could be component failure on the motherboard itself, caps, somethhing knocked off the board during storage

gmaverick2k wrote on 2025-07-02, 17:11:

could be component failure on the motherboard itself, caps, somethhing knocked off the board during storage

The part that came off strange to me was it was working perfectly fine last night, I even played a game for an hour. It booted fine this morning no trouble but my issues started when I tried to fix the gameport driver which the computer could not find and kept asking for the driver cd. Though on the other hand, it is probably a good time for me to give the caps a check anyway particularly since I now have the equipment to replace them if necessary.

As well as dodgy motherboard components, failing hard drive / SSD could be the cause sometimes they just loose a few files and you get weird things happen like this. Also worth a good few hours of memtest to check RAM is working as it should.

assortedkingdede wrote on 2025-07-02, 17:06:

(so bad that windows installer doesn't recognize the partition)

When this happens, I'd suspect an MBR virus or hardware failure.

CC-Adam wrote on 2025-07-02, 17:27:

As well as dodgy motherboard components, failing hard drive / SSD could be the cause sometimes they just loose a few files and you get weird things happen like this. Also worth a good few hours of memtest to check RAM is working as it should.

What version of memtest should I use? I am using a pentium III. What ever version I tried used seemed to endlessly try to boot off floppy printing the contents of the cpu general registers every time.

If memtest checks out, try ME with imic's update iso

assortedkingdede wrote on 2025-07-02, 22:34:

CC-Adam wrote on 2025-07-02, 17:27:

As well as dodgy motherboard components, failing hard drive / SSD could be the cause sometimes they just loose a few files and you get weird things happen like this. Also worth a good few hours of memtest to check RAM is working as it should.

What version of memtest should I use? I am using a pentium III. What ever version I tried used seemed to endlessly try to boot off floppy printing the contents of the cpu general registers every time.

That sounds like some serious system instability. Time to check to see if you have any puffed -up pop-corn capacitors. Boards from that vintage can suffer from the capacitor plague.

more likely a hardware failure than a MBR virus infection, but if you need to scan for such virus you can use my portable antivirus, boot and run it from a floppy disk. it's in the link down below, good luck!

Windows 98 is a fragile beast that really doesn't like changes, Back when it was my main OS I would do a clean install at least once a year.
Now that it's only used for very specific tasks (playing a set number of games I own) but making system changes still poses the risk of making windows unstable.
My tips are

Install Windows on a smaller partition, I find 2GB is enough. Install games and store a copy of the Win98 CD and drivers on a 2nd drive/partition.
This not only speeds up re-installation but also scandisk when windows does not shut down properly.

Install only what you need.
It can be tempting to install old programs, updates, enhancements, tweaks. but are any of these necessary on a computer that really just needs to be able to play a few games from time to time.
Less that's installed, less to got wrong.

Install all your games in 1 hit.
Installing/ uninstalling games is the best way to break windows. If you install everything at the start you'll find out early if something kills your setup and you can troubleshoot, Do another clean install then hopefully your setup will remain "static" for a number of years.
Also many games don't need to be reinstalled, so if they are on another partition/drive you can simply run the exe. This also means your system wont get unnecessary add on programs or registry settings.

That said I've never had software kill an entire partition. I'd also be looking more at the hardware side of things (different drive, cable, etc)

With all that said I've never seen software kill an entire partition.

I've seen dozens of dead partitions

Just lucky, I guess

Why would anyone reinstall it every time? It's a waste of time. Just make a backup once you get it configured with everything installed. Windows 95/98/ME uses FAT file system which is fragile. It will eventually break so be prepared. But at least FAT is easy to backup and restore without any additional software. But if you need backup software, you will surely find some that will help.

So I tried again and set up the computer with drivers that I confirmed to work after much trial and error. The next day, I turned on the computer only to get multiple BSOD's while trying to boot msfs2000, then after rebooting, the hard drive appears to have completely corrupted again 🙁. This this seems to follow a pattern of the computer having some normal operation and then the next day, crashing shortly after booting windows and completely corrupting.

What motherboard and hard drive are you using?
How did you partition the hard drive?

Only time I've had similar issues was using adapters and partitions weren't aligned properly.
but are many other causes

chinny22 wrote on 2025-07-04, 02:15:

What motherboard and hard drive are you using? How did you partition the hard drive? […]
Show full quote

What motherboard and hard drive are you using?
How did you partition the hard drive?

Only time I've had similar issues was using adapters and partitions weren't aligned properly.
but are many other causes

My motherboard is a Asus CUSL2 rev 1.2. My hard drive is a Seagate ST3120025ACE that is 120 gb.

assortedkingdede wrote on 2025-07-04, 01:26:

So I tried again and set up the computer with drivers that I confirmed to work after much trial and error. The next day, I turned on the computer only to get multiple BSOD's while trying to boot msfs2000, then after rebooting, the hard drive appears to have completely corrupted again 🙁. This this seems to follow a pattern of the computer having some normal operation and then the next day, crashing shortly after booting windows and completely corrupting.

