What happens when you go into safe mode (press F8 multiple times)? Does it work that way? Did you download the drivers from this site: http://download.viatech.com/en/support/driversSelect.jsp or another site?

Select Microsoft Windows, Windows 98 or 98SE, Integrated Graphics, CN700, download the drivers, put it on a CD or flash drive, or whichever you used to install Windows 98, reinstall the drivers, and see what happens. Welcome.

Thanks for the welcome, and the reply. This seems like an extremely knowledgeable group of folks.

It boots into safe mode fine. It will also boot with the default VGA driver installed. I did install the drivers you reference above. It almost seems like its a refresh rate issue because, depending on the monitor driver I have installed I get varying degrees of video output. In some cases it will boot to a screen with the traditional Win98 desktop color and extremely artifact-ed (not sure that's a word) screen. In other words, it's not crashing windows. It's some sort of display issue that I just cannot figure out. About the only thing I haven't done is connected a CRT monitor to see if that makes a difference. I don't have a CRT and I'm not sure it's worth the trouble to test it.

Do you have pictures of the screen? Also, which monitors have you used for the integrated graphics card?

I have a couple of Samsung SyncMaster monitors and a couple of NEC MultiSync LCD monitors. I even tested the integrated GPU on my HP (OEM) ASUS A7V8X-LA motherboard's VIA VT400 UniChrome display and it worked without issues. Have you changed the refresh rate on the display settings to something like 60Hz or 50Hz (NTSC region uses 60Hz, whereas PAL uses 50Hz), depending upon where you're located at?

I can grab some pictures this evening.

I'm using an Acer X163W but I also have a Monoprice VGA to Component adapter connected to my 42" Panasonic TV. I've isolated the VGA converter from the 16" display to confirm the issue is not incompatibility with the converter.

I haven't intentionally changed the refresh rate of the display. I'm not sure that I can; but its certainly something I'll check. Any chance it could be some sort of BIOS issue? I couldn't find any setting that I thought might effect video output but i haven't had Win98 expertise in about 20 years.

Check to see if the video RAM is set since sometimes, that'll cause an issue right there.

I have a Video RAM cacheable setting in my BIOS. I've tried both enabled and disabled and get the same result. Now i don't seem to be able to remove the acer monitor in device manager without it redetecting it automatically on each reboot. Any way to clear a particular tmp or inf file to prevent that?

The wording is a bit vague but the IGP-related settings are actually under "AGP Timing Settings" in the BIOS. (This is because the IGP in VIA chipsets is attached AFAIK using an internal AGP link.) "VGA Share Memory Size" will adjust the amount of system memory used as the IGP's frame buffer, and you can try adjusting this and the other settings to see if you can get a positive result.

Excellent! I'll give that a try. Any thoughts on where I should start?

To me it sounds like the video memory might be overwritten somehow by the OS upon loading the driver (hence, right after the Win98 splash screen). To that end, you could disable "Direct Frame Buffer" if it isn't already, as that seems to control whether or not the CPU can directly write to video memory and possibly cause problems. Failing that, you could try allocating more "share memory" to the IGP while making sure the "Aperture Size" is always set larger.

Usually driver sets something like 59Hz refresh rate on screen which was fine on CRT screens, but LCD won't work. Thats why safe mode and vga modes are working - these are running at 60Hz. Some LCD's had warning about unsupported resolution before going black.....Try to use vga mode, go into advanced screen settings and choose refresh rate with resolution manually to something at 60Hz and reboot.

SW-SSG wrote:

To me it sounds like the video memory might be overwritten somehow by the OS upon loading the driver (hence, right after the Win98 splash screen). To that end, you could disable "Direct Frame Buffer" if it isn't already, as that seems to control whether or not the CPU can directly write to video memory and possibly cause problems. Failing that, you could try allocating more "share memory" to the IGP while making sure the "Aperture Size" is always set larger.

Thanks for this suggestion. Everything mentioned above was already set as described.

vlask wrote:

Usually driver sets something like 59Hz refresh rate on screen which was fine on CRT screens, but LCD won't work. Thats why safe mode and vga modes are working - these are running at 60Hz. Some LCD's had warning about unsupported resolution before going black.....Try to use vga mode, go into advanced screen settings and choose refresh rate with resolution manually to something at 60Hz and reboot.

My inclination all along has been a refresh rate issue so this makes a lot of sense. I'll give it a try and report back. Thank you!

So I ended up installing a PCI graphics card (which has shutdown issues and is another story). But, after installing the driver from the VIA driver archive, I did find the yellow icon over the VIA/S3 display adapter, indicating some sort of conflict. That conflict, I assume, is preventing the desktop from displaying upon boot. I'm wondering if something else on the MOBO is conflicting with the display adapter? Is it possible that its a hardware issue? Seems strange given everything else works well. I think I'm past any sort of refresh rate issue and I'm not assuming its some sort of firmware problem. I'm at the end of my troubleshooting rope.

I noticed the conflict shown in the attached image. Could this be related to my issue?

I'm trying to install latest official graphics driver for VIA CN896 chipset (VIA Chrome9 HC IGP) on Windows Millenium on my HP Mini-Note PC 2133 . Driver installs without any problems, but doesn't work correctly:
- mouse cursor becomes invisible,
- screen resolution stucks at 640x480,
- if i set screen resolution upper than 640x480 right after driver installation i have an error message after reboot and drivers not loading at all,
- there is no driver icon in a tray as seen in Windows XP or Vista.
VIA HyperionPro chipset drivers version 5.24A already installed including INF and AGP driver. I tried to install graphics driver from safe mode and also manually but had the same result. Updating DirectX from version 7.0 to 9.0c doesn't help. I tried to turn off maximum hardware in BIOS but it also doesn't help.
I have 2 Gb of RAM in the netbook but Windows is patched with Rudolph Loew's RAM patch.

Update. Even more issues have noticed after driver installation:
- DOS programs don't work and hang system while starting,
- DXDiag causes system hanging also.

After several unsuccessful attempts to solve the problem, it seems that the problem is not in the drivers. I tried to install VBEMP video drivers, but they worked very similar to official ones: 640x480, no DOS. The only difference is a working mouse cursor. With PowerStrip help I was able to add resolution 1024x600 to both drivers, but system hangs with artifacts on screen when I try to set this resolution.
I think that the problem is in HP Mini-Note's BIOS. Seems HP didn't provide video chip compatibility with Windows 9x while making it. Maybe something with VESA modes or video buffer size, I don't know.
P.S. I read that some non-VIA motherboards, based on VIA's chipsets have broken Windows 9x compatibility as opposed to VIA's own motherboards based on same chipsets. Perhaps this is the case. I hope someone can find a solution to this problem.