Many problems installing Win98

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A young child in the family was given a cast off computer with Win98. It was working but had a lot of garbage from the previous owner and wouldn’t do more than 16 color VGA. Child wanted to play a few games that needed 256 colors. I suggested that I take the computer and wipe the hard drive and reload Win98SE (I have a disk) to clean it up. I’ve done this enough times without problem before on my own computer. The family can’t afford a computer which is why I tried to clean up this one. I did tell them that if someone offers another free computer, take it, as I think this one is junk.

Anyway, reformatted C drive ok and tried to install Win98 however something would go wrong or hang somewhere with every attempt. Finally after about six tries with multiple error messages along the way I finally got it to complete installing and seems to boot up OK. At this point I figured I better quit while I was ahead (at least I think I was!) I’d located a better monitor and put in another video card from another old (working) computer and got the 256 colors. However I’m wondering what may have caused all the problems with the install, which never happened to me before. Wondering if there could be other bad hardware somewhere (motherboard, etc. ???). I documented the final attempt at installation but it’s way too much info to put here. So I’ve posted the detail in two PDF’s to my web site if anyone wants to have a peek and see if anything makes any sense.

First, here is a Belarc Advisor printout of what’s in the computer:
computer_profile.pdf (application/pdf Object)

And here is the detail notes of the installation procedure including the error messages:
computer_problems.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Rod Corkum
Halifax, Canada

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Sounds like you did everything reasonable and the problems are more than likely hardware related if it’s an older box. Have you opened the case and cleaned it out ?? Often an accumulation of dust can cause minor overheating and that can cause the system to throw off a bunch of errors that seem to be coming out of left field. Take a look at this Star Post post 563,623 for some pointers. HTH

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Thanks for the reply, I’m presuming it’s likely flakey hardware. It didn’t appear to be dusty, etc. inside – I had the case open to change the video card and also changed the CD drive as the original was making some funny noises and gave me a CDR101 error the first time I tried to load Win98. Internet research indicated this to be a hardware issue, cable connections, etc. Funny that it couldn’t find the CD to load Windows however changing to E and doing a “dir” listed the CD’s directory. Anyway, I had another CD drive that I knew worked so I swapped it out before I started.

Rod

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The more you say about this box, the more it sounds like hardware. I wouldn’t spend any on it at this point. As you said, take the next one that come along and use this one for parts.

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