this may be a windows 98 bug rather than an issue with your MS DOS configuration 98 suffers from a few different shutdown / restart bugs, there's fixes for some of them, and other times it's driver issues.

IIRC black screen when going into DOS mode is one of these bugs, although never experienced this one myself so no idea how to fix

synrgy87 wrote:

this may be a windows 98 bug rather than an issue with your MS DOS configuration 98 suffers from a few different shutdown / restart bugs, there's fixes for some of them, and other times it's driver issues.

IIRC black screen when going into DOS mode is one of these bugs, although never experienced this one myself so no idea how to fix

Are there any reasons to stick with 98 over 95? I want to be able to play as many DOS and 9x games as possible, I'm honestly annoyed that this is happening because sometimes it just works and other times it doesn't. I've done two fresh installs now 😒

Uhm, which type of MS-DOS Mode do you mean ?
The one before starting Windows 98, or that one when Windows 98 is running (shutdown / drop to DOS) ?
The latter one may take some time. One of my PCs needed about a minute to drop to DOS.

UltimaPlayer12 wrote:

Are there any reasons to stick with 98 over 95? I want to be able to play as many DOS and 9x games as possible, I'm honestly annoyed that this is happening because sometimes it just works and other times it doesn't. I've done two fresh installs now 😒

Windows 95 itself is smaller and faster, but also had a lot of bugs. Windows 98FE was a bit crash-y and the unpatched version
gets a blue screen after several days without a restart. Win98SE is the most stable of them and supports WDM drivers.
It also contains several other improvments, I think. Like optimized systems files and and so on. I don't know if that's an urban legend,
but I heard it also has an MMX-optimized kernel, which gets choosen if you install Win98 on a machine with Pentium MMX.
Other technologies, like ACPI or Firewire, also got updated, I think. So overall performance could be better on Win98SE, despite Win98 beeing bigger.

Jo22 wrote:

Uhm, which type of MS-DOS Mode do you mean ? The one before starting Windows 98, or that one when Windows 98 is running (shutdow […]
Show full quote

Uhm, which type of MS-DOS Mode do you mean ?
The one before starting Windows 98, or that one when Windows 98 is running (shutdown / drop to DOS) ?
The latter one may take some time. One of my PCs needed about a minute to drop to DOS.

UltimaPlayer12 wrote:

Are there any reasons to stick with 98 over 95? I want to be able to play as many DOS and 9x games as possible, I'm honestly annoyed that this is happening because sometimes it just works and other times it doesn't. I've done two fresh installs now 😒

Windows 95 itself is smaller and faster, but also had a lot of bugs. Windows 98FE was a bit crash-y and the unpatched version
gets a blue screen after several days without a restart. Win98SE is the most stable of them and supports WDM drivers.
It also contains several other improvments, I think. Like optimized systems files and and so on. I don't know if that's an urban legend,
but I heard it also has an MMX-optimized kernel, which gets choosen if you install Win98 on a machine with Pentium MMX.
Other technologies, like ACPI or Firewire, also got updated, I think. So overall performance could be better on Win98SE, despite Win98 beeing bigger.

I'm using drop to DOS mode. Also, it seems to have gotten worse... Now I can't restart/shut down at all without having to hold the power button. This is extremely annoying, and I'm trying to figure out what's causing it but have had no luck so far and have to work soon. Spent all night troubleshooting this, haha.

UltimaPlayer12 wrote:

I'm using drop to DOS mode. Also, it seems to have gotten worse... Now I can't restart/shut down at all without having to hold the power button. This is extremely annoying, and I'm trying to figure out what's causing it but have had no luck so far and have to work soon. Spent all night troubleshooting this, haha.

Sorry to hear. I hope you will get things working again soon. 🙁
I know some people will hate me for this idea, but you could try to install Win Me.
Only for testing, of course. Because it is the last one of the Win 9x family, it might be compatible with you existing drivers and hardware.
So you could check, wheter the PC is defetive or not. But again, that's just an idea. Win Me often worked for me on otherwise
unsupported hardware, like set-top boxes or thin clients (Win98SE often didn't even made it past the setup program there).
And it also works fine with Transmeta Crusoe CPUs.

try the 98SE unofficial service pack it has some fixes and updates which may help.

