VOGONS


First post, by dicky96

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Hi guys
I've put together the rig I want to use as a fast Win98 rig. It's not the final configuration I want but it is working - to a point!

The rig as it stands now is ECS P4M800PRO-M V2.0, Core2 Duo 2,4GHz, 1Gb DDR2 533, 2x SSD (60GB Samsung, 64GB Kingston) Asus N8200 Deluxe (Geforce 3 64MB AGP), Sony DVDROM

I have XP installed on the Samsung and 98SE on the Kingston - I can choose which to boot from the Bios and that works great.

So after some messing about I managed to install Win98SE. On the way to achieving this I learnt a few things..

Win98 won't boot with 2GB RAM because it is insufficient to load windows but 1GB is plenty. Total nonsense really.

I couldn't load Win 98 from the bootable CD with a SATA DVD Drive but I had an IDE one lying around and it worked fine

And that playing around with old hardware and software is a lot of fun!

So as I said it is now loaded and working after a fashion

Problems I still have and need some help with...

I loaded the V2.0 USB drivers but it won't recognise my USB stick in Win98. Win XP works fine so I know the USB port is OK. To load drivers etc I'm having to boot XP, copy files from my USB stick to a folder on the Win98 drive then rebooting into win98 to install them

The PC will not shut down from win 98 - it just sits there forever saying windows is shutting down. From XP it shuts down fine. Probably related to this the PC hangs up at various points loading drivers, it may even blue screen with an excepion or black screen - but a manual reboot and it continues and loads the driver OK

I have a few unknown devices in win98 and can't seem to find a driver

I tried to load DirectX 8.1 and also directX8.2 from different sources but dxdiag says I have DirectX6.1

Any help would be much appreciated

best regards
Rich

Last edited by dicky96 on 2019-02-17, 20:53. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 1 of 10, by dicky96

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Sorry pic didn't load

Reply 2 of 10, by dumpsterac1d

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I can say, for one, that 98SE is pretty bad at shutting down. About 3/4 of the time I use Start - Shutdown it either hangs or takes quite a long time to fully shut itself down. On the other hand, if I use the front button it works about 1/2 the time or more? Weird behavior, but I have a feeling it's pretty standard for Win98.

Reply 3 of 10, by konc

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Look for "Windows 98 Second Edition Shutdown Supplement", this may fix your shutdown problem

Reply 4 of 10, by Baoran

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Another option with shutdown problems is to disable ACPI completely. Disabling ACPI fixed a lot of problems in a super socket 7 system I built couple years ago and also after that it does not shutdown automatically and you get the message on the screen telling that it is safe to turn off the computer now.

Reply 5 of 10, by dicky96

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OK thanks for the info
I tried the shut down supliment but it didn't help. Everytime I select restart from Win98 The PC resets, and I get the POST screen then win98 reloads just fine. However when I select Shut Down it just hangs on the Win98 splash screen saying Windows is shutting down - but it doesn't. Though if I power off the PC manually and then reload windows I don't see the screen scanning C drive because windows was not shut down properly - so it thinks it did shut down OK even though it didn't

I found some more drivers (not on the ECS site) for the PCI ethernet adapter so that is now installed OK in control panel. I also found another drivers file VIA456 which loaded all sorts of chipset drivers in Win 98. So I no longer have a Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller with a question mark in control panel. I noticed that device said it was permanently disabled as it said it failed to load on a previous boot of windows (that explains a previous hang up during installation). However once I ran the VIA456 setup Windows hung on boot with a little flashing cursor. On a second attempt it loaded windows and in the device manager I no longer have a Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller with a question mark but I have s SCSI controller with Raid or something like that - which has a question mark and says 'this device was permanently disabled as it failed to run when windows was started.

I then tried running VIA456 setup in XP (even though the device manager shows everything is OK) but it failed tro run with an error, even though the readme says it is for 98 and XP etc. To be honest I am not sure I have all the drivers loaded, I could do with a copy of the original install CDROM. Does anyone here have one for this mobo who could send me an ISO ot know where to find one on the net?

So basically the problems I have in Win98 now are:

Will restart but won't shut down
SCSI raid controller in device manager has ? and disabled because it fails to run
USB ports work (my USB mouse works) but my USB stick is not recognised
Which DirectX should I have in Windows 98? I thought was DirectX 8 but loaded two different files from the net (8.1, 8.2) but dxdiag says I have 6.1

Otherwise it seems to run Win98 stable so these are just niggles rather than a big problem so far.

Reply 6 of 10, by tayyare

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For your driver issues, I think you need the choose a different verison of VIA 4in1 drivers, according to the chipset you have. This might help:

VIA 4-in-1 driver experiences

Uninstall whatever you iinstalled before, and go for the "more correct" version for your chipset.

For USB issues, I strongly recommend NUSB (Maximus-Decim Native USB Drivers):

https://msfn.org/board/topic/43605-maximus-de … ve-usb-drivers/

This will most probably solve your "USB flash drive not recognized" problem. My machine can see all the pen drives that I tried (Sandisk Cruzer 2, 4 and 8GB), an 120GB homebuilt external HDD, and a modernish Digitus multi card reader properly with the help of it.

"Windows 9x is not shutting down properly" is a problem with many probable reasons and many probable solutions (that none would probably work). You either need to live with it, or perform a clean install using correct drivers (which might probably help). 🤣

GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000

Reply 7 of 10, by dicky96

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OK lots of probables there. These are the VIA drivers i installed https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php … riverid=1550924

I found that by googling 'ECS P4M800PRO-M 98 dual pci ide driver' because that is the one that had the Question Mark in device manager. The downlaod says it is the right one for this mobo.

On the ECS website there are only sound and USB drivers for this motherboard in win98 or win9x selection

I'll check that link out. Thanks

Reply 8 of 10, by looking4awayout

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Check out the VIA Technologies website:

http://download.viatech.com/en/support/driversSelect.jsp

If the 4in1 installer works in the same way the XP one does, not all drivers will be automatically replaced, so you will have to do it manually. It's a tedious job as you have to extract the installer and point the devices to the relative INF files, but only in that way I got the chipset drivers installed properly on my machine, at least on XP. I use the 4in1 v4.43.

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 9 of 10, by dicky96

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Some good advice on here, thanks guys

I now have Win98 recognising my USB Flash Drive

The only ?? in device manager is this one (see pic) Actually it's not a ?? it's a !!

Which version of DirectX should I have?

Reply 10 of 10, by MMX

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It seems to me people here forgot one good thing.. It's a Windows Millennium !!! 😀 😊 😀
I advice everyone to install Win ME instead Win98SE.
WinME is based on 98SE, it's have excellent compatibility with Win98's programs. On Win ME all USB works just fine. Also Win ME have all features for Network support (almost like a Win2000, sometime it is a solution with shutdown). And many other things) I had period of time i used Win ME.
On my Win98SE last version DirectX i used was DirectX9a (with my FX5900 from ASUS). I think it depends from videocard's driver. But DirectX8.1 for the Win98SE is just a necessary thing. Look for your MoBo user manual if it really should support Win98SE.