trying to install win98se

trulyred · Mar 26, 2002

I have an older pc that I want to put win 98se on.I reformatted the HD and started loading win98. it gets to a point at the very begining where it say it is loading win 98 then a pop-up comes up blank,(like there should be something there ) and hangs up the loading process. It is a legal copy of win 98se and I do have it on my main pc, and had no troubles with a clean install on that one.

So the question is ,whats gone wrong why is this happening?
thanks in advance for your help

tr

repo man11 · Mar 26, 2002

Was it running fine before this? Did you do any hardware changes? I've had similar problems with PC's I've put together, but it was allways a hardware problem that caused it.

pcgirl · Mar 26, 2002

Agreed, there's gotta be a hardware problem somewhere. I was installing a copy of Win98SE over the weekend on a friend's pc, and I was getting all kinds of errors during the install (brand new HD by the way). It turned out to be bad RAM....might want to check that.

trulyred · Mar 26, 2002

I'll check it out. I just put in a new nic card,just might be ticket,i'll let you know.

thanks...........tr

stool · Mar 26, 2002

Not knowing how old the system is, it might not meet the minimum harware config for SE if it is too old.

Try installing with just CPU, RAM, vid card and the necessary drives, nothing else.

repo man11 · Mar 26, 2002

That's possible, but boy you'd have to have some sorry hardware. I've sucessfully installed Win98SE on an 486 that I overclocked to 100 MHz! I think it only gave me 4 gigs out of my 30 gig drive, and it didn't have an upgradeable BIOS. But it worked.

Xaotic · Mar 27, 2002

If you have an app that will test the processor try that as well. I had a bad batch of AMD K6-2 450s that would operate normally on the first section of the install and then crash consistently at a later point in the install. I was rather disappointed to find that 4 of the 10 from that same batch had to be RMA'd. I used some of Norton's old dignostics to find the errors. You've probably already tried this, but have you copied the CAB files to the HDD and tried to install from there? The CDROM could be dodgy and failing to read consistently.

trulyred · Mar 27, 2002

I am not sure what the problem is.I pulled the nic card and tried installing again but it hung up on the same spot,right as it's setting up the install wizard it checks all the drives then bingo,up pops this black rectangle and hangs.

this pc, I built four yrs ago it's a K6-233.on a asus tx97-xe mobo.I have had it up and running just a week ago it ran fine All I wanted to was upgrade the os to 98se.all I have of that is the full install, not the upgrade.So that was the reason for the re-format. I will keep trying ,but in the end if all else fails I can always upgrade to win2k...............tr

repo man11 · Mar 27, 2002

I would try pulling everything but the vid card, clearing CMOS, and runing it at setup defaults, and see what happens then. How much memory do you have? I had an old board that I recently upgraded from a P-133 to a K6-2+ 450. It could run either SIMM's or DIMM's, but it wouldn't work with a DIMM that works fine on other boards, it would allways lock up. I put in some 72 pin EDO, and it worked fine!

Breadfan · Mar 27, 2002

What kind of harddrive is it??

Its most likely the harddrive.

If its a Maxtor of Western Digital, get their respective diagnostic software...create a bootable floppy and check the drive out. Also, those should have the software to overcome the BIOS limitation.

Someone gave me a 1.2g drive for free, said they couldn't get it to work, and sure enough it wasn't writing correctly. The WD software picked that up.

When I tried loading Win98SE on it, it would hang and get a black box just like you said.

Hopefully your 30g isn't dead, but it may have some errors that can be fixed with the diag. software.

Mike

Breadfan · Mar 27, 2002

repo man11 said:
It could run either SIMM's or DIMM's, but it wouldn't work with a DIMM that works fine on other boards, it would allways lock up. I put in some 72 pin EDO, and it worked fine!

Repo man, I've got some boards like that around here, don't you have to change the voltage if you use simms vs dimms? I know they all have jumpers to set between 5v and 3.3v...but you know, there may have been 5v dimms when they first came out, I just don't remmeber...

Just a thought
Mike

repo man11 · Mar 27, 2002

Voltage change? I there weren't any that I'm aware of, and I checked it out pretty thoroughly. When it was given to me, it had a dead harddrive, but up until then it had been working fine. It had the Dimm, 64 meg pc100 installed. I put a spare drive, updated the BIOS, and put a P-233 in it at first, and loaded Win98SE. It seemed ok, but it would lock up eventually, it was only a matter of how long after boot up, not if. I was ready to give up on the board as junk, when I tried SIMM's in it instead. I was amazed that that cured the problem. Then I was certain that the memory was bad, but I ran it in another machine, and it was fine! The BIOS would auto detect the memory, and I tried every different memory setting there was to make that DIMM work, but I had no luck with it, and no problems with the EDO SIMM's.

trulyred · Mar 27, 2002

YES!! I did it!! finally got the bugger to load. know what it was???the bios virus protection was enabled.DOH!

How something so simple and overlooked can cause so much grief.....sheesh I pulled every card excpt the sound card and vidio card.It still jammed up in the same spot.then I pulled the disks just to see what would happen,when up popped this screen that said that sometimes a systems bios virus protection can effect the loading of windows!!how about that!

anyhow I got the sob running now so far so good....thanks for all your input people I appreciate the base of knowledge thats out there, thats why I like it here so much!!

cheers
tr

repo man11 · Mar 27, 2002

Cool, glad you got it fixed! I would never have thought of it, every time I have done that, it would always beep at me, and I would be able to hit enter to get past it. How old is the BIOS on this board? You might consider an update if possible.

trulyred · Mar 27, 2002

the bios is v.01 from 1997. I happen to have the latest bios available for it, but I got to tell you I'm a little worried I might screw it up if it's not done right and I'm just so happy to get this machine back up and running ,I don't think I want to mess with it right now, know what I mean??

tr

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