Yes, is your 98SE installation fully up-to-date? Among other things, Microsoft released a "Shutdown supplement" for problems of that nature.

UltimaPlayer12 wrote:

as booting into the CLI on boot-up using F8 and checking them shows garbled text.

Can you be more specific about the nature of this check?

As suggested by synrgy87, download the "Unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack 2.1a" (just Google it).
There are later versions available (refer http://www.htasoft.com/u98sesp), but they include patches and updates that are not necessary (I've also had mixed results with the version 3.x updates). I do, however, utilize the USB stack from the later versions (which I install separately) that provides me with USB support for removable media (flash drives, etc.) that are formatted with FAT16 or FAT32.

Service Pack 2.1a essentially combines all official updates released by Microsoft (including the Shutdown replacement, which was to overcome shutdown problems on fast PC's).
The Service Pack includes some additional updates (like the Windows 2000 color scheme), but you only need to install the Main Updates.

Some of your problems could be related to your hardware (like too much onboard RAM or even faulty memory), but try the update first and see whether that addresses your problems.
You might also want to check for any BIOS updates for your motherboard - http://www.asus.com/supportonly/P5A/HelpDesk_Download/ (I noticed a number of issues that were addressed in the BIOS updates for your motherboard).
Also download and install the IDE & Audio drivers from the Asus website (the latter is only required if you have those audio devices installed), since some problems could be related to faulty drivers.

Interesting. Can this "Service Pack" be slip-streamed into an installation media ?
It is of little use if you can't get your Windows installed in the first place, you know.

jesolo wrote:

As suggested by synrgy87, download the "Unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack 2.1a" (just Google it). There are later versions a […]
Show full quote

As suggested by synrgy87, download the "Unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack 2.1a" (just Google it).
There are later versions available (refer http://www.htasoft.com/u98sesp), but they include patches and updates that are not necessary (I've also had mixed results with the version 3.x updates). I do, however, utilize the USB stack from the later versions (which I install separately) that provides me with USB support for removable media (flash drives, etc.) that are formatted with FAT16 or FAT32.

Service Pack 2.1a essentially combines all official updates released by Microsoft (including the Shutdown replacement, which was to overcome shutdown problems on fast PC's).
The Service Pack includes some additional updates (like the Windows 2000 color scheme), but you only need to install the Main Updates.

Some of your problems could be related to your hardware (like too much onboard RAM or even faulty memory), but try the update first and see whether that addresses your problems.
You might also want to check for any BIOS updates for your motherboard - http://www.asus.com/supportonly/P5A/HelpDesk_Download/ (I noticed a number of issues that were addressed in the BIOS updates for your motherboard).
Also download and install the IDE & Audio drivers from the Asus website (the latter is only required if you have those audio devices installed), since some problems could be related to faulty drivers.

Holy crap, thank you so much! Your recommendation for the Unofficial Win98 SE Service Pack 2.1a fixed my problems. I found it was related to my computer being far too fast, and Windows 98 not liking that. Now I can run my machine at full speed and still be able to drop to DOS mode, reboot and shutdown properly. Time to get my setup re-configured!

EDIT: Nevermind, I have to have my CPU cache disabled. I'm running a K6-III 450MHz CPU, and doing so makes the OS rather slow. I'm adding more RAM to see if this will help, but honestly I'm just glad it's functional.

UltimaPlayer12 wrote:

I'm adding more RAM to see if this will help

Using more than 512 MB in Windows 9x is a bad idea.

Jorpho wrote:

UltimaPlayer12 wrote:

I'm adding more RAM to see if this will help

Using more than 512 MB in Windows 9x is a bad idea.

For testing purposes I had cut my system down to 100MB of RAM, I'm back up to exactly 512MB. The rig seems mostly stable with the CPU cache disabled, but obviously it's extremely slow to perform any operations.

