Some time ago there was a similar topic, but with ATI VLB card, where similar issues were found under Win98SE. In that case all was fine when tested with Win95. Have you tried to test this setup under Win 95?

Link to topic with ATI VLB and Win98SE: Hangup during booting Windows 98SE with ATI Mach 64 VLB 4MB. Looking for proper ATI Mach 64 VLB driver for Windows 98 SE

Found this note in the Elsa 1000 W95 driver: "WINNER 1000AVI-VL
This board works only with up to 64MB main memory. The S3 chips 868/968 need 64MB physical address space and the VL-bus can only access 128 MB.
For this board use the following entries in the section [Hardware] in your ELSA.INI file:
VRAM-Base=0x4000000
VRAM-Size=0x4000000"
How much ram do you have ? If on a 486 doubt you have more than 64Mb....

zami555 wrote on 2023-05-20, 22:05:

Some time ago there was a similar topic, but with ATI VLB card, where similar issues were found under Win98SE. In that case all was fine when tested with Win95. Have you tried to test this setup under Win 95?

Link to topic with ATI VLB and Win98SE: Hangup during booting Windows 98SE with ATI Mach 64 VLB 4MB. Looking for proper ATI Mach 64 VLB driver for Windows 98 SE

Good catch!
Very funny, I was even participating in this thread, 🤣.
No I don't have tested with Win95, I want to stick to Win98SE, even if it is overkill for a 486 machine.

I am using the well known Asus VL/I-486SV2GX4 Rev.2.0 and an Elsa S3 with Edo RAM, but the situation is similar to the linked post:
I use 4 times 16MB FPM, so 64MB in total.
The "solution" in this thread was to downgrade to 3 times 16MB, I will definitely try that.
Also I found this thing in the Elsa Win95 driver: They wrote, that you can have maximum 64MB RAM, because of the 64MB area of the linear frame buffer.
So I should be fine.
Also there was written, that you must use the Elsa windows driver, otherwise you can have problems with the mouse pointer, somehow that looks like the problem I am facing.

Horun wrote on 2023-05-21, 00:03:

Found this note in the Elsa 1000 W95 driver: "WINNER 1000AVI-VL This board works only with up to 64MB main memory. The S3 chips […]
Show full quote

Found this note in the Elsa 1000 W95 driver: "WINNER 1000AVI-VL
This board works only with up to 64MB main memory. The S3 chips 868/968 need 64MB physical address space and the VL-bus can only access 128 MB.
For this board use the following entries in the section [Hardware] in your ELSA.INI file:
VRAM-Base=0x4000000
VRAM-Size=0x4000000"
How much ram do you have ? If on a 486 doubt you have more than 64Mb....

Exactly 64MB, I found that note, too. See my previous post.
A bit offtopic here: I have one 486 machine with 112MB RAM (3 times 32MB, 1 time 8MB and 8MB onboard), it is the Compaq 486 Prosignia Server. It is nice to max out old boards, 128MB is maximum for the Compaq (then the onboard 8MB get disabled).

I solved the problem.
I thought the system was stable, because I ran some dos benchmarks and Windows 98SE was running, but it was not.

So I removed one 16 mb module, no change (crash with Windows 98 SE s3 video driver), removed a second one, keeping only 32MB of RAM => same.
Then I thought, let's do a last try. I went to BIOS and set all settings to the slowest setting. And I was able to start Windows 98SE with the s3 driver.

I put back in all the RAM so 64MB, still working.
I actually found out easily what exact setting was the problem:
Local Bus Transparent. I had to change it to Synchronize, everything else can stay on best values.

Great success.
I did then a stability test, I ran a rendering with Lightwave 3D, no problems.

I will now start playing with the mclk utility ...

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-05-21, 17:39:

I solved the problem. I thought the system was stable, because I ran some dos benchmarks and Windows 98SE was running, but it wa […]
Show full quote

I solved the problem.
I thought the system was stable, because I ran some dos benchmarks and Windows 98SE was running, but it was not.
I actually found out easily what exact setting was the problem:
Local Bus Transparent. I had to change it to Synchronize, everything else can stay on best values.
Great success.
I did then a stability test, I ran a rendering with Lightwave 3D, no problems.

Great ! so you are using the "ELSA WINNER Windows 95 Driver Disk, ver 4.03.2115" for WINNER 1000AVI ?? I want to make a note in my S3 stuff 😀

Horun wrote on 2023-05-21, 18:30:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-05-21, 17:39:

I solved the problem. I thought the system was stable, because I ran some dos benchmarks and Windows 98SE was running, but it wa […]
Show full quote

I solved the problem.
I thought the system was stable, because I ran some dos benchmarks and Windows 98SE was running, but it was not.
I actually found out easily what exact setting was the problem:
Local Bus Transparent. I had to change it to Synchronize, everything else can stay on best values.
Great success.
I did then a stability test, I ran a rendering with Lightwave 3D, no problems.

Great ! so you are using the "ELSA WINNER Windows 95 Driver Disk, ver 4.03.2115" for WINNER 1000AVI ?? I want to make a note in my S3 stuff 😀

No. Built-in Driver from Windows 98SE "S3", dated 5-5-1999. So a lot newer than the Elsa driver.
It seems to fully detect the hardware correctly.