is that's holding up reboot). System then freezes and I have to reboot again... This is on a fresh install. NOTHING was installed yet. Not even a single driver (and again, it does things like this when I pull all cards for the Windows installation, AND things like this has happened on multiple different computers).
All I can ask is W. T. F. is going on here? This is absolutely insane. And TBH, is why I switched to Mac's over a decade ago which rarely give me any problems like listed above (for transparency I did recently give Windows 7 and 10 a go with a GroovyMAME/CRT Emudriver/Switchres build...which was a nightmare as well).
Anyway, should I go to Windows 2000 for this build? That's the last version (besides crappy ME) which was built on DOS proper, right? 2000 Professional or Server? I'm SO ready to try something else... do most Win98 drivers work on 2000? This will stink since I was purposely re-building the computer I had during college which had Win98... but I'm nearly at my wits' end here and don't know what to do. I've barely played any of these games I've loaded! It's all reformat and reinstall for weeks now!