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Windows 98SE new install "Freezes" on boot after putting files on the HDD

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First post, by relo999

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A few times now I tried reinstalling Windows 98SE but every time the installation goes fine, boots fine but it seems every time I put some files on the machine it will get stuck on boot after the Window 98 splash screen with a blinking cursor in the top left and the whatever was on the screen before the splash screen.

Files are mostly things like drivers, benchmarking programs and a few games. This sometimes happens when nothing is installed, but sometimes rebooting for installations works fine only for it to get stuck again after a hard power down. And at least once Windows booted fine but got stuck when trying to open the C drive. Deleting the files also doesn't work and the files came from my previous install.

Safe mode works fine.

What's the best way of finding whats going wrong.

Specs (not currently near computer so going from memory):
K6-III 450 CPU
Voodoo III PCI
Aureal Vortex 2
Awe 32
ESS audio drive card
200GB harddrive

Reply 1 of 5, by Yoghoo

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How big is the partition on which you install Windows 98SE? It should not be the whole 200GB (without 3rd party patches). Keep it under 128GB. If not it could introduce data corruption and strange problems.

Reply 2 of 5, by relo999

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It's partitioned to be a 120GB drive using the standard fdisk found on the Windows 98se installation floppy (the one that asks to boot from CD or HDD).

Reply 3 of 5, by NeilKnows

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"every time I put some files on the machine" this sounds suspicously like you moved the drive to another machine to copy those files. I presume you dont actually do that?

You are just copying from floppy or a network share?

Reply 4 of 5, by relo999

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I did that earlier. But recent 2 tries I installed the USB driver first and copied it from USB

Reply 5 of 5, by Yoghoo

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Maybe a resource problem (IRQ/DMA) as you use 3 sound cards? Else (if there are no hardware issues) it could be a driver problem. Maybe try older/newer drivers. Also you could remove all (sound) cards and try adding one by one until you find the culprit.

What is the motherboard and bios version btw? Did you install chipset and USB drivers if so which versions?

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