When you're back in Windows: Run Everest, go to Devices > PCI devices, in the menu bar click Report > Quick report (PCI devices) > Full text, click save, and post the log here.

As always nothing's ever straight forward. I'm now having problems reformatting and doing a fresh install. 🙁 It failed the first time and didn't give me the option to format, despite deleting the DOS partition and re-creating it. Then it went through the reformatting process, though I thought it took longer than usual. And then it failed to complete/install Windows. It even tried to get me to reformat the D drive, which is off the table. And I keep getting warnings saying Disk Boot sector needs to be modified. Press 'Y' to accept.

Are you creating the DOS partition on another PC? The normal process is: Boot from bootdisk, optionally run fdisk to create a partition, run format c:, run Windows setup. The disk boot sector warning could be your board's antivirus warning feature.

And then it failed to complete/install Windows. It even tried to get me to reformat the D drive, which is off the table.

Did it give any error message when the Windows setup failed? Where did it ask you to reformat the D drive?

Just describe step by step what you're doing right now, and where it fails.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-16, 16:57:

Are you creating the DOS partition on another PC? The normal process is: Boot from bootdisk, optionally run fdisk to create a partition, run format c:, run Windows setup. The disk boot sector warning could be your board's antivirus warning feature.

And then it failed to complete/install Windows. It even tried to get me to reformat the D drive, which is off the table.

Did it give any error message when the Windows setup failed? Where did it ask you to reformat the D drive?

No, on my main one. On the C drive. I deleted the original DOS partition that was on there and re-created it. Then running the setup, it asks to reformat, which it's going through again. I've never had that warning before even when the BIOS settings have been at default, which presumably its antivirus is enabled by default...?

It was acting like the Windows install could only continue if I reformatted the D drive...? And if I chose not to, the setup of Windows couldn't complete. It was via the Windows 98 setup with CD-ROM support. The same setup that reformats prior to installing Windows.

That shouldn't happen. Try formatting your C: drive before running the setup. Test if formatting was successful by changing to drive C: at the command prompt. Maybe it's seeing the D drive as the only formatted drive and wants to use that. If you have multiple hard disks, make sure your C drive is connected to the primary master of the first IDE channel. Also, if you make any changes with FDISK, you have to reboot first.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-16, 17:10:

That shouldn't happen. Try formatting your C: drive before running the setup. Test if formatting was successful by changing to drive C: at the command prompt. Maybe it's seeing the D drive as the only formatted drive and wants to use that. If you have multiple hard disks, make sure your C drive is connected to the primary master of the first IDE channel. Also, if you make any changes with FDISK, you have to reboot first.

Yeah, it gets rebooted after playing with FDISK. As far as I know, the C drive is connected to the Primary Master of the first IDE. On boot it has my C drive as Primary Master, nothing for Primary Slave, then the CD-ROM is Secondary Master, and then there's nothing for Secondary Slave.

Okay, I see what you're doing. You're running the setup directly off the boot floppy's menu, right? That's the OEM setup which is different. Try to use the option that says "Boot with CD-ROM support", then do what I said: format c:, run d:\win98\setup.exe from the CD.

If you can't find the format command, it's in d:\win98\.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-16, 17:21:

Okay, I see what you're doing. You're running the setup directly off the boot floppy's menu, right? That's the OEM setup which is different. Try to use the option that says "Boot with CD-ROM support", then do what I said: format c:, run d:\win98\setup.exe from the CD.

If you can't find the format command, it's in d:\win98\.

No, not the floppy's, the CD-ROM.

Looks like I foolishly deleted the contents of my E drive earlier, which contained all my CD images. >_< 🙁 It seemed to make out it was the D drive. I suppose it's no biggie to re-create them all again. A lot were missing after having HDD trouble a while ago. So I might as well completely wipe all three drives and start over. It still doesn't make sense why it wants to format D (and I bet E afterwards) in order to install Windows when it's C I want it to use.

