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[SOLVED] VIA KT133 - Windows hangs for a long time during restart/shutdown

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First post, by leonardo

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I recently started working on a very late Windows 9x-setup based for once around an Athlon/VIA chipset motherboard combo.

This is something that I've usually avoided, but I came by the parts and had an empty case lying around so I thought "why not?".

Anyway, everything seems dandy, other than that Windows will hang for a very long time when I choose to restart or to turn off the system at the screen where it states 'Please wait while your computer shuts down.' Initially I thought the system was hanging completely, but upon doing other things I discovered that it does actually reboot/power off reliably, but is taking its sweet time in doing so.

The system is built around an ASUS A7V-E (VIA KT133) motherboard and an Athlon T-Bird 1200 MHz CPU.
I'm running Windows 95 OSR2 with the VIA 4in1 4.35 driver package.

In all other ways the system is absolutely flying, there are no delays or hangups. Once finished, this rig is going to put up a good fight against my P3 1 GHz system.

In fact, there have been surprisingly few hiccups - this and not being able to set the monitor refresh rate with my Radeon 9200 seem to be the only major problems seems to be the only major problem that I have to deal with.

Does anyone here remember if there was a BIOS tweak, a patch/driver, a registry hack or anything of that sort that would fix this kind of a problem for users of VIA-based motherboards?

edit: Skip directly to the final post for the solution if you don't want to read the entire thread.

Last edited by leonardo on 2022-09-16, 10:01. Edited 3 times in total.

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 1 of 9, by Matchstick

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What bios version are you on?
The last bios is v1004
The last official VIA 4in1 for this platform is actually 4.43V

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-a7v-e#downloads

Honestly I would switch from 95osr2 to 98se, especially on a 1.2ghz Athlon.

Reply 2 of 9, by leonardo

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Matchstick wrote on 2022-09-01, 21:02:
What bios version are you on? The last bios is v1004 The last official VIA 4in1 for this platform is actually 4.43V […]
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What bios version are you on?
The last bios is v1004
The last official VIA 4in1 for this platform is actually 4.43V

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-a7v-e#downloads

Honestly I would switch from 95osr2 to 98se, especially on a 1.2ghz Athlon.

I flashed to 1004 ... there is a beta of 1005 available, not sure if I want to go that route.

ASUS in fact advertises 4in1 version 4.37 in their own support center but I wonder if that's just because or if they actually figured its the best version for the motherboard.

I'm putting this setup together as a "last hurrah for Win 95" kind of deal, so 98SE doesn't really interest me if all I gain is a timely shutdown procedure, when everything else is already peachy. I remember there were some patches that motherboard manufacturers and OEMs put out for both Windows 95 and -98 to fix such problems. I'm currently looking through stuff like this, this, this, or even this in search of a potential solution...

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 3 of 9, by leonardo

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OK, this looks like it could actually be due to a resource conflict:

res_conflict_vortex_au8820_via_kt133.png
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res_conflict_vortex_au8820_via_kt133.png
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4.33 KiB
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Resource conflict between Gameport Joystick and Vortex Gameport Interface
File license
Public domain

I tried shuffling the cards into different slots, but that didn't seem to have any effect on this.

I will try...

  • Reinstalling Windows
  • A different version of VIA 4in1
  • BIOS update

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 4 of 9, by Joseph_Joestar

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leonardo wrote on 2022-09-05, 11:43:

OK, this looks like it could actually be due to a resource conflict:

If you're using two sound cards at the same time, you need to either disable one of the joystick ports or assign it to a different address.

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Reply 5 of 9, by leonardo

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-09-05, 12:03:
leonardo wrote on 2022-09-05, 11:43:

OK, this looks like it could actually be due to a resource conflict:

If you're using two sound cards at the same time, you need to either disable one of the joystick ports or assign it to a different address.

Seems like a glitch, as there is only one sound card in the system. Removing or trying to reassign the device just causes it to be rediscovered and improperly set up each time.

Last edited by leonardo on 2022-09-05, 15:28. Edited 1 time in total.

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 6 of 9, by dondiego

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That's typical, you need to disable the motherboard gameport in bios. Or disable the one on the soundcard configuring the drivers if possible.

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Reply 8 of 9, by leonardo

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jmarsh wrote on 2022-09-06, 11:53:

In my experience this is usually network-related; try disabling the NIC in device manager and see if the delays go away. If they do try narrowing it down by disabling different clients/protocols.

I tested this hypothesis in multiple ways: I reinstalled Windows and did not install networking, I moved and removed the NIC itself etc. It doesn't look like it has to do with this directly, although currently I have 3Com NIC in the system instead of the Realtek RTL8139-based one I started out with.

Other stuff I've done thus far is I tried 4in1 4.37 instead of 4.35, I flashed 1005.004 Beta BIOS, I installed Windows with and without Plug&Play, set manual and automatic resources in the BIOS...

