In my experience, with a Pentium 3, this is caused by Windows 98SE not liking the HBA. Try using a different IDE controller. This happened when I used a FastTrak EIDE RAID card. Everything installed fine, but hung indefinitely at boot.

Do you have a smaller hard drive? Or does the hard drive have a capacity limit jumper setting?

Worth a shot?

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Do you have a smaller hard drive? Or does the hard drive have a capacity limit jumper setting?

Worth a shot?

Shouldn't matter. As long as it's detected and LBA is set correctly, you should be fine.

jheronimus wrote:

Hi, all […]
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Hi, all

I've finally built a Super Socket 7 machine with the following specs:

- AMD K6-3+ 400MHz;
- 2x128 MB PC-133 RAM;
- Lucky Star 5MVP3 rev 4.0 motherboard;
- 80GB HDD;
- Voodoo 3 3000/AGP;
- Sound Blaster 16 CT2230 with Dreamblaster X2;
- 3COM NIC;
- 40x CD-RW drive.

There is a BIOS patch for this motherboard on an unofficial K6 list, so I've installed it. The POST now shows me "AMD K6-3 400" (no mention of plus, though). The HDD is detected correctly.

I then proceed to install Windows. I use a single partition on my disk, go through all the steps (including the parts where I enter the serial code and the system tries to detect all hardware). However, first boot always hangs at logo screen. The animation goes for a little while and then everything just freezes — no disk activity, no nothing. I tried installation several times — it's always the same. Could this be some sort of a hardware problem?

No, you need to downclock the cpu on the first boot and install a cpu-patch (google for AMDK6UPD), otherwise it will always crash.
I use K6dos.sys on my Win9x Bootdisk to slowdown to 2x (133 or 200Mhz, depending on the FSB you selected).

****
I forgot you use "win98se", so please check if your machine works fine with slower cpu-power (200Mhz) and please check the ram.

Ampera wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Do you have a smaller hard drive? Or does the hard drive have a capacity limit jumper setting?

Worth a shot?

Shouldn't matter. As long as it's detected and LBA is set correctly, you should be fine.

How do I check if it's detected correctly? Right now it's shown in BIOS as 80GB/LBA. Windows installer's format tool shows it as 10 or 15GB initially, but shows as 80GB in the result table. I'll try repartitioning it anew (I only quickformatted it every time).

Not that this is the problem necessarily, but since bios detects the disk as 80gb, give it a try creating a partition <32GB (if the disk doesn't have a jumper limiting capacity).

Didn't have time to change any of the components, so I tried everything I could with the current system:

- tried disabling the L2 cache;

- reformatted/repartitioned the disk. I don't really think there's an issue with it — it worked perfectly on my 430TX and 440BX systems under Windows 98SE;

- tried booting in safe mode — it worked;

- tried booting in "logged" mode — it took 3-4 minutes to boot, but it did work.

Now the weird thing is when I tried shutting down the system that was booted in "logged" mode — it froze at "shutting down" screen.

I have attached a bootlog to this post just in case

Seems like the issue is solved:

1) needed to turn off ACPI in BIOS options. Now the boot takes long, but works. Also, now Windows is able to shut down/reboot properly.
2) looks like the delay in boot is caused simply by the fact that my NIC wasn't plugged into a network. I'll either move the PC to another room or get a long cable soon to check, but looks like it.

Think the delay is it trying to pick up a DHCP address, giving it a static IP may speed it up. (or just disable it in device manager when not hooked up)

Yes, looks like it. Got the system online and it all works great now

jheronimus wrote:

Seems like the issue is solved:

1) needed to turn off ACPI in BIOS options. Now the boot takes long, but works. Also, now Windows is able to shut down/reboot properly.
2) looks like the delay in boot is caused simply by the fact that my NIC wasn't plugged into a network. I'll either move the PC to another room or get a long cable soon to check, but looks like it.

In my experience once you install a network card in 98 it adds like another 30 seconds to the boot to desktop time. Removing or disabling the network card you can get into the desktop much faster. I would disable the network card in the Device Manager you'll probably won't use that except in XP or higher.

There is an option for that in TuneUp97.