Hi dude!
It would really help if you listed your complete hardware configuration.
Running Win9x on newer hardware can cause all kinds of problems and knowing what exact hardware you're using helps narrowing down troubleshooting steps.

With behaviour like that, I'd run memtest first on that setup and check both motherboard and power supply for bulging capacitors (see www.badcaps.net for what I mean).

Doornkaat wrote on 2020-05-14, 05:18:

Hi dude!
It would really help if you listed your complete hardware configuration.
Running Win9x on newer hardware can cause all kinds of problems and knowing what exact hardware you're using helps narrowing down troubleshooting steps.

Thanks for the reply. I'll describe what I have as much as I can. I have a Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz CPU. This is in a LGA 775 slot board: Gigabyte GA_EP45-UD3L motherboard. I have 1 stick of 512MB DDR2 RAM in it. I have a floppy connected via floppy ribbon cable, 20GB HDD connected via IDE ribbon cable, and a DVD drive connected via SATA. The board doesn't have built in VGA so I was trying to use a PCI-E NVidia GeForce 7950 GT because I can get win98 drivers for it, but I've also swapped in a very basic PCI VGA card. I think that's all but if you think I'm missing any information let me know.

I second the Memtest and capacitor inspection .
Could be a flaky or under-powered PSU, even if capacitors look OK .

darry wrote on 2020-05-14, 23:20:

I second the Memtest and capacitor inspection .
Could be a flaky or under-powered PSU, even if capacitors look OK .

I forgot to mention the PSU. I'm using a 350W PSU that should be in good working order. I am not sure exactly if that's enough to power the other components I've listed.

I was considering trying to install windows XP if 98 couldn't work. If it installs and boots XP fine would it be assumed the board/psu/capacitors are in working order?

Just as followup, yeah the computer installs and boots up windows XP just fine.

Capacitors are never not suspect but seeing as the install causes some system load but worked properly and this board is from way past the capacitor plague era as long as there's no visual damage to the caps they wouldn't be my primary suspect.
If you're still prioritising ruling out general system instability as a cause of the hangups you can boot several stability testing tools from the Ultimate Boot CD.
To me the system crashing at startup in between the two times Win98 loading screen is displayed is more of an indication of driver problems, misconfiguration or hardware conflict. No wonder with this generation of hardware and Win98.
Your IDE header is part of the onboard JMB368 connected to the south bridge via PCIe. This controller would be my first concern. I don't think there are drivers for anything prior to Win2k so performance may be suboptimal. There should be a compatibility option though. Can you try to find and enable it? If you can't, can you try and install Win98 onto an SATA drive connected to SATA2_0 and SATA Port0-3 Native Mode set to Disabled in BIOS?
Are you using a USB or PS/2 keyboard? If USB try using a PS/2 keyboard and disable USB for now in BIOS.
Could you try enabling other compatibility/legacy options in BIOS? Please also try disabling all devices you don't need.

Doornkaat wrote on 2020-05-15, 15:56:

Capacitors are never not suspect but seeing as the install causes some system load but worked properly and this board is from wa […]
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Capacitors are never not suspect but seeing as the install causes some system load but worked properly and this board is from way past the capacitor plague era as long as there's no visual damage to the caps they wouldn't be my primary suspect.
If you're still prioritising ruling out general system instability as a cause of the hangups you can boot several stability testing tools from the Ultimate Boot CD.
To me the system crashing at startup in between the two times Win98 loading screen is displayed is more of an indication of driver problems, misconfiguration or hardware conflict. No wonder with this generation of hardware and Win98.
Your IDE header is part of the onboard JMB368 connected to the south bridge via PCIe. This controller would be my first concern. I don't think there are drivers for anything prior to Win2k so performance may be suboptimal. There should be a compatibility option though. Can you try to find and enable it? If you can't, can you try and install Win98 onto an SATA drive connected to SATA2_0 and SATA Port0-3 Native Mode set to Disabled in BIOS?
Are you using a USB or PS/2 keyboard? If USB try using a PS/2 keyboard and disable USB for now in BIOS.
Could you try enabling other compatibility/legacy options in BIOS? Please also try disabling all devices you don't need.

Thank you for responding. If I could get Windows 98 to work with my setup I'd be so thrilled. I do believe there is some sort of driver issue. I don't know how to fix it though. I think this because I have installed using a newer video card (that I should be able to get drivers for later) and what I described above happens. However I've also installed using an older PCI vga card and instead of crashing it just sits on the windows 98 splash screen forever. Now I believe this is when trying to install plain 98. When trying to install 98SE I get the installation freezing on when it's trying to load the drivers. To go along with this I've tried an old guide I've found here for how to install 98 on a newer machine by having it install without drivers and then configuring the system.ini and config.ini to look for specific generic drivers that you put on the hard drive. This also hasn't worked for me though.

Now as far as the bios goes I did change a lot of the settings to be legacy mode. For example I turned off threading, turned sata to IDE legacy mode. However with the SATA hard drive that I tried the WIN98 installer wouldn't see the drive even though the bios saw it as IDE0 master. Also I'm using PS2 mouse and keyboard. I have tried to change all of the bios settings I think I need to however I'm not sure if I have. (Some of the bios settings I've changed I'm not sure what they even do, just picked what seemed like the older/ more compatible option) If you don't mind giving me advice please keep responding and I'll get you whatever information I can about how I'm trying to install. Thanks again.

Windows 98 and SATA, now that is an interesting combo. I'd try a true IDE disk first...

evasive wrote on 2020-05-16, 16:31:

Windows 98 and SATA, now that is an interesting combo. I'd try a true IDE disk first...

While the onboard IDE controller can't be easily configured the integrated Intel controller offers legacy OS support on four ports that can be enabled in BIOS. It's designed to do just that, I've been running Win9x on SATA for years, it's no big deal. 😀

Doornkaat wrote on 2020-05-16, 18:57:

evasive wrote on 2020-05-16, 16:31:

Windows 98 and SATA, now that is an interesting combo. I'd try a true IDE disk first...

While the onboard IDE controller can't be easily configured the integrated Intel controller offers legacy OS support on four ports that can be enabled in BIOS. It's designed to do just that, I've been running Win9x on SATA for years, it's no big deal. 😀

I can try again with a sata HDD. Last time it didn't seem to find it. I mostly was trying to use an IDE hard drive though. A newer IDE hard drive but none-the-less.

If Windows 98 setup did not see the drive, did DOS 7.1 see it ? I assume you were booting from the Windows install CD or floppy .
AFAICR, you still need to partition and format the drive manually with FDISK an FORMAT before running the Setup . It will not do it for you like XP does . At least that's what I remember (I have always partitioned and formated manually anyway before installing Windows 9x, so my memory may be off ).

Whatever drive you use, make sure it is under 127GB, otherwise otherwise you will have issues that will require patches .

darry wrote on 2020-05-17, 03:35:

If Windows 98 setup did not see the drive, did DOS 7.1 see it ? I assume you were booting from the Windows install CD or floppy .
AFAICR, you still need to partition and format the drive manually with FDISK an FORMAT before running the Setup . It will not do it for you like XP does . At least that's what I remember (I have always partitioned and formated manually anyway before installing Windows 9x, so my memory may be off ).

Whatever drive you use, make sure it is under 127GB, otherwise otherwise you will have issues that will require patches .

I have been using 80GB drives. Mostly I was using IDE drives, but the SATA drives it had trouble finding. The BIOS allows me to set the SATA connections to be seen as IDE connections though. Possibly the drive was bad though, maybe I'll try another one.