Then see if you can boot to a command line from the CD's boot menu, as described above. If not, choose "Exit setup" in your above screenshot, and see if that gets you to the command line. Then proceed to do the formatting manually and run d:\win98\setup.exe instead of the OEM setup. This one never reformats any drives.

If you can't get to the command line, use a Win98 boot floppy. That has this option.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-16, 17:40:

Then see if you can boot to a command line from the CD's boot menu, as described above. If not, choose "Exit setup" in your above screenshot, and see if that gets you to the command line. Then proceed to do the formatting manually and run d:\win98\setup.exe instead of the OEM setup. This one never reformats any drives.

If you can't get to the command line, use a Win98 boot floppy. That has this option.

Okay. I never realised that was an OEM setup. I mean, I'm using our Windows 98 SE disc we bought waaaaay back in the late 90s.

Anyway, I've wiped all three drives, re-created the DOS partition on C, and then the setup asked me if I wanted it to sort out unallocated disk space, which I did. Now a new problem, which I did notice before and thought was odd. It's asking me to put the Windows 98 CD in, which it's using (how else would I have gotten here? :p) as it seems to be assigned to drive A. No idea what the floppy drive is using then. I'll have to check in the BIOS and see if I can do anything there.

Are you following the setup as intended right now, or did you quit to the command line and run win98\setup.exe manually? It might not work if you booted from CD before and it puts the CD contents on A:. In that case, you're stuck with the OEM CD setup.

When is it asking you to put in the Windows 98 CD? During the initial setup phase or after the first reboot when it's continuing?

Just so we're on the same page - you're booting directly from the Windows 98 CD, with no floppy involved at all, right?

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-16, 17:55:

Are you following the setup as intended right now, or did you quit to the command line and run win98\setup.exe manually? It might not work if you booted from CD before and it puts the CD contents on A:. In that case, you're stuck with the OEM CD setup.

When is it asking you to put in the Windows 98 CD? During the initial setup phase or after the first reboot when it's continuing?

Just so we're on the same page - you're booting directly from the Windows 98 CD, with no floppy involved at all, right?

That's correct - booting directly from the Windows 98 CD. No floppies. If I go to the Command line and explore the contents of the 98 CD, there's no Setup.exe. In fact, it doesn't show me all the contents of the CD, including folders. Just DOS files.

At the moment I am completely done with life. I think I need to take a step back or something. Everything I touch just breaks due to my clumsiness. 🙁

I tried disconnecting all drives I don't need - drive D and E, the floppy drive - in the hopes of getting the right drive letters assigned. And when I came to re-connecting the floppy drive, which I bought the other day and it arrived today I might add, I clearly tried connecting the 4-pin power connector blind, because when I re-booted, the system sounded different and there was a weird smell. And lo-and -behold - I plugged it in wrong and it's fried. >_< 🙁 The pins are stuck to it.

No words describe how I'm feeling right now. All I wanted to do was play around with my sound card. Go and try to reformat and this has all happened.

And despite what’s happened, even if I hook up my flash floppy drive, which looks to clearly be assigned to A in the BIOS, the CD drive is still making out it’s A.

So sorry to hear that, I completely understand how you feel right now. I'm sure most people here have ruined hardware with mistakes like this, I know I have. Takes a couple days until that feeling of wanting to kick yourself disappears. Let's hope it's just the floppy that died and not anything else. And please do not turn the PC on again before thoroughly testing your PSU for short circuits. It might fry the rest of your rig if the regulation circuit has failed.

The Windows 98 boot CD, when booted directly from, apparently has the CD contents are on A:. In that case, you're probably stuck with the OEM installer. What you should do next time is boot from a Windows 98 boot floppy, that way you have full control over the process. The regular installer does never reformat drives, in fact, it will refuse to start if you didn't format your C: drive before.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-16, 18:41:

That's correct - booting directly from the Windows 98 CD. No floppies. If I go to the Command line and explore the contents of t […]
Show full quote

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-16, 17:55:

Are you following the setup as intended right now, or did you quit to the command line and run win98\setup.exe manually? It might not work if you booted from CD before and it puts the CD contents on A:. In that case, you're stuck with the OEM CD setup.

