W98SE hanging during setup!

[Guest]

Putting a new system together and I am having trouble loading the operating system W98SE. At first I had a problem reading from the CD-DVD drive. Then I just waited forever and was able to get setup started from the CD. Now it seems to hang frequently during setup and I have to restart frequently. Setup gets close to finishing when it tries to setup PnP devices. I only have the HD, and the video card connected. I have tried this about 4 times from scratch with similar results.

I have a new SOYO K7V Dragon+ MB with WD 60 GB HD and Pioneer 16x CD-DVD drive. I have the driver for the CD but I am a little confused on exactly how to link it with MSCDEX and the driver in autoexec.bat and config.sys. Right now I am using the standard OAK drivers that come with W98. Can anyone help me here?

The system acts like there may be a data problem from the CD or there is an intermittent problem with the MB.

Any other suggestions?

Thx

 

[Guest]

It sounds like the CD-DVD rom. Ive had that trouble before(maybe).

Is you pioneer a Slot load? I had to send mine back and get a diff one. Also, DVD players are NOT good at reading cdroms. Especially BURNED cds, hence a burned copy of SE.
Also, it could have trouble picking up where it left off after spinning down. You have to consider replacing something.
Are you using a boot disk and do you leave it in the drive? are you booting off the CD? If the first is the answer, find a 98 or 95 machine and make a new boot disk.

Thats the best i can do.

 

[Guest]

I thought it might be the CD as well so I tried an old slower model with the same results. I hear SOYO is coming out with a new BIOS any day, apparently there are some issues to be resolved.

Right now I am reloading W98SE from original CD and boot floppy with BIOS set to optimized and internal cache disabled. It sounds funky but it was the best SOYO could recommend. It does seem to be working but instead of 30 minutes to load OS it will probably take three hours. Then I can reset cache and maybe it will work.

If not, I have my RMA number ready!

 

[jiffy]

Let me see if I can help. I just about reload windows once a months, sometimes twice in a row. Hay, I'm a frager. I would be suspicious of the DVD too, also I found when I have my mobo tweak it may not install all the time, just one finigy setting could do this. Normally though I am able to get threw the installation. So optimized may not be best, do you have a lower default to try? Also are you using fdisk and deleting the primary partition, then making sure there are no more partition, then creating a primary partition? Then restart, format, install Win98. Myself I set the bios to boot up from cd first, instead of using a floppy. Let me back up here, when you boot up from floppy or cd and it ask you if you want to format or continue. I press F3, which is to quit followed by a Ar D: prompt, then I type C: to where I put fdisk. So if you fdisk right, have you bios on default, and check your cdrom you should be ok, if not, I don't know what els to tell you. could try clearing the cmos


defrage is child's play-fdisk

 

[Guest]

OK, i just found this on the net and it could help your problems.

Make sure that the third screw (from the left) on the HDD is installed to keep the heffer shaft in place. This prevents the finnagin pin from becoming displaced; therefore keeping the eagles foot aligned and in place with the system.

Hope this will help.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the comment. What board are you using anyway? I sure hope it is not a SOYO Dragon + like mine because I really don't want to be fdisking that much.

I think one problem I had was the CD in not being able to boot from CD originally but I got around that. Then it kept hanging while loading W98 and I got around that by disabling internal cache but that took 5 hours on a 60GB HD to fdisk, format and load W98SE.

Now I have loaded most of the drivers/files from the SOYO disk but it hung on one and I am again in troubleshoot mode. I was going to load the new BIOS onext but I am hesitant if all is not well with the HD. I can't seem to get by ScanDisk, it goes in to surface scan mode automatically and then HANGS after 14 blocks.

 

[camieabz]

Set your BIOS to default settings, make sure your PnP settings are on Auto and try that.

<b><font color=blue>~scribble~</font color=blue></b>

 

[jiffy]

I use a Abit KT7A-Raid.. Ya, one time I was partition over and over, and I didn't go all the way threw with installing windows. I broke my mobo. got another one and hack why fry one when you can fry two at the sometime 2 days 3 mobo $400, but that's another story. haha
I had a couple times I couldn't install windows, because windows was all ready on there. So now I just got to fdisk, but sometimes I don't have to and can format. I know for me one wrong setting in the BIOS can give me a problem, even if the system was working fine before. And if you can't boot to your CD, I would think it's the CD. If you got it up, but stop during the drivers, what els could it be but something in the BIOS or and Windows wasn't installed right. Out side of that I'm stump, and am all ready stretching.

defrage is child's play-fdisk