I sympathize with OP's situation/plight, but, similarly to other posters, my issues with Windows 98 SE after (or even during) a fresh installation have been mainly due to, AFAICR,

a) bad hardware (off the top of my head) :
- capacitors issues on an MSI MS-6330 (in 2002 or earlier), for example
- bad RAM
- bad L1 cache on a Celeron 300 (non-A) (crashed at specific point of Windows install with L1 cache enabled, worked with L1 cache disabled and replacement Celeron 300 worked fine with L1 cache enabled)

b) bad/unstable drivers for specific devices

c) Not installing the VIA 4-in-1 drivers ASAP after Windows 98 SE installation on some VIA chipset motherboards

Obviously, I can't say for sure what's happening in OP's case, though I agree that multiple hardware issues are possible and even likely, to a point, with hardware this age, the degree of bad luck he seems to be having seems atypical .

Maybe there is some variable we are not seeing/considering that is coming into play . Possibly either something environmental or even something in appearance innocuous that the OP is doing systematically by force of habit that contributes to this (OP, I am not accusing you or doubting your competence in any, just trying to imagine what might be happening).

I assume there are other non-Windows 98 SE machines in the same room that are working fine (are there?).

What about input/output peripherals ? I mean, I would be very surprised if a keyboard or mouse was to blame for all this, but maybe something powered externally from the PC, like the monitor or maybe even the powered speakers. Is everything powered from the same wall outlet ? If it sounds like I am grasping at straws, it's because I practically am 😉 some slightly, but not fully, defective electrical device generating intermittent very low-level EMPs ? 😉 I will now stop with my outlandish hypotheses before I look crazier than I actually am .

As an anecdote on a related subject, I can share the experience that a friend has with an unstable Windows 8.1 PC (when that OS was current) that crashed several times a week, even with only a keyboard mouse and SVGA LCD monitor connected . This lasted for months, until the whole PC setup was moved to another room in the house and the issue never manifested itself again . At the time, I suspected an odd electrical issue or even proximity with the furnace (though PC actually go moved closer to it, AFAICR) as possible explanation, but I never managed to come up with something that felt plausibly likely . Maybe a driver update or Windows update or some other software update fixed a long-standing issue and, by coincidence, that occurred at the same time as the PC got moved .

I've done the multiple-simultaneous-flaky-old-motherboards dance a time or two before. It can be extremely frustrating, particularly if an issue is intermittent, and without physical sign (e.g. caps look good). It's possible to flush a lot of time down the drain and still get no good result.

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-07-09, 02:11:

I've done the multiple-simultaneous-flaky-old-motherboards dance a time or two before. It can be extremely frustrating, particularly if an issue is intermittent, and without physical sign (e.g. caps look good). It's possible to flush a lot of time down the drain and still get no good result.

I can't disagree with that . I have been relatively lucky with all my motherboards either working well, not working at all, or being partially broken in relatively unambiguous ways . I have, however, had my share of perfectly good looking sound and video cards and hard disks that had sneaky and/or intermittent issues ( an X-FI SB0460 being the most recent one ) that took hours or even days to diagnose.

You have to simplify and get methodical, bare minimum system, simplest vid, no sound, one fixed disk, one RAM stick or set of RAM, then get all Sherlock Holmes, eliminate the impossible, then whatever remains however improbable is your culprit, downclock, monitor voltages, run tests on components IN the system, do not assume because another motherboard doesn't have a problem with them that THIS motherboard doesn't have a problem with them. Research the board, does it have mods and fixes in later revisions, does it call out fixes in the BIOS changelogs, are there user community mods or recommendations, like always set vcore 0.1 over or something like that. Clean the motherloving crap out of every contact, SIMM/DIMM sockets, power sockets all the slots, bios socket, every damn place. Visually inspect for dry solder joints, those are a bugger for working until the system warms up, then the copper pin warms up and eases itself away from the pad. Everything should be a suspect, gremlins don't care if your vid card, PSU or RAM is NOS fresh out the box, test it. I knew one guy who never pushed his SIMMs in past the point where they just started to "scrinch", or begin to compress the contacts, his builds would work a couple of times then quit, sometimes he'd reinstall them just as lightly and get a couple more boots. I demonstrated twice pushing them fully home, but next time he had his regularly scheduled fortnightly bluescreen he'd take them out and put them back in "just how he liked them" I guess. 🤷

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-07-08, 21:46:

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-07-08, 21:01:

Use of SSD requires a trim program to run on each boot thats available.

No it doesn't.

