W98SE Hangs During Instllation Process

Hi Folks,

For Christmas I trated myself to a Fujitsu/Siemens Celsius W340 processor box (tower case) and an Acer P225HQL monitor, connected with a DVI-D ( "David? ") cable. I partitioned the 160 Gb hard disk so that the first 6 Gb is the C: drive. To create that FAT32 partition, I used FDISK with patch 263044 applied (has to do with large capacity disks). I specified Yes to enable large drive support.

Upon attempting to install W98SE, everything's normal until AFTER the second automatic restart of windows. At that point, the default splash screen is displayed and it just hangs. Upon rebooting, I get the Windows 98 Startup Menu, where I'm invited to boot in Safe Mode. If I select Safe Mode, it complains that "Windows cannot detect and install your devices while it is running in safe mode. To detect and install your devices, restart Windows and don't choose safe mode." (Of course. What else did you expect?) After that, it displays control panels' display applet, where it lists my monitor as an unknown monitor. (I don't try to change that.) After that, I get a dialog box explaining what safe mode is, then I finally get a working desktop.

But it's still only safe mode. I tried poking around in Device Manager to see if I could find anything unusual. But everything looks normal. No yellow question marks.

If I choose Normal Startup in the Startup Menu, it just hangs.

I tried creating a boot log and here are the last 10 lines of same:

. . [0000BBC7] DEVICEINITSUCCESS = VFAT
. . [0000BBC7] DEVICEINIT = VDEF
. . [0000BBC7] DEVICEINITSUCCESS = VDEF
. . [0000BBC9] Initing hsflop.pdr
. . [0000BBFC] Init Success hsflop.pdr
. . [0000BBFD] Initing esdi_506.pdr
. . [0000BC03] Init Success esdi_506.pdr
. . [0000BC03] Initing esdi_506.pdr
. . [0000BC03] Init Success esdi_506.pdr
. . [0000BC04] Initing esdi_506.pdr

I had a problem with W98SE some years ago and I don't remember what the problem was, but I remember the solution. The solution was to add the following line to CONFIG.SYS:

device=c:\windows\himem.sys /m:1

I have not yet tried the above.

Any help anyone could give me would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Jennifer

 

Been a long long time since I installed Win98SE, but have you tried to decrease the first bootable [C:] partition to something like 2GB ?

 

The partition size shouldn't be an issue rsinfo (98 can handle 127Gb). I'm thinking it's just simply incompatible.

Jennifer, 98 is antiquated and you're trying to install it on a relatively modern system, have you considered upgrading to XP? The learning curve wouldn't be too difficult.

EDIT: Sorry didn't mean to sound condescending (just looked at your system specs ). Advice still stands though, try a later OS (perhaps testing the hardware with Linux)?

 

Oops.

Wildfire is correct. The confusion arose as the file size limit under FAT32 is 4 GB.

Long time - as I said earlier.

 

I tried the fix I used previously and it did not work. I will try several other variations of same.

I also found a driver disk. I suppose I can boot in safe mode, go to each device, particularly system devices, and attempt to update the drivers.

I'll let y'all know if that works.

 

I've finally been able to boot W98SE---sort of.

In Safe Mode, I was able to delete the PCI Bus device (LOTS of work trying to figure out which device to delete), and then was able to boot in Normal Mode. It detects and tries to install PCI Bus upon startup, so I have to escape out of that each time. Is there some way to REALLY remove it so it doesn't try to reinstall it?

It doesn't recognize my CD-ROM drive. No drive letter even in windows explorer. Any suggestions?

Three people have suggested virtualization. I'll try that.

Jennifer

 

During startup, go into the BIOS (startup configuration settings). You should be able to find the PCI Bus controller and disable it.

 

Now THAT'S a REAL GOOD idea!

Jennifer

 

Unfortunately, the BIOS doesn't have PCI Bus as an option---only 8 items labelled PCI Interrupt.

That's okay, I'll just press Esc every time it tries to reinstall it.

I'm calling this resolved.

Jennifer