VOGONS


First post, by PKFreeZZy

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Just recently, my retro PC started loading really slowly. Normally it'd spend 10 seconds on the cloudy "Windows 98" loading screen then 3 seconds in the DOS prompt before the desktop appears. All of a sudden it's taking over 30 seconds after a fresh install and have no idea what's happening. I even fiddled with my BIOS to see if I could fix it, no luck. Any help?

My Windows 98 PC: Slot 1 Pentium III 600 (Katmai) | 256MB PC133 SDRAM | 64MB Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 Pro | Creative SB16 CT2230 | Intel PRO/100+ with Alert on LAN* | 18.64GB Seagate ST320011A | Corsair CX430 | ASUS P2B Rev. 1.04

Reply 3 of 5, by derSammler

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Do you have an Ethernet card installed and no cable connected? That's the most common reason for slow booting of Win95/98, as it waits quite a bit for a DHCP server to answer, not knowing that no cable is attached to the Ethernet card.

Reply 4 of 5, by PKFreeZZy

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derSammler wrote:

Do you have an Ethernet card installed and no cable connected? That's the most common reason for slow booting of Win95/98, as it waits quite a bit for a DHCP server to answer, not knowing that no cable is attached to the Ethernet card.

Could've been that, as my ethernet cable is pretty loose, though even after properly connecting it, things didn't change. It seems it was a BIOS problem in the end as reverting to the defaults and then reconfiguring it made it go away.

My Windows 98 PC: Slot 1 Pentium III 600 (Katmai) | 256MB PC133 SDRAM | 64MB Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 Pro | Creative SB16 CT2230 | Intel PRO/100+ with Alert on LAN* | 18.64GB Seagate ST320011A | Corsair CX430 | ASUS P2B Rev. 1.04

Reply 5 of 5, by Roman78

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derSammler wrote:

Do you have an Ethernet card installed and no cable connected? That's the most common reason for slow booting of Win95/98, as it waits quite a bit for a DHCP server to answer, not knowing that no cable is attached to the Ethernet card.

In this case W98 is querying the DHCP server and waiting. Could be speed up when set to Static IP instead of DHCP. In this case, even when the cable is lose, the PC boots fast.