Reinstalling windows 98 failure

Hi Guys, My PC is a PIII 850 256mb RAM 40Gb and 30Gb drives.
Whenever I used the PC it nearly always froze or gave a blue screen which required a restart. Finally, it reached the point where I couldn't do anything so I decided to try and reinstall Windows 98SE. All went smoothly until it gort the part about searching for plug n play devices, at which point it froze. I didn't worry too much initially as it said in the on screen instructions that it might. I restarted and it went through the initial startup routine until a blue screen with no text on appeared and all keys and the mouse are frozen.

Haven't got a clue what to do now! Options appear to be reformat and do a clean install, but I don't want to lose data (I don't have enough space left on the second drive for some video I am editting), take it to a shop (bottom of my list) or maybe get a windows upgrade disk and start again?

If I try to run setup now, it tells me that the PC already has an operating system so I shouldn't continue, but what happens if I do? or can I just go and get an upgrade disk instead.

HELP PLEASE!

 

I encountered the identical problem on a older 98 system...and it does it every time Windows is installed or reinstalled. It turned out to be the video card.

Try this: If it will boot into Safe Mode, go into Display Properties and manually set the video display to the lowest resolution and color quality available. Reboot and if Windows loads normally, cancel Windows' attempts to install the video drivers by itself, let Windows load and then do a manual installation of the drivers for the video card.

 

If that fails, take the case off, and remove all other periperals.
Leave video (duh!) but take out the modem, NIC, soundcard, etc.
Go into BIOS setup, and disable com 1 and 2.
Set "PnP OS Installed" to NO.
Set "Reset configuration data" to YES.
Disable USB.
Once windows is installed, you can go back and enable the stuff you need, one at a time, and then add back the modem, NIC, sound, whatever, one at a time also.

 

To get around this, at the prompt type this in, pressing enter at the end of each line, assuming you are looking a A:\>:
c:
cd\windows
ren win.com win.old
Install windows. It will do an overlay install, your installed programs will still be installed, none of your data will be deleted.
Of course, follow the above posted advice.

 

Thanks guys,

Tried a combination of these and found it to be the cable modem, once that was unplugged the reinstall went smoothly. Plugged the modem back in and it fired up straight away.

Theanks for the help!