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Slow response time in Win 98SE

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by lls 1 view

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I have an older 450 mhz machine which dual boots in Win 98SE and Win 2K Server. (using it for studying/testing.) There are hardly any programs loaded on either partition. (other than maybe Winzip) The machine has 384 mb ram.

The problem is, onthe Win 98 side, the response time is incredibly slow...to the point where you think the machine crashed. Select the "Start" button, go make a sandwich, and come back to see the menu initialize.

I've done basic diagnostics (scandisk/defrag), andthere are no errors. What else should I check? Re-seat the memory? Get rid of the Win 2K partition?

Everything works fine from the Win 2K server side.
I'd like to give this pc to my brother (after wiping Win 2K), but not if it's acting like this.

Thanks.

4 replies

by thechas

Do you have IE 6 installed?

If so, that just might be the cause.

I have seen so many problems with IE 6 and W98 systems that I no longer install IE 6 on ANY W98 system.

Likewise, if you installed DirectX 9 and the driver for the video card does not support it, you may have problems.

It has been suggested to me that the IE 6 problems with W98 are related to the video card and drivers. (like most other W98 problems)
A check for updated drivers for both the motherboard and video card might be worthwhile.

I seriously doubt that the W2K partition is part of the problem.

Chas

by lls

Thanks anyway, but the system has IE 5 installed. (I installed IE 6 on my other pc and it gave me nothing but grief.) I also have not installed DirectX 9.

by choppit

Some things you might want to consider,

1) If the OSes are on separate physical drives, try disabling the W2K drive from W98. I experienced system instability on W2K when my slave drive had Linux installed. This was cured by disabling the Linux drive.

2)Are you dual booting using Windows boot manager or a 3rd party app?

3)Is the W2K partition NTFS but not hidden from W98?

4) Reduce the system memory (eg. to 128M) and retry W98.

Hope this gives you some more ideas.

by aaelwyn

format both partitions, then resinstall Win2k on the first partition and Win98 on the second. This will allow Win2k to place the boot manager in the MBR, the Win98 boot manager should reside at the beginning of the second partition which should effectively disable it.

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