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Windows Installation Trouble
Not working...what am I doing wrong??

New MessageWindows Installation Trouble (modified 0 times) Beeblebrox
Okay, this is driving me kind of crazy. Maybe one of you who've gotten 98se up and running on the WS can help me understand what I'm doing wrong. I've got a WS wired up to power the HD (working). It's got two identical 16 meg DIMMs in it (one original and one from another WS). I'm using a Promise EIDEMAXII ISA IDE controller.

I've got everything set up so that I can boot off the 1 gig drive I've got hooked up. I'm also able to boot with my ATAPI CD-ROM drive as a slave and my HD as the master. Everything is disabled in the WS BIOS (the USB, IO ports, IDE, etc). Using this configuration, I run setup from the Win98SE CD. Setup seems to run just fine, rebooting when needed. After the first reboot, I enter the normal information (CD key, etc) and as usual, it reboots a second time (this time to boot into windows).

I get the Windows splash screen, but then instead of Windows comming up, I get the "It is now safe to turn off your computer" screen?! What the heck? Then if I reboot, it just hangs endlessly on the Windows splash screen. I've tried this a couple of times, once with a 540 meg drive, with the same effects.

Do I maybe not have the BIOS options configured correctly? Do I need to flash the BIOS before installing windows (I didn't think that was needed just to get it running)? I know I'll eventually want to Win98 Lite it, but I just want to get it running once first.

Please, can someone who's gotten windows running let me know what I might try? Suggestions from anybody else would also be really appreciated, of course. Thanks - this is making me nutz!

05-31-2000 09:31:28

New MessageRE:Windows Installation Trouble (modified 0 times) gr8_brit
A couple of dumb questions time....

1) Have you overclocked the CPU yet ??? - I had troubles with Win98SE at about 266+ Mhz (from memory). would boot Dos mode, but no Winblows splashes etc.

2) Have you tried with a standard configuration - i.e. 180Mhz, only 1 SIMM fitted ?? - just thoughts!!

OK. How I did it (distant memories)

1) installed disk into "standard" PC.
2) disk set as slave
3) Fdisk'd, formatted and sys'ed - i.e. at least "WinDos" [f8] bootable
4) copy of Win98 directory copied to new disk
5) other drivers (as needed) copied to new disk
6) power down, remove primary and set new drive as master
7) booted [f8 -> Command] and fdisk'd as bootable primary drive.
8) power down
9) installed in Websurfer
10) power up and setup run from [f8] command mode.
11) wait about 45 minutes... chug chug
12) TADA !!!

- then later did again with 98lite installed. Changes to:
1) -> 5) as above
5a) copy 98Lite to win98 directory
5b) copy Win95 required files (extracted from CAB files directly - a useful feature of win98!!)
5c) run 98Lite - this takes a while!!
6)+ as above.

Hope that helps.

gr8_brit

05-31-2000 17:36:30

New MessageRE:Windows Installation Trouble (modified 0 times) ckbone
If you have a copy of Win 98 you don't need to set a new hard drive up in another computer.......First , temporarily hook up a cdrom as a slave in the system. Make sure the hard drive is recognized in the bios settings. Then set the boot order as cdrom,C. When you boot off the win 98 cdrom, you are given the option of running the setup program. If the drive is new, not formatted, etc, you are given the option of setting it up, using only the cdrom. This works every time I tried it in every computer, including the surfer. Just make sure the hard drive is recognized correctly in the bios. I was unable to do this, however with the original 16 mb ram. With 32mb it worked fine. During the inital setup, it actually said I needed more memory. Forget floppies, forget DOS, forget cdrom drivers......Win98, despite all the bad-mouthing, is an easy setup.
05-31-2000 18:41:00

New MessageRE:Windows Installation Trouble (modified 0 times) Beeblebrox
Hmmm. No I haven't overclocked yet (I just wanted to make sure I could get the the vanilla version up and running before I did anything else). I've done everything almost exactly as you described...and like I said, it installs all the way up to the point where windows is actually supposed to come up and give you the desktop enviornment, but then I get that dang "it is now safe..." screen and that's all. Here's what I'm doing, exactly:

1) In main PC: main HD master, slave 1 gig for WS, boot with Win 98 Startup disk (just command line).
2) Format and sys 1 gig (it's already Fdisk'ed and set active and is bootable).
3) Copy MSCDEX.EXE. HIMEM.SYS, and OAKCDROM.SYS to 1 gig.
4) Setup autoexec.bat and config.sys to load the above.
5) Copy WS drivers and bios flash stuff to 1 gig.
6) In WS: 1 gig as master, CD as slave. Boot order as C:,CDROM
7) Boot WS...HD and CD are recognized just fine (IDE controller not in PnP mode).
8) Change to CD directory and run setup.
9) Setup runs...takes about 45 minutes.
10) On second automatic windows reboot, I get splash screen followed by shutdown screen.
11) On manual reboot, I get boot menu - choosing even safe mode gives me the splash screen forever.

I guess I'll try making the boot order CDROM,C: and allowing windows to try doing it's own thing (yeah, I've done that before on other machines and it couldn't be easier - very cool). Barring that, I'll try copying the win98 directory to the 1 gig itself and running setup from there (but I tried that before and it failed - although last time I tried it there was only 16megs ram in there, but the error it reported was lack of disk space! which obviously there wasn't since when it crapped out there was like 800 megs free).

I should have time tonight to at least try the boot order re-arrangement. I'll report back if that works or not (I can't believe what I'm doing now doesn't as it is...). Maybe this IDE controller is giving me trouble? I dunno, I'll let you know what I find out tonight. Thanks for the posts.

06-01-2000 07:30:57

New MessageRE:Windows Installation Trouble (modified 0 times) Old+Lady
Turn ON "report floppy to Win95" in BIOS.
Maybe also boot in safe mode (you know, the F8 thing) and reinstall drivers.
06-01-2000 11:17:51

New MessageRE:Windows Installation Trouble (modified 0 times) Beeblebrox
Report floppy, eh? Ok, I'll try that next...didn't notice that one in the BIOS. I attempted to use the CDROM,C: boot order, as previously posted, but all I got was a non-system disk message. Which leads me to believe that the thing isn't seeing my CD drive without those real-time drivers I was using before. Damn IDE card must really be a lemon. Ah, well.

It's installing off the HD again now...copied the win98 directory to the drive directly (again). We'll see if it works this time. If not, I'll turn on that floppy option in the BIOS. I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks!

06-01-2000 12:03:02

New MessageRE:Windows Installation Trouble (modified 0 times) Beeblebrox
Thanks for all the help, folks. The problem turns out simply to have been the lack of memory. I still have some kind of problem trying to install from the CD drive, but whatever, I won't be using a CD drive with this box anyway. With the 2 16meg DIMMs, the install from the HD worked this time. Again, thanks.
06-02-2000 06:57:14

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