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Problems running an DirectX applications on a Radeon 9700 on Windows98SE

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First post, by Cobra!

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I've had to do a fresh install of 98SE due to a corrupt ram stick causing the previous one to be unstable and very error prone.
When said install worked, it ran everything I threw at it fine, but no matter what order I install drivers and directX, or what combination of drivers to install, no games run on this new install. I've tried several games and versions of 3DMark.

I don't get any errors, and dxdiag doesn't show anything unusual (except when it comes to testing the 3D, which crashes the whole thing). Whatever game I run just flashes black and then it goes back to the desktop. Only other information I have is that Lego Racers doesn't recognise a DirectX compatible card in the installer.

The only other card I have installed is a modem card, but removing it doesn't fix the issue. Also the RAM is fine. It's passed memtest several times.

What do I do?

Here are my specs if it helps:
MSI 865PEM3-ILS Motherboard
Pentium 4 3.4Ghz CPU
256MB RAM
Radeon 9700 GPU
500GB HDD with W98 on a 127GB partition.

Last edited by Cobra! on 2026-06-14, 15:37. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 3, by NitroX infinity

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Your Pentium4 does not exist; did you perhaps mean a 2.53GHz or a 3.4GHz?

Have you tried another videocard? Sounds like this one might be broken.

Reply 2 of 3, by Cobra!

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NitroX infinity wrote on Today, 15:34:

Your Pentium4 does not exist; did you perhaps mean a 2.53GHz or a 3.4GHz?

Have you tried another videocard? Sounds like this one might be broken.

Yeah sorry, 3.4GHz.

Only other GPU I have is an Nvidia FX5200, which seems to work when I tested it there, but that's a different brand and different drivers. Surely it can't be a bad card? It was working fine last month when I found out about the corrupt ram/install and I hadn't moved the card since then?

Reply 3 of 3, by swaaye

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It's probably a driver problem. Maybe ATI or there's something not right with the AGP GART driver for the motherboard. Try some different ATI drivers. Does the ATI control panel you're running show the SMARTGART page?

Frankly, I would run XP on hardware like that. Maybe you can set up an XP partition to test with.

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