For the K8M800 chipset, try installing VIA Hyperion Pro 5.09A drivers. They should still be available on VIA's website.

For using SATA drives natively, check if your motherboard has the VT8237R Plus southbridge. If that is the case, you should be able to use modern SATA III SSDs, as long as they are 120 GB or less. You may need to set the SATA controller to RAID mode in the BIOS and install the appropriate RAID component from the Hyperion Pro driver pack.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-01-12, 13:11:

For the K8M800 chipset, try installing VIA Hyperion Pro 5.09A drivers. They should still be available on VIA's website.

For using SATA drives natively, check if your motherboard has the VT8237R Plus southbridge. If that is the case, you should be able to use modern SATA III SSDs, as long as they are 120 GB or less. You may need to set the SATA controller to RAID mode in the BIOS and install the appropriate RAID component from the Hyperion Pro driver pack.

the 5.09A drivers have been installed, but it didn't fix the "dual pci ide controller" issue, nor the "compatability-mode paging reduces overall system performance" message, and the phantom floppy drive is still present
the ide controller gives me code 11, saying that it causes windows to hang and that it's been set to AWD
i also don't have the ssd showing up in device manager, not letting me enable DMA

and according to the retro web data page, this board does have the VT8237R+, which explains why i've had relatively few issues actually installing 98, i thought that'd be related to something because at first i kept getting BSODs after applying the date and time settings on initial setup, but not after messing with the floppy controller

i still have 6 "unknown devices" in device manager, but apparently they're all connected to my radeon 8500 all in wonder card, and the "unknown devices" program doesn't say anything about it

Latiodile wrote on 2024-01-12, 14:30:

the 5.09A drivers have been installed, but it didn't fix the "dual pci ide controller" issue, nor the "compatability-mode paging reduces overall system performance" message, and the phantom floppy drive is still present
the ide controller gives me code 11, saying that it causes windows to hang and that it's been set to AWD
i also don't have the ssd showing up in device manager, not letting me enable DMA

IIRC, that is why I had to put the SATA controller into RAID mode, back when I was setting up my own system with the K8M800 chipset. And I don't mean using multiple disks to actually create a RAID. It's enough to set the controller to RAID mode, even if you're only using a single SSD.

You might need to reinstall Win98 after that, not sure if it would work on an existing installation.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-01-12, 14:41:

IIRC, that is why I had to put the SATA controller into RAID mode, back when I was setting up my own system with the K8M800 chipset. And I don't mean using multiple disks to actually create a RAID. It's enough to set the controller to RAID mode, even if you're only using a single SSD.

You might need to reinstall Win98 after that, not sure if it would work on an existing installation.

any recommended version or is 6.10C going to be good enough?

edit: after turning on raid in the bios, and reinstalling windows, turns out the 5.09A chipset drivers come with raid drivers anyway
now it hangs after the windows 98 boot screen showing nothing but a blinking cursor

edit2: after letting it sit on the boot screen for like 10 minutes, it was frozen, and EVENTUALLY got to the desktop, but every little thing causes it to hard freeze for even more time

Latiodile wrote on 2024-01-12, 14:50:

edit2: after letting it sit on the boot screen for like 10 minutes, it was frozen, and EVENTUALLY got to the desktop, but every little thing causes it to hard freeze for even more time

Are you by chance using an SSD larger than 120 GB? And do you have more than 512 MB RAM installed?

Both of those things can mess up Win98, and need to be circumvented by third-party patches. Applying Rudolph Loew's PATCHMEM can resolve the RAM issues. I think he may also have something for larger disks, though I never tried that, since I only use smaller SSDs on my retro systems.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-01-12, 16:44:

Are you by chance using an SSD larger than 120 GB? And do you have more than 512 MB RAM installed?

Both of those things can mess up Win98, and need to be circumvented by third-party patches. Applying Rudolph Loew's PATCHMEM can resolve the RAM issues. I think he may also have something for larger disks, though I never tried that, since I only use smaller SSDs on my retro systems.

it's a 120gb kingston v300 ssd, and only 512mb ram, so it's not the windows 98 limitations

I'm out of ideas then, but maybe someone else can point you in the right direction.

For what it's worth, I'm using an Asus K8V-MX on this system and it works fine with the aforementioned approach. Despite using the same K8M800 chipset, perhaps your motherboard has some slight differences that need to be accounted for.