Wait a second.

UltimaPlayer12 wrote:

I found it was related to my computer being far too fast

What exactly led you to believe that a K6-III 450 MHz is "far too fast" ? That would have been entirely typical for the time Windows 98 was released. If it was 2 GHz or more, that would be a different matter.

Jorpho wrote:

Wait a second.

UltimaPlayer12 wrote:

I found it was related to my computer being far too fast

What exactly led you to believe that a K6-III 450 MHz is "far too fast" ? That would have been entirely typical for the time Windows 98 was released. If it was 2 GHz or more, that would be a different matter.

The assumption is related to the fact that disabling my CPU cache, which drastically reduces my systems performance in Windows 98, allows me to drop to DOS, shutdown and restart flawlessly, but the moment I enable it and get my computer running at full speed again, it refuses to do these things.

Oh. I thought you had read about the Win9x speed limitations and had drawn your own conclusions.

There is certainly no reason it is not supposed to work with cache enabled and without having to make it "extremely slow to perform any operations".

UltimaPlayer12 wrote:

The assumption is related to the fact that disabling my CPU cache, which drastically reduces my systems performance in Windows 98, allows me to drop to DOS, shutdown and restart flawlessly, but the moment I enable it and get my computer running at full speed again, it refuses to do these things.

Perhaps try a BIOS update from Asus' website.
Skip the beta release and first go for the last stable release (depending on what version you're on now).

Jo22 wrote:

Interesting. Can this "Service Pack" be slip-streamed into an installation media ?
It is of little use if you can't get your Windows installed in the first place, you know.

Not to my knowledge, but most installation problems with Windows 98 on "modern" systems (based on what I've read) was due to too much onboard RAM. Reducing it (initially) to below 512 MB usually helps.
However, when you try to install Windows 98 on a Core i5 with 4 GB of RAM, then you are bound to run into problems 🤣.

synrgy87 wrote:

this may be a windows 98 bug rather than an issue with your MS DOS configuration 98 suffers from a few different shutdown / restart bugs, there's fixes for some of them, and other times it's driver issues.

I second this. I have a similar Win98SE box myself (with a K6-II 500MHz instead of a K6-III 450MHz). Every once in a while, it would not shutdown/restart properly and would just hang there, until I hit the power/reset button manually.

Now it happens about 5-10% of the time, so I don't care. I seem to recall that it used to be more frequent, and I have no idea what I did to affect it and whether I did anything at all. As said, Win98 is quite glitchy in shutdown/restart. It is one of the earliest ACPI implementations, so some bugs would be expected.

Here are a couple of Microsoft KB articles on the subject:
Windows 98 Second Edition Shutdown Supplement
Problems Shutting Down Windows 98 Second Edition

jesolo wrote:

Jo22 wrote:

Interesting. Can this "Service Pack" be slip-streamed into an installation media ?
It is of little use if you can't get your Windows installed in the first place, you know.

Not to my knowledge, but most installation problems with Windows 98 on "modern" systems (based on what I've read) was due to too much onboard RAM. Reducing it (initially) to below 512 MB usually helps.
However, when you try to install Windows 98 on a Core i5 with 4 GB of RAM, then you are bound to run into problems 🤣.

Thanks, as of now I do know of two of my systems that are totally Win98SE incompatible.
- GA586S REV v1.22C with Pentium133, 32MB RAM (released ca. 95-97)
- MS-6507 with Pentium IV 1.8GHz, 256MB RAM (released ca. 2002)

And several thin clients (not all).. One of them has an PIII@733MHz and 128MB of on-board memory, for example.

Ironically, they all do run with Win Me. The Me installation program had sometimes trouble, too, but
at least it did finish after a restart. The Win98SE setup program on the other hand, freezed or
crashed for up to 15times in a row on the GA586S. Boy, at some point 98SE made me feel like I was an incompetent fumbler. 🙁
At least I do understand now why people of the 90s literally threw their Windows machines out of their windows.
Because I felt the urge to do the same.