boot up

I have an old socket7 mb out of an emachine. It is a compaq and when I boot up it has a black screen for awhile then it comes on saying compaq and changes to black and then back to compaq.It does this for awhile and then changes.It comes up compaq and then win98.This goes on for awhile and then it stays win98 and works fine.Would this be caused by a bad bios?