I have a similar issue with the SATA controller on a VIA chipset im running in similar circumstances...

When I installed Windows on an IDE hard disk I didnt have the issue with the dual PCI IDE controllers. When I installed onto a SATA disk i did, no matter if it was set to RAID or IDE mode in the BIOS before or after installing Win98.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-01-12, 17:32:

I have a similar issue with the SATA controller on a VIA chipset im running in similar circumstances...

When I installed Windows on an IDE hard disk I didnt have the issue with the dual PCI IDE controllers. When I installed onto a SATA disk i did, no matter if it was set to RAID or IDE mode in the BIOS before or after installing Win98.

i wanted the benefit of solid state storage, even if it's only limited to 150mb/s, but it seems like i might have to resort to using an old IDE drive for the time being until i can buy one of those sata to IDE adapters
before i throw in the towel on this though i'm going to try the MSI drivers one last time and ignore the USB drivers and see if i get any results

edit: the drivers on the MSI support site straight up render the system unbootable, i just don't get it

For the USB drivers problem
Try and install the drivers manually.
Open device properties and reinstall driver.
Then get it to search but point it to C:/Windows and see what happens.
I just did that and it found the USB 2.0 drivers and a root hub.

In addition to that.
When I installed Windows I disabled all the devices in the BIOS.
I turned off the Serial and Parallel ports, the IDE controllers and all the functions of them, Audio and LAN were disabled.
All that was left on was SATA RAID and USB 2.0.
The VIA 4in1 installed just after Windows setup finished and it installed without an error. I then installed
intelipoint 4.12 (i dont know if it will make a difference, thats just what I did) nusb33.exe and then force installed the USB 2.0 drivers as above.
Then I turned on the IDE controllers in the BIOS and there are no errors in the device manager. All devices have drivers.

Dont forget Im using a different motherboard to you so none of this might work at all.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-01-14, 13:21:

For the USB drivers problem Try and install the drivers manually. Open device properties and reinstall driver. Then get it to s […]
Show full quote

For the USB drivers problem
Try and install the drivers manually.
Open device properties and reinstall driver.
Then get it to search but point it to C:/Windows and see what happens.
I just did that and it found the USB 2.0 drivers and a root hub.

In addition to that.
When I installed Windows I disabled all the devices in the BIOS.
I turned off the Serial and Parallel ports, the IDE controllers and all the functions of them, Audio and LAN were disabled.
All that was left on was SATA RAID and USB 2.0.
The VIA 4in1 installed just after Windows setup finished and it installed without an error. I then installed
intelipoint 4.12 (i dont know if it will make a difference, thats just what I did) nusb33.exe and then force installed the USB 2.0 drivers as above.
Then I turned on the IDE controllers in the BIOS and there are no errors in the device manager. All devices have drivers.

Dont forget Im using a different motherboard to you so none of this might work at all.

i ended up turning the sata controller off entirely since it kept causing the IDE controller to crash, on top of turning off everything else, i also tried downgrading the bios to 1.0 to see if it made any difference, it didn't do much aside from make windows not know what CPU was installed and remove the option to change the sata controller to IDE, so it was stuck in raid mode

now i'm faced with a different, equally as annoying problem, my radeon 8500 is performing like an absolute potato, only getting like 5FPS in gta 3 at 480p and about 14 in midtown madness with like 5fps in the menus, doing a 3dmark 2000 score i only get 1927 with a cpu score of 33k

Goes from bad to worse!
Flash the BIOS back to the latest version.
I got mine working with no problems.
Just make sure you turn off the ATA controllers in the BIOS and install Win98 with the SATA controller in RAID mode, once installed install 4in1 and reboot, allow it to find all the new devices and reboot again to fix all the devices, once done then restart into the BIOS and turn on the ATA controller and they will be found without a problem in device manager once you restart Windows.

i actually already did flash back to the latest bios, but all it did was render windows unbootable so i have to reinstall again 😭
i borrowed some money from a friend and got an SD card adapter so i can make a full disk backup before i do anything futher and just re-flash if i mess up, faster than dealing with the full format from the 98 setup

installing the 4 in 1 drivers with sata raid enabled never worked, for any of the driver versions, the latest 5.24 drivers instantly fail saying it was "interrupted", 5.09 causes windows to take 40+ minutes to boot, and then ends up with a general protection fault, and the MSI ones just cause it to hard lockup on boot

You dont need to reformat the drive.
Fdisk and format the drive as you want to then you just need Deltree.exe on your Windows 98 boot floppy. "deltree /y c:" will return the disk in a moment and then you just need to type "sys c:" to copy the system files over to the disk to make it bootable and youre all set to install again.
That combined with msbatch.inf file to automate the install and your all set to install Windows 98 like a pro.

