Sounds like a PnP resource conflict. Who's managing PnP resources, BIOS or OS?

Also, VGA is generally the second driver you want to install (after motherboard chipset), doing it after all the others is asking for problems.

In any event I'd remove all non-essential cards (SCSI, NIC, MPEG decoder) and try again. Odds are that will work. Then add the other cards one by one. Possibly it will all work that way. If not, you'll at least know where the conflict is.

Which Matrox driver version are you using ?

Horun wrote on 2020-11-08, 16:41:

Which Matrox driver version are you using ?

6.8.2 This was the last driver released for Windows 98 that supported MGA G200

dionb wrote on 2020-11-08, 16:28:

Sounds like a PnP resource conflict. Who's managing PnP resources, BIOS or OS?

Also, VGA is generally the second driver you want to install (after motherboard chipset), doing it after all the others is asking for problems.

In any event I'd remove all non-essential cards (SCSI, NIC, MPEG decoder) and try again. Odds are that will work. Then add the other cards one by one. Possibly it will all work that way. If not, you'll at least know where the conflict is.

If not mistaken I've set it to be handled by the BIOS. I will try the other solutions you've proposed as well and I will let you know

@dionb I have tried what you said, all resources handled by bios, clean install on Win98, chipset drivers, VGA drivers and the problem persists. The drivers are installed the colors are good, what I notice is some graphical anomalies on the top border of each window. Then the system freezes or restarts

Is the device manager showing any irq or resource conflicts?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-11-09, 14:45:

Is the device manager showing any irq or resource conflicts?

Can't access device manager, system freezes a few seconds after booting the OS

Have you tried booting into safe mode?

Yes. I think I've solved it. I've switched the BIOS' PNP OS option to true and then I also selected that the system should update the system configuration. So far no artifacts and no freezes/crashes. I don't think that is that odd, considering the age of the machine it's just that I haven't faced a similar issue before with similar hardware.
Like dionb said, most likely an IRQ conflict caused it.
In any case this happens again I will let you know.

Thank you again for your help.

Excellent news glad to hear it's all sorted out. By making that setting change it was most likely a resource conflict

Unfortunately, i was wrong. It crashed after 10 minutes of use. In safe mode, the system shows no conflicts.... I think I'll try step by step confirmation, to check it out abd let you know. If by the way yoy gjt an udea, gladly il hear it.

I don't know If there is another way to check it, since I haven't involved my self into old hardware for quite some time and I don't remember all the details when we use to check for issues like that.

A bit of an update. The motherboard comes from an HP Vectra i8/VLi8 which is a slot 1 all-in-one motherboard, minus the NIC. I was able to find the manual which references the exact hardware used. I'll give it a try to find the drivers needed.
If I may ask, where do you seek old drivers these days ? any good sites to reference ?

found a picture of the board, https://www.ebay.ca/itm/324674222971?hash=ite … utorefresh=true .
Thank you in advance

TonyStark wrote on 2022-02-05, 23:19:

A bit of an update. The motherboard comes from an HP Vectra i8/VLi8 which is a slot 1 all-in-one motherboard, minus the NIC. I w […]
Show full quote

A bit of an update. The motherboard comes from an HP Vectra i8/VLi8 which is a slot 1 all-in-one motherboard, minus the NIC. I was able to find the manual which references the exact hardware used. I'll give it a try to find the drivers needed.
If I may ask, where do you seek old drivers these days ? any good sites to reference ?

found a picture of the board, https://www.ebay.ca/itm/324674222971?hash=ite … utorefresh=true .
Thank you in advance

Think its the same motherboard as used in the Vectra VEi8 (Sherwood-B), so try either of these links

VLi8 - https://drivers.eu/PC/HP/Vectra%20VLi8

VEi8 - https://drivers.eu/PC/HP/Vectra%20VEi8

Thank you for your reply. I will give it a shot and I'll let you know.

No luck unfortunately, when the driver is installed and the OS loads, the screen shows black artifacts and the PC instantly freezes, only the mouse pointer is active. Oddly enough this does not happen with Windows 2000...
any suggestions ?

TonyStark wrote on 2022-02-09, 11:33:

No luck unfortunately, when the driver is installed and the OS loads, the screen shows black artifacts and the PC instantly freezes, only the mouse pointer is active. Oddly enough this does not happen with Windows 2000...
any suggestions ?

Pity; I'll stick my board (linked below) on the test bench and try a similar base install for comparison - assume your config is still (roughly) as op?

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

That's the board alright. And the configuration is still the same as op.

TonyStark wrote on 2022-02-10, 18:33:

That's the board alright. And the configuration is still the same as op.

Wasn't able to replicate your problem on the bench...

- clean install of 98SE (board + P3 600MHz + 128MB PC133 SDRAM / PnP OS set to yes in BIOS) on bare 20GB WD200 IDE drive + ATAPI CD drive

- added Intel chipset drivers v3.20.1008 (fresh download from PhilsComputer Lab)

- added Matrox drivers v6.82.016 (fresh download of w9x_682.zip from Matrox)

- no color issues, corruptions, black screens or lockups / freezes

- changed screen resolution, color depth, refresh rate - still nothing

- changed acceleration levels and window drag behaviour (whole window or just empty frame) - still nothing

- was going to try the last version HP supplied (v5.41.008) but didn't seem much point as you hadn't tried them either afaik

Maybe looking like some issue with the actual G200 chip or onboard SDRAM which the 98SE drivers hit but the W2k ones don't???

Screen grab from my install