Windows has drivers for many things.
Again, which ones are installed?

m0u53r wrote on 2024-08-10, 00:20:

The fact that you're getting into safe mode makes me think it's some kind of hardware driver issue. […]
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The fact that you're getting into safe mode makes me think it's some kind of hardware driver issue.

Since you say the screen is going black, have you tried different video cards? maybe an old PCI card. Verify that your videocard is in good working condition. Maybe a card with less vram.

If this is your first time using your motherboard then I think dormcat's idea of installing windows xp might be useful just to make sure everything is working.
I've experienced difficulty using dos based flash tools. Often the motherboard manufacturer will have a windows based utility or more modern motherboards you can flash from the bios using a flash drive. But I kind of doubt that a new bios version will solve your problem.

for your mouse issue maybe use a ps/2 mouse?

Unfortunately t's just a guessing game for what hardware windows 98 doesn't like

I've tried a Matrox Mystique, but I didn't get past the Plug & Play device detection. The screen just went black and I had to press the reset button. It was an endless loop.

No, this is not the first time I'm using this board. Previously this was a Windows 7 machine.

I've flashed v16.1 of the BIOS yesterday and it worked.

The motherboard only has one PS/2 port.

LequaRex wrote on 2024-08-10, 08:47:

I've tried a Matrox Mystique, but I didn't get past the Plug & Play device detection. The screen just went black and I had to pr […]
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I've tried a Matrox Mystique, but I didn't get past the Plug & Play device detection. The screen just went black and I had to press the reset button. It was an endless loop.

No, this is not the first time I'm using this board. Previously this was a Windows 7 machine.

I've flashed v16.1 of the BIOS yesterday and it worked.

The motherboard only has one PS/2 port.

That windows install loop, seems like a use case for using the install switch "setup /p i". Perhaps try the Matrox Mystique again?

with the one ps/2 port you can use either mouse or keyboard. It just seems to me that the generic mouse driver isn't playing well with your mouse.

I've still got a feeling that it's either your video card, mouse or storage device...in that order hehe

m0u53r wrote on 2024-08-10, 14:25:

That windows install loop, seems like a use case for using the install switch "setup /p i". Perhaps try the Matrox Mystique agai […]
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LequaRex wrote on 2024-08-10, 08:47:

I've tried a Matrox Mystique, but I didn't get past the Plug & Play device detection. The screen just went black and I had to pr […]
Show full quote

I've tried a Matrox Mystique, but I didn't get past the Plug & Play device detection. The screen just went black and I had to press the reset button. It was an endless loop.

No, this is not the first time I'm using this board. Previously this was a Windows 7 machine.

I've flashed v16.1 of the BIOS yesterday and it worked.

The motherboard only has one PS/2 port.

That windows install loop, seems like a use case for using the install switch "setup /p i". Perhaps try the Matrox Mystique again?

with the one ps/2 port you can use either mouse or keyboard. It just seems to me that the generic mouse driver isn't playing well with your mouse.

I've still got a feeling that it's either your video card, mouse or storage device...in that order hehe

The Matrox Mystique had the same issue again with "setup /p i".

dormcat wrote on 2024-08-09, 01:59:

I'd perform two tests: […]
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I'd perform two tests:

1. Install WinXP on the current spec instead.
2. Replace the SATA HDD with a PATA, while everything else stays the same.

And see if the problem persists.

It's possible that the RAM strip might be the culprit.

For this I'd have to get a PATA HDD.

I would echo the 'get a PATA HDD' thing. I tried something similar to yours except around the Via chipset, and... could never, ever get it to install successfully with a SATA device. Put the same SSD on a Startech SATA to PATA adapter, and it works...

My theory as to what is happening: Win98 expects PATA controllers at specific memory addresses. SATA controllers, even in PATA legacy mode, will show up at different memory addresses and completely confuse it. At least some Intel/ICH5 boards had a BIOS option to remap things such that the SATA controller would be at one of the traditional PATA controller memory addresses for Win98, but certainly my board didn't. You may want to take a look at your BIOS and see if it's any different.

Boot into safe mode.
Device manager.
Picture.
Post here.
"disable in this profile" hardware one at a time and reboot. Start with the video, then IDE, then USB.

Those are the most likely culprits.
If it starts booting in normal mode, you've found it.

Then update the driver and cross your fingers.

myne wrote on 2024-08-11, 00:41:

Boot into safe mode. Device manager. Picture. Post here. "disable in this profile" hardware one at a time and reboot. Start wit […]
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Boot into safe mode.
Device manager.
Picture.
Post here.
"disable in this profile" hardware one at a time and reboot. Start with the video, then IDE, then USB.

Those are the most likely culprits.
If it starts booting in normal mode, you've found it.

Then update the driver and cross your fingers.

Most of the time I'm not able to open Device Manager. As soon as I wanna open the tab I get a blue screen with that fatal exception.

In safe mode?

myne wrote on 2024-08-12, 01:53:

In safe mode?

Yes, in safe mode. Mostly followed by white dialog boxes with the application name like Explorer, Kernel, Msinfo32...

If you cant do anything in safe mode, there isn't much else that can be done.
I'd blow it all away, remove the seatools size hack on the hdd and make a normal 10gb partition on the normal 80gb drive.
98 has no issues with drives under 127gb, and nor should such a new board.

Have you tried setting the RAID Mode to AHCI in BIOS?
You can then try installing AHCI drivers from here: https://archive.org/details/ahci_win9x

If there are still issues, you can try an IDE Hard Drive connected to the IDE port and/or try Windows XP/7 to see if there are any issues under there.

If still no dice, it seems your motherboard or cpu is not fully stable.

As noted by others, you don't need to limit the capacity of the drive, Win9x works fine up to 137GB with no patches.