Deltree.exe can be found in the C:/Windows/Command folder
The MSBatch.inf can be made in any set up copy of Windows 98
The file you need once 98 is setup is on the 98 CD in Root:/Tools/Reskit/Batch/setup.exe

i don't have a boot floppy, this pc doesn't have a floppy drive at all, i've been using an OEM install CD

It doesnt have to be a floppy disk. Just a local medium you can boot off instead of the hard disk.
You can do it from a USB stick, or a CD of you have some CDs to burn.

Latiodile wrote on 2024-01-14, 22:30:

faster than dealing with the full format from the 98 setup

You can quick format the drive outside of the Windows installer by choosing "Start Computer With CD-ROM Support", from the 98 install disk, and running this command:

1D:\win98\format C: /q

Where "D:\" is whatever drive letter your CD drive is.

the latest 5.24 drivers instantly fail saying it was "interrupted"

It's a successful failure message. After you reboot it should find all the chipset drivers. What I do is only select the chipset drivers when I first run the driver installation, reboot, then select the rest of the drivers.

i ended up turning the sata controller off entirely since it kept causing the IDE controller to crash

Getting SATA to work on these VIA boards properly, in my experience, requires RLoew's SATA patch for 98 and his PCI patch specifically for VIA chipsets. You also need to experiment a bit with BIOS settings until you find what options cause instability. I found I had to disable ACPI 2.0, ACPI APIC, and any power management. Still not sure if Plug n' Play support should be enabled or not, if you have the option. You may also try disabling USB 2.0 or enabling or disabling Legacy USB support, those options can go either way.

VDNKh wrote on 2024-01-15, 20:43:

You can quick format the drive outside of the Windows installer by choosing "Start Computer With CD-ROM Support", from the 98 in […]
Show full quote

Latiodile wrote on 2024-01-14, 22:30:

faster than dealing with the full format from the 98 setup

You can quick format the drive outside of the Windows installer by choosing "Start Computer With CD-ROM Support", from the 98 install disk, and running this command:

Copy code to clipboard

1D:\win98\format C: /q

Where "D:\" is whatever drive letter your CD drive is.

the latest 5.24 drivers instantly fail saying it was "interrupted"

It's a successful failure message. After you reboot it should find all the chipset drivers. What I do is only select the chipset drivers when I first run the driver installation, reboot, then select the rest of the drivers.

i ended up turning the sata controller off entirely since it kept causing the IDE controller to crash

Getting SATA to work on these VIA boards properly, in my experience, requires RLoew's SATA patch for 98 and his PCI patch specifically for VIA chipsets. You also need to experiment a bit with BIOS settings until you find what options cause instability. I found I had to disable ACPI 2.0, ACPI APIC, and any power management. Still not sure if Plug n' Play support should be enabled or not, if you have the option. You may also try disabling USB 2.0 or enabling or disabling Legacy USB support, those options can go either way.

so i tried these, and i'm getting... more issues, the IDE/SATA driver refuses to install, says it failed and gave me a code -14 first and then just doesn't give me an error after subsequent retries, i'm going to ignore it for now since as far as storage speed goes it still seems fine

and i'm still getting absolutely abysmal performance with my radeon 8500, a 3dmark 2000 score of only 1925 which is.... idk, XP gives me a score of 2400 and benchmarks for this card are hard to find

VDNKh wrote on 2024-01-15, 20:43:

Getting SATA to work on these VIA boards properly, in my experience, requires RLoew's SATA patch for 98 and his PCI patch specifically for VIA chipsets.

Do you mean you've got Win98 to work nicely with this board in SATA IDE mode using this patch? Rather than the RAID mode, which tends to work with the VIA 5.09 drivers?

What is the RLoew VIA PCI patch? I can't see this on either of the sites that archive his other patches?