[aurgathor]

I decided to do a clean OS re-install and do a bit of HW upgrade on my spare PC (Dell Precision 410 with 2x450 MHz PIII and 1 Gig RAM) that's been in use since 2002 (W98/W2K) but exhibiting some weird issues lately.

I installed a Sil0680 based ATA133 HA (SD-ATA133R from Syba) in said PC, and started setting up Win98 SE as the first part of a multiboot (98SE/2K/Linux) package. After installing the drivers for the ATA133 card, "Restart in MS-DOS mode" and "Shutdown" appears to be really screwed up. The first one is to 'hang the system', the other one is to 'corrupt the filesystem'.

I made a ghost-ed image of the system drive just before installing the drivers for said HA, so it's beyond any doubt that the ATA drivers, or whatever else the installer may have changed is somehow connected to this shutdown problem. The only thing installed before the Sil0680 drivers were Win98SE with network support from a CD, and the driver for the video card. (FireGL 1000)

The shutdown menu now works in this way:
Standby => instant shutdown requiring powercycle to get out
Shutdown => quick reboot and corrupt HD/filesystem (at least Win98 thinks that way)
Restart => restart
Restart in MS-DOS mode => hang with a blinking cursor in the top left corner (requires CtrlAltDel or Reset)

To make it even worse, Scandisk will usually runs on boot, and with the following message:
"One or more of your disk drives may have developed bad sectors.
Press a key to run ScanDisk with surface analysis on these drives..."
With a 16 Gig partition, that takes quite a while, so I usually just cancel the surface analysis part. Drive was checked with the factory tool and I let surface analysis to run couple of times to completion -- no problem found, so I'm 99.9% sure that there is nothing wrong with the drive.

Any idea on how to fix this? (other than replacing the HA) Boot drive is only 80 Gig, with a 16G partition for Win98.

I went thru Win98's built in help, Q232657, turned ACPI ON/OFF, installed a couple of shutdown related patches, but all to no avail. I know that 98SE is very finicky in this respect, but based on the evidence, it's clear that the HA and/or its driver somehow plays a significant role.

TIA

[RJARRRPCGP]

aurgathor, on May 25 2006, 12:48 AM, said:

I decided to do a clean OS re-install and do a bit of HW upgrade on my spare PC (Dell Precision 410 with 2x450 MHz PIII and 1 Gig RAM) that's been in use since 2002 (W98/W2K) but exhibiting some weird issues lately.

I installed a Sil0680 based ATA133 HA (SD-ATA133R from Syba) in said PC, and started setting up Win98 SE as the first part of a multiboot (98SE/2K/Linux) package. After installing the drivers for the ATA133 card, "Restart in MS-DOS mode" and "Shutdown" appears to be really screwed up. The first one is to 'hang the system', the other one is to 'corrupt the filesystem'.

I made a ghost-ed image of the system drive just before installing the drivers for said HA, so it's beyond any doubt that the ATA drivers, or whatever else the installer may have changed is somehow connected to this shutdown problem. The only thing installed before the Sil0680 drivers were Win98SE with network support from a CD, and the driver for the video card. (FireGL 1000)

The shutdown menu now works in this way:
Standby => instant shutdown requiring powercycle to get out
Shutdown => quick reboot and corrupt HD/filesystem (at least Win98 thinks that way)
Restart => restart
Restart in MS-DOS mode => hang with a blinking cursor in the top left corner (requires CtrlAltDel or Reset)

To make it even worse, Scandisk will usually runs on boot, and with the following message:
"One or more of your disk drives may have developed bad sectors.
Press a key to run ScanDisk with surface analysis on these drives..."
With a 16 Gig partition, that takes quite a while, so I usually just cancel the surface analysis part. Drive was checked with the factory tool and I let surface analysis to run couple of times to completion -- no problem found, so I'm 99.9% sure that there is nothing wrong with the drive.

Any idea on how to fix this? (other than replacing the HA) Boot drive is only 80 Gig, with a 16G partition for Win98.

I went thru Win98's built in help, Q232657, turned ACPI ON/OFF, installed a couple of shutdown related patches, but all to no avail. I know that 98SE is very finicky in this respect, but based on the evidence, it's clear that the HA and/or its driver somehow plays a significant role.

TIA

Make sure you have Q273017. (I believe it's Q273017)

[aurgathor]

RJARRRPCGP, on May 25 2006, 12:39 AM, said:

Make sure you have Q273017. (I believe it's Q273017)

That was a good suggestion and I just installed it, but unfortunately, it didn't help. Still blinking cursor when I try to restart in MS-DOS mode.

Edit: but it did fix shutdown, that's no longer a dirty reboot. But for me, the restart in MS-DOS mode is the more serious issue since I use that rather frequently.

This post has been edited by aurgathor: 25 May 2006 - 01:13 AM

[LLXX]

Edit MSDOS.SYS in the root of the drive and change BootGUI=1 to BootGUI=0, that way it'll always boot to a command prompt. Just type "win" and press Enter to start windows. This is the setup I have.

[aurgathor]

This probably works, but it takes much more time and it's cumbersome. I need to be able to go from GUI -> DOS, and that would involve a restart with the MSDOS.SYS mod, and with scandisk thrown in.... you get the picture.

Anyhow, I just bought a Promise Ultra100 TX2 fron eBay today, and I hope that will fix it. We shall see.

[LLXX]

You can disable the automatic disk scanning on bootup...

[aurgathor]

Well, it was the HA beyond any doubt. I replaced it with a Promise Ultra 100TX2, and the problems are gone. No RAID and no ATA133, but at least it works.