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Win98 PC locks up installing games from optical drive

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First post, by Dystopia

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I've been having a problem where my PC locks up hard when I try to install a game from the DVD drive. And I mean hard - to the point where the hard disk isn't detected by the BIOS on the first reboot. The offending game was X-Wing Alliance, but I tried another game and the same thing happened. It's not totally consistent how far it gets before failing, but it always happens before the installation completes. I have successfully installed Windows and various drivers with this DVD drive previously.

At first I thought my joystick (Logitech Wingman Strike Force 3D) was somehow responsible because the first this happened it did so about 30 seconds after plugging in the joystick. But on subsequent attempts it seems to make no difference whether it's plugged in or not. Just a silly concidence I suppose.

My next thought was that the hard disk is faulty. I had bought it from some doofus who thought an envelope was a sensible way to post a hard disk, so maybe it's finally dying. I tried thrashing with ATTO disk benchmarks, thinking that would induce a failure if the disk is faulty, but no, it did just fine. So then I installed a game from an ISO on a USB flash drive, and it works just fine. Then I installed XWA from the DVD to the USB drive, and that worked. Then I copied the files off the XWA disc onto the hard disk via Explorer, that worked too. Then I tried the installer again, and it was right back to failsville.

The PC seems generally stable otherwise. It runs 3D Mark 2001 with no issues. I played No One Lives Forever for a few hours with no problems. I'm at a loss as to what the problem is.

My system for reference:

SE440BX-2
Pentium III 1400-S (modded, from the Korean Ebay guy) via MSI MS6905 Master slotket and this cooler
512MB RAM
64MB Geforce 4 4200Ti
36 WD Raptor via cheapo IDE to SATA adapter (the sort that plugs into the motherboard rather than the disk)
Some old IDE LG DVD-RW
PCI USB2 card (the one Phil's Computer Lab covered some years back)
Vortex 2
Audician 32
Sound Blaster Audigy
Windows 98SE with the community service pack

Reply 2 of 9, by Dystopia

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Deksor wrote:

Have you checked your psu ?

It's an Antec High Current Gamer 750W, which is just a rebadged Seasonic M12-II. I bought it new middle of last year. Ludicrous overkill I know, but at one point it was going to go into a Socket A build, so the minor rails were the priority.

I haven't tried swapping it out, but given that I'd have to pull a PSU out of another PC, and that a nearly new Seasonic is unlikely to have failed, I'd rather leave that for a last resort.

Reply 4 of 9, by Dystopia

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squiggly wrote:

Have you tried installing Win98 Service Pack 3 or even Win982ME?

http://www.htasoft.com/u98sesp/

http://www.mdgx.com/upd98me.php

Win98 SP3 is what I meant when I said "community service pack". I had a blank moment on what it was called.

EDIT: Though it does seem to have had a new version since the one I downloaded.

Reply 8 of 9, by Dystopia

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Might get a SATA controller card. This one any good? Looks to be a knock off of a Promise 150 TX2. Are generic cards with Promise chips legit like the Silicon Image based generic cards, or are they basically dodgy counterfeits?

Reply 9 of 9, by squiggly

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derSammler wrote:

Use a native hard disk and scrap that "cheapo IDE to SATA adapter". It may do bad things with DMA transfer / bus master, causing conflicts with the optical drive.

There might be something there, but I use $3 sata/ide adapters on all my retros from DOS to XP for both HDDs and DVDROMs and they haven't caused noticeable impacts or issues.

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