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scrapser

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    Windows 7 x64

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  1. Update I ended up buying an old Gateway 700C tower off eBay. It has a socket 473 CPU and the 850 chipset. I completely dismantled the tower and all components inside, cleaned everything thoroughly (even dismantled the PSU for cleaning), put it all back together and it works famously. So now I have: Intel 1.8 gHz CPU 512 megs PC800 RAM Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 (brand new off eBay and not an OEM card) geForce 2 MX400 graphics card Monster 3D2 (Voodoo 2) 3D accelerator (glide) Gateway VX920 19" Diamondtron NF monitor (used less than a month and in pristine condition) Thanks to all who have given me what help they could.
  2. Thanks for posting those links. After doing some extensive research I have found only two other forums/threads where the owner discusses installing Win98 on the nF4 Ultra-D board. In one case, the owner asks as I did about the slow start up at the splash screen. Nobody replies to his question for help and in the end he too mentions his own finding there is no support for Win98 on an nF4 board (but then asks why does Win98 install?). The second post has the owner asking about the same problem but the thread goes nowhere. All I can say is I installed it on my board back in 2005 and there was some setting in the BIOS that eliminates the stalled startup issue. I wish I had made a note of it. I got a response on the Clunk forum where a member states he used the same trick and will dig through his notes and try to find what it is and post it. But even so, I'm starting to wonder at the wisdom of forcing it to work now that I know it was never meant to be installed in the first place. Back in 2005 I was naive about chipset drivers and never even thought to install them on that Win98 installation. The mobo utility CD came with WinXP drivers and I did install them there only because I explored the CD contents, found them, and asked about it. Oddly, it never occurred to me there should be a set for Win98 as well. I guess I just assumed they were something special above and beyond what was normally required by an operating system since up till that point I had never had to deal with chipset drivers on my computers (they were all store bought).
  3. Just thought I would mention I just found a thread on Anandtech dated 2002 where I guy is discussing that he is running Win98SE on his DFI UT nF4 Ultra-D board (the same one I have).
  4. Thanks. I'm not giving up. It would be sweet to get past this issue. I will look at the BIOS and see if I can find the IR-Adapter entry. My SoundBlaster card is a 5.1+MP3 Live!. I bought it factory sealed off eBay.
  5. I thought I would explain something here to help clarify how I'm approaching this project. I know it sounds hokey but we all operate in our own way. This computer was my first homebuilt which I purchased in 2005. Prior to this I had a Gateway GP6-450 that had a geForce 6800 Ultra graphics card that I bought later to upgrade from the original geForce 4400 ti. I purchased a BFG 7800 GTX graphics card for my first homebuilt. I mention this because I have a memory trigger (something I clearly remember) when I upgraded to my second homebuilt in 2007. My second computer was a socket 775 with a E6600 dual core CPU. When I bought these components to upgrade, I also bought a BFG 8800 graphics card. I clearly remember discovering with the 8800 graphics card I would no longer be able to use Win98 since it did not come with Win98 drivers. I remember being disappointed like it was yesterday. I also have a distinct memory of struggling in the confines under my desk to pull the second 512 MB RAM stick when I learned Win98 doesn't work with more than 512 megs of RAM...then having to go back and reinstall it after I was done and had set the win.ini file to limit recognized RAM to 512. I just don't remember what it was I had to do to get it boot without the lag. I don't remember if I even had the lag issue back then. I have a vague memory of finding something in a forum (I think it was DFI Street which sadly no longer exists) but the only thing I clearly remember was learning what I had to do in the win.ini file to limit the RAM recognized. I was hoping whatever the solution was would not be so hard to find again. I have my order history at NewEgg to reconstruct which parts I ordered and when. This also helps recall of what I did. I think this computer's hardware is okay. I have tried installing WinXP Pro using a SATA HD with no issues at all.
  6. Gave that a try but made no difference. I have to say something here about what I remember. I originally built this computer with 1 gig of RAM. I clearly remember removing one stick to install Win98/SE when I first put it together in 2005. After it installed, I changed the win.ini file [vcache] to 524288 and then re-installed the second stick to be available for my WinXP OS which I installed 2nd. I don't remember touching the [386Enh] but could have. Also, right now I have the installation on a 20gig partition to avoid the limits of Win98. It's odd the way this is playing out. Once Win98 finishes booting it runs fine. I keep trying to remember what it was I had to do to eliminate this issue which is why I'm hoping someone else may know the answer.
