I have the following motherboard https://www.asrock.com/mb/intel/g31m-s/

I know it isnt ideal, but it was cheap and works great with an e8600 .

I had the onboard NIC working with this exact driver the very first time I installed win98 on this hardware.

I know Realtek NICs are not greatly supported, but I had it working ONCE!!

I was experimenting with configurations and well long story short after what seems over 100 installs I can't reproduce the working driver install again.

The issue is now after I install the driver and reboot, the PC blue screens after the Win98 loading screen with the message-

1VFAT Device Initialization Failed A device or resource required by VFAT is not present or is unavailable

I always have PATCHMEM installed because I am running with 4GB of RAM. It was this way when it worked, and how I set all my installs up now.

If I uninstall the driver in Safe Mode the PC boots fine.

Any ideas what may have made it work once?

Ive tried:
Clean install with nothing (except patchmem), then driver install.
Clean install with Autopatcher and patchmem, then driver install.
Clean install with KernelX and patchmem, then driver install.
Replacing VFAT.VXD after driver install.
Everything in the last post in this thread https://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php? … oblem-need-help