Freakin' weird 98 boot problem ?!?

[Audioaficionado]

A while back after I installed w2k on my Pentium Pro box, it wouldn't boot any form of win9x.

I've tried using differant versions of bootdisk.com ME, 98 & 95 boot flloppies, bootable CDs and even a 98 HD installation. It just grinds the disk for a while and then just stops at a blinking curser line with no further text imput possible. No error message either.

It boots into MS-DOS and DR-DOS off a floppy. Linux will also boot fine off a CD or floppy.

This happened even before my bios reset itself to defaults a few weeks back.

I've had win9x on that box for over 6 years with no problems before.

I have a 3Gb FAT32 D:\ partition all set up with the installation cab files on it but I can't get into 98 to start the installation process. The 8Gb bios limit shouldn't affect the floppy or CD boots. I tried tagging the 98 setup.exe in DOS but it won't work and just errors out.

I have the HDs in auto detect mode but since my boot sequence is floppy --> HD it shouldn't affect the floppy boots.

I just want 98 for two sided printing jobs and true DOS apps that w2k can't emulate.

[verbatim]

Am I reading this right, u have win 2000 on and now u want to put win 98 on?

If that is ur situation u will just have to install ur os's from oldest to newest. Ie win 98 THEN win2k.

[Audioaficionado]

Why won't the floppies or CD boot?

You shouldn't even need a HD for a floppy or CD boot.

MS-DOS, DR-DOS, Linux & w2k floppy boot. Knoppix Linux & w2k CD boot. Nothing win9x boots off the HD, floppies or CD-ROM. The bootdisk.com floppies all work on my Abit box but not on the Pentium Pro box.

I've already installed 98se after w2k on my Abit NF7-S box without any problems. 98se is NT aware and won't trash the w2k bootloader. It's even more polite with w2k than ME was.

Why would hardware that ran win9x for six years no longer recognize it as an OS?

Is it possible that w2k or linux tweaked low level harware bios settings without me being able to see or change them back?

[El<(')>Maxi]

You installed Win2k on a seperate partition right? If not then you have caused a problem with your boot files for 98. Still, you should be able to boot it from a FD.....what kind of file system did you use when you installed 2K?

[Audioaficionado]

Yes I always use separate partitions.

I've installed it three times on two HDs. NTFS, FAT32 and this last time on a differant HD I used FAT32.

This still shouldn't affect the floppy & CD-ROM boots.

[verbatim]

I have had problems where my win98 boot disk is corrupted after only a few uses. U tried a new bootdisk?

hang on, hang on. You r trying to put win 98 on ur DUAL pp setup? Win98 is not smp aware so maybe a fresh install may not work.
U r saying that u had it going b4 though, so was win98 allready installed b4 your dual board went in or did u clean install the last time?

(by the way I finally got a avator. u like?)

[Audioaficionado]

All my win9x bootdisk.com floppies work on my Abit box but not my PPro box. Win9x just isn't being recognized as a valid OS.

It only recognizes DOS, w2k & Linux.

[verbatim]

Thats right. Your abit is a SINGLE processor system. Linux, nt, xp can handle 2 processors NOT 95, 98, me. Thats y I ask if origianally win98 was installed on your system/hdd b4 the dual mobo went in.


mayb take out 1 processor and c if that works..........

[Audioaficionado]

It ran 98 with two processors in the box, albeit only one cpu was getting used.

[verbatim]

My point being "it aint made to work, it aint gunna work"

[Audioaficionado]

It has nothing to do with the number of CPUs. There's somthing very unusual going on with the low level hardware settings. It's something that's changed in the bios or firmware settings of the mobo. Reflashing isn't an option unless I can get a spare EPROM to flash first or I could risk killing the mobo. w2k is a good OS to be stuck with.