  7. Well after over a year I am back. Please ignore the last post I made regarding not having Win98SE installed on these components. I'm now giving it another try. I'm using one of the original IDE hard drives (120 gig) I had used previously to install Win98 and the update CD for SE. I'm at the point where I installed Win98 and got the stutter/lag behavior each time it reboots. I then tried the SE Update CD and still get the "not enough conventional memory" fail. I checked and I have 573K free conventional memory. Right now I'm trying the "setup /is" approach to install SE. On the first restart, the splash screen ran normally for about 3 seconds and I saw the hard drive light flicker during this time. Then it bogged down again. I'll let it sit and run through for a while and see if I can get past this. I don't have it yet but I just bought a brand new Win98SE CD factory sealed. I will probably clear off all this and try running that on a clean reformatted and scanned hard drive (20 gig partition to start). Please let me know if you have any other tips I might try. I am not giving up on this. I think it's just a matter of identifying what the problem(s) is. Editted to add: I finished installing the SE Update CD. The stuttering splash screen behavior continues on each restart as it did previously.
  8. You can add CH Products Combatstick, FighterStick, Pro Throttle, and Pro Pedals (all USB) devices to the list. I still have mine and have been using them since 1999. The Control Manager driver (downloaded from the Tech Support page on the CH Products website) is designed to work with all versions of Windows back to and including Windows 98. For Win98, the software is installed with all CH Products devices disconnected...reboot...then plug each device into a USB port and they will be recognized. Using WinXP and above, the software is installed after connecting all devices. In addition, a good resource for tweaks and setup is the CH Hanger forums website.
  9. I have to apologize and thank everyone here who tried to help me get this problem resolved. I just did some research and tried to trigger my memory of the chain of events as I upgraded my computers over the years. One thing struck me...when I bought my current sound card. I know for a fact I never used it for Win98 because I bought it roughly 6 months after I built my first computer (the hardware I'm trying to set up now). I bought the hardware to build my first computer in May 2005 and bought the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Elite Pro in October 2005. This means I had Win98 and WinXP on my last Gateway and could never have had it installed on this hardware I'm trying to use. Anyway, it was good of you to offer help. At least I have a new resource for other issues should they come up. Thanks again folks! I think I'll ponder whether I want to go through the hurdles of collecting all the hardware I would need to set up Win98. For now I think I will take a breather.
  10. Well I still have the same problem. I tried installing using one hard drive with a 20 gig partition, then again with an 8 gig partition. I have only one stick of ram and one hard drive, CRT monitor, and video card. The RAM stick is in the correct slot for this mobo. I'm stumped. The reason I tried 8 gigs was because I remembered when I bought my Gateway computer with Win98, it arrived with only an 8 gig partition on the drive. I can't remember what I did to fix it, that was 13 years ago. I didn't buy System Commander 7 until 2000 when I bought a Gateway computer with WinXP Pro installed. My boss suggested getting System Commander when I told him I was hoping to find a way to install Win98 and dual boot. I found a forum discussion where a person was reporting the same problem (splash screen seems to hang). I think he gave up before waiting to see if it would eventually finish booting and assumed it was frozen. Anyway, the responders all recommended upgrading to WinXP so the discussion fizzled. I'm not sure what else I can try now. When I ran the very first install, I used a WD SATA 320 gig drive with a 125 gig partition. I had my modern LCD monitor hooked up, too. This led me to think it was either a monitor or SATA drive issue. Since then I have tried both old IDE drives but not until tonight did I try a really small partition. Perhaps there's something wrong with the hardware. All I can say is at one time I had Win98 (updated to Win98SE) installed on this mobo, RAM, HS, video and sound card. I also had an ethernet connection since it was my main computer. I can try disabling everything to do with the onboard LAN (and anything else...the board has an onboard sound module called, "Karajan"). Beyond that I'm at a complete loss.
  11. Arminius, You just may have hit on the answer. When I last installed Win98 back when I was actually using it, I remember installing it on a small partition, then using the Partition Manager that's part of System Commander to expand the size back to what I wanted. I'm pretty sure I used a 20 gig partition and later expanded it to 40 gigs. I have the same hard drives I was using back then installed in the box I'm setting up now. One is 120 gigs and the other is 80 gigs. I used the 80 gig for data backup and split the 120 into two partitions 80/40 (it's all coming back to me now). I put WinXP Pro on the 80 gig partition and Win98 on the 40 but had to start with a small partition first. I'm at work and will have to wait until tonight to try this out! My face will be bright red if this was the culprit all along.
