VOGONS


First post, by AzzKickr

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Hi fellow enthusiasts,

I've been having a problem for a long time now of which I don't really know where to start. In fact,it's been so long I built the machine I don't even remember when it started or what triggered it.
basically, every time I try to reboot to DOS mode from the Win98 shell, the machine BSOD's. Also, selecting shutdown reboots the PC instead of shutting down.
And last but not least *sigh* ; the machine refuses to return to Win98 with the "Win" command from the prompt.

If anyone could help me out in pinpointing the issue, I'd be grateful. If not, I'll just deal with those quircks.

Last edited by Stiletto on 2022-01-18, 00:08. Edited 1 time in total.

Heresy grows from idleness ...

Reply 1 of 7, by Garrett W

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This is not very helpful. Tell us about the machine this is happening to, what kind of specs you have there etc. Share your autoexec.bat, config.sys and msdos.sys files with us as well. Otherwise, there's really not much to go on.

Reply 2 of 7, by AzzKickr

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Pentium 200MMX
Shuttle HOT-597 mainboard
128MB SDRAM
Canopus Spectra 2500 TNT 16MB AGP
Canopus Pure3D 6MB VooDoo 1
Maxtor SATA150 TX2Plus (fasstrack card with Maxtor branding)
Dual Maxtor 40GB SATA drives and 1 DVD ROM drive attached to it
6x CDROM drive attached to the mainboard
ESS1868F Soundcard
USB2 addon card with VIA chipset
Floppy drive with integrated multi-card reader
Gotek floppy emulator drive
Roland Sound Canvas 55 - MK1

Everything runs on vanilla Win98SE.

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Heresy grows from idleness ...

Reply 3 of 7, by Cosmic

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Does the BSOD point to any particular file or process? You could also try booting into safe mode and then switching to DOS, that might help rule out anything in your startup config.

I think the last issue (rebooting instead of shutting down) is an ACPI issue. Maybe you have some BIOS options for ACPI you could try? My Pentium 200MMX has this issue too. Windows NT 4 will at least just say "it's safe to turn off the PC" instead of rebooting like Windows 98 does.

EDIT: My 200MMX shuts down completely with a fresh install of 98SE. I must have installed or configured something weird that broke it in my last install. Now Start > Shutdown brings the PC to fully off.

Reply 4 of 7, by Agent of the BSoD

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If you're doing the "Restart in MS-DOS mode" on the shutdown prompt, "win" typically won't work and will just hang. Try typing "exit" instead.

Pentium MMX 233 | 64MB | FIC PA-2013 | Matrox Mystique 220 | SB Pro 2 | Music Quest MPU Clone | Windows 95B
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Reply 5 of 7, by AzzKickr

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Cosmic wrote on 2022-01-17, 23:08:

Does the BSOD point to any particular file or process? You could also try booting into safe mode and then switching to DOS, that might help rule out anything in your startup config.

I think the last issue (rebooting instead of shutting down) is an ACPI issue. Maybe you have some BIOS options for ACPI you could try? My Pentium 200MMX has this issue too. Windows NT 4 will at least just say "it's safe to turn off the PC" instead of rebooting like Windows 98 does.

EDIT: My 200MMX shuts down completely with a fresh install of 98SE. I must have installed or configured something weird that broke it in my last install. Now Start > Shutdown brings the PC to fully off.

Yes, that's my fear too. That it's an ACPI thing or something and by changing a BIOS setting it could trigger Win98 to reïnstall everything again, which I absolutely want to avoid. The BSOD is pretty generic in my opinion and doesn't happen 100% o f the time ..

Heresy grows from idleness ...

Reply 6 of 7, by AzzKickr

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Agent of the BSoD wrote on 2022-01-23, 01:48:

If you're doing the "Restart in MS-DOS mode" on the shutdown prompt, "win" typically won't work and will just hang. Try typing "exit" instead.

Thanks for the tip. It *does* do something better yes, it doesn't hang immediately but after a while displays an error along the lines of "Windows protection error. You need to reset the PC" (roughly translated as I'm on a Dutch version).

Heresy grows from idleness ...

Reply 7 of 7, by gaffa2002

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It could be some incompatibility with the hard drive.
Usually there is a jumper setting in the hdd to limit it to 32gb, you might want to try setting that and repartition/reformat/reinstall win98.
I had a similar problem (protection faults and unstable system) and limiting the HDD to 32gb solved it.

LO-RES, HI-FUN

My DOS/ Win98 PC specs

EP-7KXA Motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird 750mhz
256Mb PC100 RAM
Geforce 4 MX440 64MB AGP (128 bit)
Sound Blaster AWE 64 CT4500 (ISA)
32GB HDD