The thing that jumps out to me is the neforce 2 chipset on computer 1 and the 6800LE on computer 2.

windows 98 is a finicky b*****. Try putting the 9800pro on VIA board and giving windows a fresh install.

One other thing... the audigy 2 should be installed with the VXD driver. The WMD driver can sometimes cause problems.

With the right chipset and drivers windows 98 can be pretty stable, but the occasional crash can be expected.

yes, its all about drivers as already said. to be honest i just dont put windows 98 on any machine where the cpu exceeds much beyond 1ghz, it just seems to become less and less stable and by the time we get into mid 2000's tech it no longer seems worth the effort to me . However if lacking other hardware and wanting multiboot etc then it makes total sense to invest the time and effort

Ah thanks, conclusion is I'm just using too modern hardware. I do recall trying windows 98 on a pentium 3 733mhz, voodoo2 sli and a creative live and I had no issues which confirms the above.

geertjanb wrote on 2023-06-06, 11:26:

Ah thanks, conclusion is I'm just using too modern hardware. I do recall trying windows 98 on a pentium 3 733mhz, voodoo2 sli and a creative live and I had no issues which confirms the above.

Our family PC in 2000 was a Pentium III 733 Mhz, too.
It shipped with Windows 98SE, some nvidia graphics card, on-board sound (SB16 compatibility option CMOS Setup) and an Elsa USB modem.
Monitor was a 17" model, I think. Memory about 128MB? 256MB? Something like that.
It had 768MB once we had moved it over to Windows XP.

The km400, nforce2 and geforce 6800 are all basically end of '03 going into '04 hardware. If drivers were made, they could be half-baked. You are basically on the very end of what could have had win98 support before it was just discontinued and left for broken. So now you are hunting for specific driver versions hoping for the best or making some serious compromises. So those machines require more attention. I agree that stepping down a bit will be easier, to no loss. You might still be able to try out the ATI 9800 pro.

Fast processors aren't necessary a problem, it's really about how well the chipset and graphics behave in windows 9x. One of the most stable platforms I have ever used is for windows 9x is socket 478... but that is because it used an intel chipset that was only a few years removed from the period. You don't always strictly need chipset drivers even, but it certainty can help.

Some via chipsets are quite good and I have had success with socket 754 in windows 9x before. Some chipsets are also pretty awful. For example, the socket 775 VIA chipsets have always given me problems Asrock 775Dual VSTA & Core4Dual thread

If all the games and software you are interested in run well in XP you might want to do that 😀.

What everybody else said, plus:

You should avoid using PCI cards until you are sure the machine is stable without them. PCI cards and their drivers are a tricky thing with Win9x in particular. Their interactions with each other and motherboard devices are also a source of problems.

I would also consider disabling USB 2.0. It is another source of complications with Win9x.

And if your boards have SATA, note that mixing SATA and IDE can be troublesome with Win9x. Those boards seem just old enough to lack it though.

I'll keep my k6 and p3 for windows 98. For the faster machines i will use xp from now on which is even more period correct anyway 😀

Thanks for all the info!