When is it asking you to put in the Windows 98 CD? During the initial setup phase or after the first reboot when it's continuing?

Just so we're on the same page - you're booting directly from the Windows 98 CD, with no floppy involved at all, right?

That's correct - booting directly from the Windows 98 CD. No floppies. If I go to the Command line and explore the contents of the 98 CD, there's no Setup.exe. In fact, it doesn't show me all the contents of the CD, including folders. Just DOS files.

At the moment I am completely done with life. I think I need to take a step back or something. Everything I touch just breaks due to my clumsiness. 🙁

I tried disconnecting all drives I don't need - drive D and E, the floppy drive - in the hopes of getting the right drive letters assigned. And when I came to re-connecting the floppy drive, which I bought the other day and it arrived today I might add, I clearly tried connecting the 4-pin power connector blind, because when I re-booted, the system sounded different and there was a weird smell. And lo-and -behold - I plugged it in wrong and it's fried. >_< 🙁 The pins are stuck to it.

The attachment IMG_4992.JPG is no longer available

The attachment IMG_4991.JPG is no longer available

No words describe how I'm feeling right now. All I wanted to do was play around with my sound card. Go and try to reformat and this has all happened.

The center pins are both ground.
What you did was short +5v, the red wire, to ground.
nothing really bad happened, it's annoying, and extra work.
Just find a new connector for the floppy drive and replace it and it will be fine again.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-16, 19:09:

So sorry to hear that, I completely understand how you feel right now. I'm sure most people here have ruined hardware with mistakes like this, I know I have. Takes a couple days until that feeling of wanting to kick yourself disappears. Let's hope it's just the floppy that died and not anything else. And please do not turn the PC on again before thoroughly testing your PSU for short circuits. It might fry the rest of your rig if the regulation circuit has failed.

The Windows 98 boot CD, when booted directly from, apparently has the CD contents are on A:. In that case, you're probably stuck with the OEM installer. What you should do next time is boot from a Windows 98 boot floppy, that way you have full control over the process. The regular installer does never reformat drives, in fact, it will refuse to start if you didn't format your C: drive before.

Thanks. It’s just when one thing after another goes wrong, it wears me down. 😕 Unfortunately, I didn’t test the PSU before powering it back on. 😅🤦🏻‍♂️ But so far, things appear, sound, and smell fine.

I did create a Windows boot floppy, but, sadly I don’t have a workable floppy drive. Again. I just don’t get why it thinks the CD drive is A. I even made sure to assign my flash floppy drive to A, which boot lists. So it’s bloody weird. I suspect, even if I’ve disconnected the other drives, it will still keep asking for the disc in D, and I won’t be able to continue and reinstall. 😕

weedeewee wrote on 2025-10-16, 19:14:

The center pins are both ground. What you did was short +5v, the red wire, to ground. nothing really bad happened, it's annoying […]
Show full quote

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-16, 18:41:

That's correct - booting directly from the Windows 98 CD. No floppies. If I go to the Command line and explore the contents of t […]
Show full quote

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-16, 17:55:

Are you following the setup as intended right now, or did you quit to the command line and run win98\setup.exe manually? It might not work if you booted from CD before and it puts the CD contents on A:. In that case, you're stuck with the OEM CD setup.

When is it asking you to put in the Windows 98 CD? During the initial setup phase or after the first reboot when it's continuing?

Just so we're on the same page - you're booting directly from the Windows 98 CD, with no floppy involved at all, right?

That's correct - booting directly from the Windows 98 CD. No floppies. If I go to the Command line and explore the contents of the 98 CD, there's no Setup.exe. In fact, it doesn't show me all the contents of the CD, including folders. Just DOS files.

At the moment I am completely done with life. I think I need to take a step back or something. Everything I touch just breaks due to my clumsiness. 🙁

I tried disconnecting all drives I don't need - drive D and E, the floppy drive - in the hopes of getting the right drive letters assigned. And when I came to re-connecting the floppy drive, which I bought the other day and it arrived today I might add, I clearly tried connecting the 4-pin power connector blind, because when I re-booted, the system sounded different and there was a weird smell. And lo-and -behold - I plugged it in wrong and it's fried. >_< 🙁 The pins are stuck to it.