Slowly but surely I'm becoming quite the expert on how not to install Windows on this particular set of hardware. Everything I've tried ends with the system being more unstable than why I started the thread in the first place. 😁

One curiosity that I've discovered is that the Gameport Joystick-device that keeps conflicting with the actual sound card in the computer will turn up if I run setup the regular way, even though the built-in AC97-audio is Disabled in BIOS. I have to disable Plug & Play BIOS info for setup (setup /p i) and then it won't show in the Device Manager, although this also has the side-effect that my parallel port does not seem to register under the IRQ that it uses - which then causes other devices to take up that IRQ, which then causes other types of issues.

Will continue with more trial and error...

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 9 of 9, by leonardo

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OK - I utterly and completely fixed the issue, 100%. The system is stable and there are no remnants of the shutdown issue!

Unfortunately, I'm not perfectly sure what caused the problem in the first place, nor which of my actions resulted in the problem going away, but as I hate threads where the OP's final post says they fixed their problem and then don't share the solution, I thought I'd do my best to outline what I did this last round so that other potential sufferers can extract the gold:

  • I swapped my Realtek RTL8139 Fast Ethernet -> 3Com Etherlink 10/100 TX (3C905B-TX)
  • I placed the NIC into PCI slot 4
    (which according to ASUS' manual* shares IRQ with slots 5, 6, and built-in USB controller)
  • I moved the soundcard (Diamond Sonic Impact S90 / Aureal Vortex) into PCI slot 2
    (which according to ASUS' manual* does not share resources with other slots or devices)
  • I flashed BIOS from 1005.004 Beta -> 1004 with Aflash V2.21.
  • After completing the BIOS update/downgrade, I turned off the computer, and on first boot-up entered BIOS setup and
    Exit → Load Setup Defaults
    after which I also changed
    Boot → Reset Configuration Data: Yes
    in order to clear any residual device configuration. I then rebooted, saving my changes.
  • I reformatted drive C for a clean Windows installation, then restarted and re-entered the BIOS, changing some of the following settings from their default values (values changed in bold):

    Advanced → CHIP Configuration → AGP Fast Write: Enabled
    Advanced → CHIP Configuration → PCI Master Read Caching: Disabled
    Advanced → CHIP Configuration → Delayed Transaction: Enabled
    Advanced → CHIP Configuration → Graphic Aperture Size: 64MB
    Advanced → CHIP Configuration → Video Memory Cache Mode: USWC

    Advanced → I/O Device Configuration → Onboard Parallel Port: 278H/IRQ5 (to free IRQ7 for SB emulation)
    Advanced → I/O Device Configuration → Onboard Peripheral Resource Control → Onboard AC97 Audio Controller: Auto

    Advanced → PCI Configuration → Slot 1/2/3/4/5/6 IRQ: Auto
    Advanced → PCI Configuration → SYMBIOS SCSI BIOS: Disabled
    Advanced → PCI Configuration → PCI/PnP IRQ Resource Exclusion → IRQ 7 Reserved for Legacy Device: Yes

    Advanced → Shadow Configuration → Video ROM BIOS Shadow: Disabled

    Power → Power Management: Disabled

    Boot → Plug&Play O/S: Yes
    Boot → Boot Virus Detection: Disabled
    Boot → Primary VGA BIOS: AGP Card
  • I started Windows setup with the setup.exe /p i switch in order to not create the ghost Gameport Joystick-device.
  • After the first restart during setup, I re-entered the BIOS to change these settings:
    Advanced → CPU Level 1 Cache: Disabled
    Advanced → CPU Level 2 Cache: Disabled
    (this is a temporary fix for the Windows 95 bug for AMD CPUs faster than 350 MHz, in order to complete the setup).
  • After Windows installation completed, I re-entered the BIOS to set this setting:
    Boot → Plug&Play O/S: No
    This removes the exclamation marks from the soundcard- and ethernet controller devices in Device Manager.
  • Once back in Windows, I installed the eXtended USB Supplement
  • Next, I installed VIA 4in1 4.35 and enabled all the components (AGP in Turbo Mode)
  • I installed the 3Com ethernet drivers
  • I installed Unofficial Service Pack 1.05 Lite as per my own guide:

    win95_unofficialSP_options.png
  • After installing the service back, I re-entered the BIOS to set these settings:
    Advanced → CPU Level 1 Cache: Enabled
    Advanced → CPU Level 2 Cache: Enabled
    (The service pack fixes the bug that stops Windows from booting with fast AMD CPUs).
  • I installed DirectX 8.0a
  • I installed the recently discovered beta of ATi Catalyst which is compatible with Windows 95!
    See
    Filename
    ATi-Catalyst_2003-05-w95.zip
    File size
    4.81 MiB
    Downloads
    164 downloads
    File comment
    Catalyst Beta driver 05/15/03, 4.14.01.9104
    File license
    Public domain
  • In Device Manager, I changed configuration for LPT1 to use manual resources, and I forced Windows to allocate 278H/IRQ5 so that the SoundBlaster-emulation device would not attempt to grab IRQ5, but use IRQ7 which I had reserved for it in the BIOS.
  • I installed the latest non-beta Aureal Vortex reference drivers for the Diamond Sonic Impact S90

So there - it took quite a few attempts but I finally got the system working as well as it should. Maybe some other adventurer with Win95/98 will find the above useful.

References:
ASUS A7V-E User Manual (English) E746
ATi Radeon 9200 AGP card in Windows 95?

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

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