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98SE Installation won't finish

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9 replies

by rickyrattlesnake

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I am trying to install Windows 98 SE on a known good hard drive (20 GB Maxtor or 17 GB Western Digital - happens on both, neither is connected at same time as other, both jumpered as master when I try this and read by BIOS correctly). I have an MSI motherboard(MS-6330), 1 GHz Athlon and 192 MB PC 100 SDRAM (new). Setup copies files, etc., but when it gets to the point of restarting and having me enter my name and company, or sometimes on the next screen where I need to enter my product key, machine freezes to a blank screen and keyboard unresponsive(won't let me reboot by Ctrl-Alt-Del). I am using a GeForce 4 PCI video card, but it also does this with a Rage 128 AGP card and also with a Rage IIC PCI, so I assume it's not the video card. I have installed Windows 2000 on this machine before and since with no problems. I have tried other good Hard Drives, no luck. Took out all other cards, disabled and enabled onboard audio, still does it. I need to have a 98 machine for some older games. 300 watt Power Supply and new CD ROM and CDRW, it doesn't matter which one is connected. HD's are fdisked, formatted, etc. each time. Retail Windows 98 SE CD(clean). Also does this with a retail Windows 98 first edition CD. I have reset BIOS, flashed BIOS, all no help. Also switched to other keyboard (and mouse) and moved RAM to different slots (also tried with only the 128 MB RAM chip installed and only the 64 MB)

9 replies

by rickyrattlesnake

It is not BIOS level virus as it gets to OS setup before becoming unresponsive. I went ahead and tried, doesn't make a difference.

by tech_wiz03

Just a thought, when you had win2000 installed did you set the drive as NTFS? If so you may need to go back to win2000 and force formating volume as fat16 or fat32 or even wiping the partiton table totally and let win98se partition and reformat.

Anoth thing you can try is checking if DMA, pnp-OS aware, and APMS in the bios are interferring.

rick

by rickyrattlesnake

No, Windows 2000 was setup as FAT32 on this machine. I did, in fact, fdisk and format the hard drive before trying to install 98SE. Also, this happened on two differrent hard drives. As far as DMA, pnp-OS aware and APMS go, I have changed everything I can think of in the BIOS with no luck.

by pierrejamme

You didn't say how you were trying to install, I have found that it works better from a startup boot disk and the changing to E:\setup. for some reason Win98Se doesn't install well from a booted CD, gives you errors almost ever time.

by rickyrattlesnake

I originally tried this booting from the CD-ROM. Per your suggestion, I tried using a boot disk to run setup, but it does the same thing. I even purchased a new Hard Drive with no luck. I suspect something hardware-related, but I can't seem to figure out what it could be. I don't get "errors", just a dead, blank screen and unresponsive box after a few seconds just after the screen that says Starting Windows for the First Time

by tqm

It is a while since your query and you may well be all fixed, but ...

I had a similar problem about 18 months ago. After F-disking, I partioned the 20Gig drive in half, designating the primary partition as c: and the extended one as D:. On the D: I created a Win98 directory, into which I copied the Win98 CD in total and did my installation from there, no worries.

by rickyrattlesnake

It was a hardware problem. Bad voltage regulator or capacitor (not sure which) on motherboard would cause it to shut down hard drive on either IDE port as well as keyboard,mouse and any card slots. CD-ROM on the other IDE port remained powered on, even when ports were switched. Don't know why. No warning beeps, just no more power to them. Power supply replacement didn't fix, so I replaced motherboard.

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