Were you ever able to run memtest? I attached 1.70; when running it I have encountered the error that you described, but usually all I have to do is reboot and let it load again. There have been times where I had to rewrite the image on the floppy to get it to run correctly, but it's pretty obvious when it does load correctly.

assortedkingdede wrote on 2025-07-04, 02:39:

chinny22 wrote on 2025-07-04, 02:15:

What motherboard and hard drive are you using? How did you partition the hard drive? […]
Show full quote

What motherboard and hard drive are you using?
How did you partition the hard drive?

Only time I've had similar issues was using adapters and partitions weren't aligned properly.
but are many other causes

My motherboard is a Asus CUSL2 rev 1.2. My hard drive is a Seagate ST3120025ACE that is 120 gb.

Nice and simple IDE hard drive, that's good as it means we can rule out issues caused by adapters! 😀

I'd run Seagate tools to check the drive health.
https://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloa … -legacy-support

How was the hard drive partitioned? Personally I only use fdisk it's not as fancy as 3rd party tools but you it'll setup the drive in a way compatible to windows
With 120GB you'll need the updated version
https://archive.org/details/windows-98-and-se … drive-fixes.-7z

Is this just a standard install of Windows or are you using something like the unofficial service pack or similar?

assortedkingdede wrote on 2025-07-04, 01:26:

So I tried again and set up the computer with drivers that I confirmed to work after much trial and error. The next day, I turned on the computer only to get multiple BSOD's while trying to boot msfs2000, then after rebooting, the hard drive appears to have completely corrupted again 🙁. This this seems to follow a pattern of the computer having some normal operation and then the next day, crashing shortly after booting windows and completely corrupting.

Ok, so I still wouldn’t rule out intermittent hardware failure because of the memtest crashes, but the periodic hard drive corruption reminds me of a drive geometry issue. Perhaps your system accidentally maps multiple logical addresses to the same physical sector because of some half implemented LBA48 or something like that.

assortedkingdede wrote on 2025-07-02, 17:06:

The attachment IMG_8309.jpg is no longer available

If you would like an extra opinion: I've been using the Windows 98 a lot since, er, 1998... Back then I never had issues like that. Yes, a BSOD now and then, but never so intense. But when I've started using real hardware again about 5 years ago, I started having the symptoms exactly as you describe. And that was caused by the faulty hard drives (several real full-size ones and even one faulty Kingston A400 SSD). The modus operandi was as follows: fresh install, some poking around (mainly testing some music software and MSOffice). Then a full HDD surface test and standard Windows 98 defrag. Back then I was doing the tests often and defrags on the weekly, OK, monthly basis, nothing happened. Now - one drive died in the midst of the first ever defrag already. Others lasted a couple of weeks, a month maybe. Then I started getting BSODs and drive errors. Nothing unusual, plain Windows 98 setup formatting from the proprietary Microsoft CD, plain defragmentation. As I had about 5 drives ending up like that, the pattern is suspiciously familiar. And I know the difference as of now: having switched to 2,5" laptop 4200rpm drives, I do the very same routines and my user behaviour is the same, but the system is stable. Also I have somehow come across one WD 80Gb full-size Caviar, which apparently was very lightly used by the original owner.

If you have time and are out of other options, my suggestion would be running the standard Windows 98 surface test on your 120Gb hard drive. With the DMA 5 that you have that should not take more than 5-6 hours to complete. If you will get errors during that test, I would strongly suggest replacing the hard drive.

chinny22 wrote on 2025-07-04, 05:22:

Nice and simple IDE hard drive, that's good as it means we can rule out issues caused by adapters! :) […]
Show full quote

assortedkingdede wrote on 2025-07-04, 02:39:

chinny22 wrote on 2025-07-04, 02:15:

What motherboard and hard drive are you using? How did you partition the hard drive? […]
Show full quote

What motherboard and hard drive are you using?
How did you partition the hard drive?

Only time I've had similar issues was using adapters and partitions weren't aligned properly.
but are many other causes

My motherboard is a Asus CUSL2 rev 1.2. My hard drive is a Seagate ST3120025ACE that is 120 gb.

Nice and simple IDE hard drive, that's good as it means we can rule out issues caused by adapters! 😀

I'd run Seagate tools to check the drive health.
https://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloa … -legacy-support

How was the hard drive partitioned? Personally I only use fdisk it's not as fancy as 3rd party tools but you it'll setup the drive in a way compatible to windows
With 120GB you'll need the updated version
https://archive.org/details/windows-98-and-se … drive-fixes.-7z

Is this just a standard install of Windows or are you using something like the unofficial service pack or similar?

I was partitioning the hard drive as just one big partition, I am unsure of my service pack though I believe someone in the past pointed out I was using some unofficial service pack for Windows 98 SE. That likely still is the case since I have been using the same install CD since I first built my system.