The attachment IMG_4992.JPG is no longer available

The attachment IMG_4991.JPG is no longer available

No words describe how I'm feeling right now. All I wanted to do was play around with my sound card. Go and try to reformat and this has all happened.

The center pins are both ground.
What you did was short +5v, the red wire, to ground.
nothing really bad happened, it's annoying, and extra work.
Just find a new connector for the floppy drive and replace it and it will be fine again.

Do you mean this part…?

That’s to the previous floppy drive that I tried to clean, put back together, and inadvertently jiggered up. I don’t suppose that part can be easily taken out and put into another? I take it it’s glued or welded on? Thanks.

Okay, thankfully, disconnecting other devices has helped. I just have the flash floppy drive, the CD-ROM, and the C drive. Re-created a DOS partition, rebooted, loaded from the CD, and without asking or complaining this time, it started formatting the C drive. Here's hoping it succeeds all the way through.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-16, 18:41:

No words describe how I'm feeling right now. All I wanted to do was play around with my sound card. Go and try to reformat and this has all happened.

Don't blame yourself too much over that. Many of those old connectors were built in such a way that it's easy to accidentally insert them backwards. It sucks, but that's just how things were back then. Mistakes like that aren't uncommon.

From personal experience, I would recommend two things. First, get a very small (but still bright) flashlight. Those Varta ones that take a single AAA battery should be fine. You want it to be small, so that it can easily reach into the depths of the PC case, when you need to shine more light on something that isn't clearly visible. It helps a lot when positioning various connectors and such.

Second, only work on retro hardware during daytime. You want all the natural light that you can get. Also, I find it easier to handle delicate tasks involving hardware in broad daylight than after dark, but that might just be me. A couple of years back, I tried cleaning and repasting a heavy chipset cooler on a socket 939 motherboard during nighttime, and I ended up accidentally knocking off some SMD components around it, which ruined the board. Since then, no more nighttime retro tinkering for me.

Anyway, good luck with the project! Good to hear that the other components (aside from the floppy) don't seem to have suffered any damage.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-10-16, 19:46:

Don't blame yourself too much over that. Many of those old connectors were built in such a way that it's easy to accidentally in […]
Show full quote

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-16, 18:41:

No words describe how I'm feeling right now. All I wanted to do was play around with my sound card. Go and try to reformat and this has all happened.

Don't blame yourself too much over that. Many of those old connectors were built in such a way that it's easy to accidentally insert them backwards. It sucks, but that's just how things were back then. Mistakes like that aren't uncommon.

From personal experience, I would recommend two things. First, get a very small (but still bright) flashlight. Those Varta ones that take a single AAA battery should be fine. You want it to be small, so that it can easily reach into the depths of the PC case, when you need to shine more light on something that isn't clearly visible. It helps a lot when positioning various connectors and such.

Second, only work on retro hardware during daytime. You want all the natural light that you can get. Also, I find it easier to handle delicate tasks involving hardware in broad daylight than after dark, but that might just be me. A couple of years back, I tried cleaning and repasting a heavy chipset cooler on a socket 939 motherboard during nighttime, and I ended up accidentally knocking off some SMD components around it, which ruined the board. Since then, no more nighttime retro tinkering for me.

Anyway, good luck with the project! Good to hear that the other components (aside from the floppy) don't seem to have suffered any damage.

Thank you. 😀 I do own one of those head-lamps. A small one that works using a coin battery. Usually I just wind up using my phone's light, which I'm going to make sure I do from now on. This has been a valuable lesson learned. :p But thanks for the tip about not tinkering with them at night. I just hope I don't do something to this motherboard as I want to keep it for as long as possible. I suspect I'll have a hard time finding another one.

Also, success! Windows has been reformatted and re-installed. Currently back on the desktop. 😁 Now to get familiar with Ghost and make an image copy before doing anything further with it.