I hate to repeat my post from 5 posts above, but... just get a PATA drive. I was where you are however many months ago, convinced that I would somehow get my clever AM2 contraption to run Win98 SE on SATA.

I went exactly nowhere. Probably installed 98SE 20-30 times with a whole range of BIOS options, different failure modes, various attempts at various rloew patches, etc. Installed XP to test the machine and it ran beautifully, but... ummm... I already have 2 retro XP systems, why would I want a single core AGP Athlon to run XP?!? Finally I listened to someone here and shoved my SSD onto a Startech SATA to IDE adapter. Got much further than I had ever gotten before. Then I removed the SATA optical drive and bought a NOS PATA one from eBay. (Oh, and reduced the RAM) Boom, problem solved, working 98SE AM2 system, no monkeying with rloew patches, no anything!

I spent months on this, there isn't a huge record of successful 98SE installs on AMD SATA. There's more on Intel ICH5 but those have a special BIOS option for 98SE compatibility. And if anything, your chipset is more rare than my VT8237A or whatever it is, which is a south bridge that was used on tons of 754/939 systems. Maybe even some late socket A boards, I don't know...

I never had the opportunity to install 98SE on AMD chipset SATA controllers so I was just basing my ideas on my existing knowledge and experience.
The fact that I never had such issues on nForce/Intel chipsets was of course misleading me in my assumptions about things...and even then, I have encountered special cases like ThinkPad X200 not being able to boot 98SE but able to boot 95 and ME without issues...I'll make a thread about this one day maybe...

Have you tried 95/ME or an external PCI SATA controller? Have you tried deleting ESDI_506.PDR?
Maybe this particular AMD SB700 southbridge simply isn't working right with 9x (even in legacy BIOS/PIO/DOS compatibility mode), which would be especially weird even if ESDI_506.PDR is not loaded (since I think safe mode doesn't load it yet you still had issues in safe mode) but this isn't the first, nor the last time I'll see weird 9x shenanigans.

MrMateczko wrote on 2024-08-13, 00:18:

The fact that I never had such issues on nForce/Intel chipsets was of course misleading me in my assumptions about things...and even then, I have encountered special cases like ThinkPad X200 not being able to boot 98SE but able to boot 95 and ME without issues...I'll make a thread about this one day maybe...

I suspect the answer to this 98SE/AMD SATA issue can be found somewhere in this document - https://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/manual/ … -ata-manual.pdf . This explains all the funky things that the ICH5 does for backwards compatibility with some older operating systems. And it talks about a "native mode" supported in Win2000/XP. (I do not believe for a second that this native mode is the same thing as AHCI...)

My strong, strong belief, but obviously I have no way or technical enough knowledge to prove it, is that the majority of SATA chipsets for AMD platforms do not support these kinds of tricks.

And why would they? In 2003-5, it was still a PATA world; ODDs stayed PATA until summer 2006. And no one who somehow had an early SATA system in that era would have had any interest in 98SE. Now, on the Intel side, I think it's different - they probably still had Dell and co wanting to sell 98SE compatible systems for some business uses in 2003.

VivienM wrote on 2024-08-12, 22:58:

Finally I listened to someone here and shoved my SSD onto a Startech SATA to IDE adapter. Got much further than I had ever gotten before. Then I removed the SATA optical drive and bought a NOS PATA one from eBay. (Oh, and reduced the RAM) Boom, problem solved, working 98SE AM2 system, no monkeying with rloew patches, no anything!

I have a SATA to IDE adapter. I will try this first. My original goal was to run on SATA, because it is possible.

LequaRex wrote on 2024-08-13, 19:51:

VivienM wrote on 2024-08-12, 22:58:

Finally I listened to someone here and shoved my SSD onto a Startech SATA to IDE adapter. Got much further than I had ever gotten before. Then I removed the SATA optical drive and bought a NOS PATA one from eBay. (Oh, and reduced the RAM) Boom, problem solved, working 98SE AM2 system, no monkeying with rloew patches, no anything!

I have a SATA to IDE adapter. I will try this first. My original goal was to run on SATA, because it is possible.

Possible... on this particular chipset/motherboard? Or generally?

I have every reason to believe that 98SE can run on SATA on an ICH5 with that remapping feature.

Possible... on this particular chipset/motherboard? Or generally?

I have every reason to believe that 98SE can run on SATA on an ICH5 with that remapping feature.

No generally, I didn't know it causes problems on certain chipsets .

VivienM wrote on 2024-08-13, 02:13:

And no one who somehow had an early SATA system in that era would have had any interest in 98SE.

That is dead wrong -- the MSFN forum has numerous posts from people running 98 on this hardware when it was new. Not everyone could be bothered to run out and buy a new Windows release, especially one with a very different UI.

VivienM wrote on 2024-08-13, 23:01:

LequaRex wrote on 2024-08-13, 19:51:

VivienM wrote on 2024-08-12, 22:58:

Finally I listened to someone here and shoved my SSD onto a Startech SATA to IDE adapter. Got much further than I had ever gotten before. Then I removed the SATA optical drive and bought a NOS PATA one from eBay. (Oh, and reduced the RAM) Boom, problem solved, working 98SE AM2 system, no monkeying with rloew patches, no anything!

I have a SATA to IDE adapter. I will try this first. My original goal was to run on SATA, because it is possible.

Possible... on this particular chipset/motherboard? Or generally?

I have every reason to believe that 98SE can run on SATA on an ICH5 with that remapping feature.

Can confirm; I have Windows 98 SE installed on a ThinkCentre S50 with a SATA hard disk drive. The only patch I needed was PATCHMEM.

Quick update.

Windows 98 SE is now running fine. I settled for the SATA to IDE adapter. I didn't have any problems with installing Catalyst 6.2.