dr_st wrote:

synrgy87 wrote:

this may be a windows 98 bug rather than an issue with your MS DOS configuration 98 suffers from a few different shutdown / restart bugs, there's fixes for some of them, and other times it's driver issues.

I second this. I have a similar Win98SE box myself (with a K6-II 500MHz instead of a K6-III 450MHz). Every once in a while, it would not shutdown/restart properly and would just hang there, until I hit the power/reset button manually.

My Win98SE machine often hangs at shutdown when I've been running a resource (memory)-intensive game for more than 4 hours. However, sometimes it shuts down properly, especially if I let it run a bit after closing the game.

dr_st wrote:

I second this. I have a similar Win98SE box myself (with a K6-II 500MHz instead of a K6-III 450MHz). Every once in a while, it w […]
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synrgy87 wrote:

this may be a windows 98 bug rather than an issue with your MS DOS configuration 98 suffers from a few different shutdown / restart bugs, there's fixes for some of them, and other times it's driver issues.

I second this. I have a similar Win98SE box myself (with a K6-II 500MHz instead of a K6-III 450MHz). Every once in a while, it would not shutdown/restart properly and would just hang there, until I hit the power/reset button manually.

Now it happens about 5-10% of the time, so I don't care. I seem to recall that it used to be more frequent, and I have no idea what I did to affect it and whether I did anything at all. As said, Win98 is quite glitchy in shutdown/restart. It is one of the earliest ACPI implementations, so some bugs would be expected.

Here are a couple of Microsoft KB articles on the subject:
Windows 98 Second Edition Shutdown Supplement
Problems Shutting Down Windows 98 Second Edition

Interestingly, my latest install was without ACPI, and the issues persisted. That's why I attempted the unofficial Service Pack, and then did a cache disable to see if my system would be stable there.

Jo22 wrote:

Thanks, as of now I do know of two of my systems that are totally Win98SE incompatible. - GA586S REV v1.22C with Pentium133, 32M […]
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Thanks, as of now I do know of two of my systems that are totally Win98SE incompatible.
- GA586S REV v1.22C with Pentium133, 32MB RAM (released ca. 95-97)
- MS-6507 with Pentium IV 1.8GHz, 256MB RAM (released ca. 2002)

And several thin clients (not all).. One of them has an PIII@733MHz and 128MB of on-board memory, for example.

Ironically, they all do run with Win Me. The Me installation program had sometimes trouble, too, but
at least it did finish after a restart. The Win98SE setup program on the other hand, freezed or
crashed for up to 15times in a row on the GA586S. Boy, at some point 98SE made me feel like I was an incompetent fumbler. 🙁
At least I do understand now why people of the 90s literally threw their Windows machines out of their windows.
Because I felt the urge to do the same.

I had a quick look online regarding the GA-586S and read something on a WIMSBIOS post that there is a problem if the hard drive size is above 64 GB.
The fact that Windows froze up so many times could be related to memory problems (incompatible or faulty memory or even perhaps too fast memory timings in your BIOS setup).
I must admit, I've installed Windows 98SE on many systems back in the day and never experienced major installation problems, but (from the top off my head) you could perhaps investigate/explore the following options:

1. Check for any BIOS updates for your motherboard as sometimes this might address issues with specific CPU's, memory and even certain types of keyboards and mice.
2. Try loading the BIOS Setup Defaults and then install Windows 98SE (since sometimes the problems could be related to too fast cache and/or memory timings). You can always, afterwards, optimize your BIOS settings again.
3. Disable any power saving features and ports (serial and/or parallel) in the BIOS (can be enabled again afterwards)
4. Unplug any peripherals from your PC that is not required for the initial installation (sound cards, network cards and external connections)

Jo22 wrote:

Interesting. Can this "Service Pack" be slip-streamed into an installation media ?
It is of little use if you can't get your Windows installed in the first place, you know.

Coming back to your original query, I found this guide in how to slipstream all the hotfixes from Service Pack 2.x into your Windows 98SE installation:

Slipstreaming Guide

2.x supports a special slipstreaming method. Only hotfixes can be integrated into your Windows 98 SE Setup from the start. Other features like TweakUI cannot be integrated.
1- Copy \WIN98 directory with its contents from CD into your hard drive (like D:\WIN98).
2- With Winzip, Winrar or PowerArchiver, extract SP2.CAB from SESP21.EXE into a temporary directory.
3- Extract all files into D:\WIN98 from SP2.CAB. (For example, you should see D:\WIN98\ACPI.SYS file after extracting SP2.CAB).
4- Use D:\WIN98\SETUP.EXE for starting Windows 98 Setup. Windows 98 Setup will use these hotfixed files automatically during installation.

Here's the link where I copied it from: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/38193-install … win98-se-sp-20/