  12. Still having the same problem. I found an article online where someone reported the same problem trying to use the update CD to update Win98FE to Win98SE and was getting the "not enough conventional memory to check hard drives". The admin of the site told him: "Setup was unable to run ScanDisk to check your hard drives. This could be because of low conventional memory or your disk contains errors that Scandisk cannot fix when run from Setup. To work around these errors, reboot your system to MS-DOS mode and run ScanDisk /all. Then, run Setup again. If Setup still fails, reboot to MS-DOS mode and run Scandisk /all /surface. This will take a little longer, but it will ensure your hard disks are in good shape. If, after running ScanDisk with these options, Setup still won't continue, you should run Setup /is to bypass ScanDisk." For the heck of it I tried running "Setup /is" and got the update CD to finally run but it still bogs down at the splash screen during each installation restart. I think there must be something wrong with system memory or memory management (I'm not fluent on these things...just inferring things). One thing I noticed but haven't mentioned until now...during installation, I see at least three CMD windows popup in quick order and barely get to read them but they are all showing the path to the CD drive. I'm thinking the system memory has everything running so slow these windows are actually visible whereas in the past they would go by so quickly you don't see them. I guess I will completely dismantle the entire computer and try cleaning all the contacts if that sounds like it might help.
  13. I tried using the UPDATE disc. This is not an "UPGRADE" disc by the way. I bought it from Microsoft directly for less then $20 and it was mailed to me. It has its own product code on the case. On the front of the case in the upper left corner it says, "For users of Windows 98". In the middle of the label it says, "Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition Updates". At the bottom it says, "Includes system updates, Internet Explorer 5, Internet Connection Sharing, and more". The readme file says it must be installed over an existing copy of Win98 (or Win95) but I could swear I had found a way online to fool it into thinking I had Windows installed on the computer so it would be a fresh install. The file also says it will not install over DOS. It does not have an autostart file. You must manual execute the setup file to get it started. When I do so with no windows installed, it says it cannot find windows so there is no way to start the install and use the earlier Win98 CD later to prove ownership. I remember doing a trick where I created a "Windows" folder on the C drive and created a blank file with a specific name but lost that information. I think that trick was to fool the disk into think Win95 was already installed but I'm not positive. Wish I could find the trick again.
  14. I looked at my BIOS but cannot find where to disable SATA. I'll keep looking and do a search online for the answer.
  15. Thanks again for your suggestions. I do plan on literally starting from scratch and only using the absolute bare bones to install. I will also disconnect and reconnect all wires and components to make sure they are correct and seated properly. Arminius, I have Windows 98 (first edition). I also have a Windows 98 Second Edition Update CD which must be applied to an existing Win98 OS. I bought a Gateway computer in early 2000 that had WinXP Pro (OEM disk) installed. Prior to that I had a Gateway computer with Windows 98 (OEM disk) installed. I later bought the UPDATES CD I mention above. These are the installation disks I am using now. My first homebuilt was in May 2005 and it worked. Most of the hardware from that build is what I am using for this build project. Since then I have upgraded my primary computer twice (Core 2 E6600 in 2007 and Core i7 920 in late 2010). The DFI utilites CD has nVidia nF4 chipset drivers for WinXP but nothing for Win98 or Win98SE. I don't recall trying to install them for my Win98 OS but do remember using them for the WinXP OS. The infrared device issue very well could have existed back then. I have a fuzzy memory of always seeing a couple exclamation points in the Device Manager for Win98 but don't remember any details beyond that. My gut tells me these issues are not causing my installation and boot problems. I forgot to mention I took a look at virtual memory in Win98 yesterday. The C drive showed a very large number (6 digits) with a negative sign in front of it. The D drive (data backup) showed a 6 digit number smaller than the C drive (D hard drive is smaller than C) but did not have the negative sign. These appear in a drop down list that is disabled unless you uncheck the "Let Windows Manage Virtual Memory Automatically". I'm thinking there must be something wrong with the File System...maybe. The step that is taking 15 minutes to load during boot is the Loading Vxd = VMM step. The boot analyzer is a little confusing to read. The timestamp on the success line for "LoadSuccess = C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS" is 15 minutes earlier than the "LOADING Vxd = VMM" line. I interpret this as it taking the Vxd load 15 minutes to complete so perhaps the IFSHLP.SYS file is corrupt or something. I have tried installing Win98 on my original 120 Gig IDE hard drive and a new 320 Gig SATA hard drive with a 125 Gig partition. The same behavior occurs on both so I don't think it's a hard drive issue. When I try to install the graphics card driver off the CD that came with the card, it reports not being able to find a DLL file (sorry I didn't write it down but will if I see it again next time...it was something like NPA.DLL or NVA.DLL). I also have a half dozen saved driver updates. Some report the same problem and a couple say they cannot find any nVidia chip on the system. When I try to install the UPDATE CD to convert Win98 to Win98SE, I always get a "not enough conventional memory" error. Never saw this before...ever. Each time I install Win98 and look at the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files they are both empty. I'm not sure if that is normal or not as I don't remember what they looked like in the past after installing the OS. Anyway, I will report the outcome later today and anything else I discover.
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