While it's recommended to have TRIM support in the OS, many newer SSDs can work just fine without it, as stated by the manufacturers. As long as you let the SSD sit idle for 8 hours once per month or so, the firmware can deal with garbage collection.

not all do garbage collection 😀

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-07-09, 04:48:

not all do garbage collection 😀

Even then, if you have a drive being mostly static the garbage collection doesn't need to be ran as often as a boot drive in a modern use system.

BetaC wrote on 2021-07-09, 05:58:

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-07-09, 04:48:

not all do garbage collection 😀

Even then, if you have a drive being mostly static the garbage collection doesn't need to be ran as often as a boot drive in a modern use system.

If you dual boot would a modern OS perform the garbage collection on all partitions it can see even if the delete occurred on the other OS?

Shagittarius wrote on 2021-07-09, 14:31:

BetaC wrote on 2021-07-09, 05:58:

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-07-09, 04:48:

not all do garbage collection 😀

Even then, if you have a drive being mostly static the garbage collection doesn't need to be ran as often as a boot drive in a modern use system.

If you dual boot would a modern OS perform the garbage collection on all partitions it can see even if the delete occurred on the other OS?

Assuming it is a modern drive that isn’t the cheapest possible, it should be doing that automatically. The point I was making is that for most of the places people would be using an SSD in a retro stay them, they aren't constantly writing and deleting files, and or generating web browser caches. if you’re not generating much garbage, there’s little reason to be concerned about said garbage.

BetaC wrote on 2021-07-09, 19:46:

Shagittarius wrote on 2021-07-09, 14:31:

BetaC wrote on 2021-07-09, 05:58:

Even then, if you have a drive being mostly static the garbage collection doesn't need to be ran as often as a boot drive in a modern use system.

If you dual boot would a modern OS perform the garbage collection on all partitions it can see even if the delete occurred on the other OS?

Assuming it is a modern drive that isn’t the cheapest possible, it should be doing that automatically. The point I was making is that for most of the places people would be using an SSD in a retro stay them, they aren't constantly writing and deleting files, and or generating web browser caches. if you’re not generating much garbage, there’s little reason to be concerned about said garbage.

I can see that but there is a dos trim tool it doesn't have to trim every boot just for those who boot into windows in a hurry.
So if I see anyone asking for a dos trim I wil say visit Rudolph Loews website.

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-07-10, 15:47:

BetaC wrote on 2021-07-09, 19:46:

Shagittarius wrote on 2021-07-09, 14:31:

If you dual boot would a modern OS perform the garbage collection on all partitions it can see even if the delete occurred on the other OS?

Assuming it is a modern drive that isn’t the cheapest possible, it should be doing that automatically. The point I was making is that for most of the places people would be using an SSD in a retro stay them, they aren't constantly writing and deleting files, and or generating web browser caches. if you’re not generating much garbage, there’s little reason to be concerned about said garbage.

I can see that but there is a dos trim tool it doesn't have to trim every boot just for those who boot into windows in a hurry.
So if I see anyone asking for a dos trim I wil say visit Rudolph Loews website.

Having a look at this Corruption issue when using rloew's TRIM.EXE (TRIM utility for DOS) with FreeDOS FDISK 1.2.1/1.3.1 partitioned DISK might be useful too, if planning to use Rudolph Loew's DOS TRIM utility .

EDIT : Also the ability to successfully run TRIM under DOS will depend on both the IDE or SATA controller used (SIL3114 does not pass TRIM under DOS) and the IDE to SATA adapter used (JMicron and Marvell ones do, Sunplus ones do not) . Some of my experiences on the front : Re: Small capacity SSD PATA/SATA benchmarks and here Re: Is Vista now Retro

oh boy freedos I tried freedos a few days ago I think a version from 2003 got a 13h error booting cdrom I use a boot image made from xp system floppy disk now will do to the 128gb DOS FAT32 barrier without millennium emergency boot message Maybe that be the limit for SSD trim partitions dos tool to be flexible with fat and NTFS without further patches? I know can still do heaps of fat32 128gb partitons i did quite a few on a 500gb WD PATA before I decided to do a 500gb fat32 partition and load windows Me with loews high capacity patch (works well but I am starting to think of the movie 101 dalmations but with patches instead) I don't know if theres a high capacity patch to load in dos maybe a dynamic drive overlay to work with trim beyond 128gb when flying dual mode of dos and windows but I think i'll go back to the 128gb barrier supported by powerquest and symantec for 98se and lower (Yeah! windows teaches drive alphabet). NTFS with that dos trim? prolly need a bootable flash usb?
shesus rice! Need to make a full instruction manual how to pull the flush lever 🤣 jk
I am pretending to fly my kingston SATA SSD here "to explore strange new partitons to seek out FAT32 NTFS and EXT4 to boldly flush the cap's log"