Had a problem for 2 months now. running win 98se with xp sp1 on top. normal op ok. even installed linux on top of that. for some now forgotten reason had to reinstall.
since then (using 2 different cd copies of 98 and xp), format disk (even used kill disk) when its done with the base install of win 98 fat32 (even kill disked fixed boot and mbr) win98 gets to the win 98 screen and then cycles (restarts) repeatly. last night I went ahead and added xp sp 1 anyway and it to recycles. what gives? am now running xp sp1 solo.

are u using unattended cd's?
maybe it's a glitch there?
are u installing 98 and xp / linux on a different partition?

sorry for the delay in responding. I have been building the unattended AIO-DVD from Dec till now. SAME thing when doing the dual system install. I used to routinely install win 98 and then XP without a problem, but something has changed. Last night I used the AIO to load win98SE still recycles. Then used killdisk to kill every byte track on the hard disk. Reinstalled win98se SOLO same thing. Added XPSP2 on top leaving it as a FAT32 partition (yes only 1 partition ie contains c:windows and c:XPSP) never got the dual boot win98SE of course fails to load. Is it the dos emulation mode creating the problem? IF so why did it used to work and no longer works.

Located the problem. i have a Shuttle AN35 board with 2 sticks of PC2100 and 1 stick of PC2700 memory. XP handles this fine but the win 98 mem manager couldn't so....it just kept cycling.