windows 98se 98 meg ram seagate HD maxtor HD QDI legend advance II motherboard with VIA VP3 580 chipset hi, Be newBe here. Be won't boot. If I use the floppy to boot I get the Be splash screen but fails at the same point booting from the HD does. That is right after MCDEX loads for the CDRW. Any suggestions for getting Be to boot and other Be helpful websites?

mcdex is a dos file. If you booted from the beos boot floppy then I am not sure how you could have seen that comment. 1. Did you install the R5 PE on your windows? Look for a subdirectory called beos. 2. Do you have an AMD cpu above 1Gig? 3. Do you have a promise ide board?

Hmm... you've confused the hell out of me with this line: > That is right after MCDEX loads for > the CDRW. Are you booting MS-DOS? What version of BeOS are you using? (e.g., BeOS R4.5, BeOS Pro Edition 5.0, BeOS Personal Edition 5.0 (PE), etc.) How did you install it? How is your hard drive interface to the computer--SCSI or ATAPI? (I'm assuming you're not using USB, Fiber Channel, IEEE-1394, but if you are, this information would be useful.) If you're trying to boot BeOS from a SCSI drive, what sort of host adapter are you using? (Not all are supported.) How did you create your boot floppy? When the boot process fails, what happens exactly? Does the system hang, does it pause for a long time then reboot the system, or do you get some sort of error message? Is your computer system configured to boot from a floppy? Can you boot your computer from a DOS floppy? Can you boot BeOS from a CD? That bit about loading MCDEX really throws me. If you're booting BeOS, you should *definitely* not be seeing that.

thanks for taking the time to help me out. sorry for being unclear. you're right. when i boot from the floppy i don't see the mscdex message. when i try to start Be from windows used i see that message just before it died (i removed the CDRW and commands to activate it to troubleshoot). i just see an underscore cursor with no HD activity. answers to questions >1. Did you install the R5 PE on your >windows? Look for a subdirectory called >beos. Yes. It's personal edittion version 5.01 and it installed OK but I can't start Be. >2. Do you have an AMD cpu above 1Gig? No. I have an AMD K6-2 300mhz >3. Do you have a promise ide board? No. The IDE host is provided by the chipset (VIA) on the motherboard. (VIA VP3 580) >How did you install it? A PE download from the web. I installed it to my physical D drive which is a primary slave >How is your hard drive interface to the >computer--SCSI or ATAPI? (I'm assuming >you're not using USB, Fiber Channel, IEEE->1394, but if you are, this information >would be useful.) ATAPI in PIO mode4 right now. >How did you create your boot floppy? After installing Be i used the create floppy executable. >When the boot process fails, what happens >exactly? Does the system hang, does it >pause for a long time then reboot the >system, or do you get some sort of error >message? I should let it sit longer but so far i get a screen with only an underscore cursor. >Is your computer system configured to boot >from a floppy? You mean in the BIOS? Normally I boot from C first but right now I have an A, C boot sequence. >Can you boot your computer from a DOS >floppy? Yes. A windows98 startup floppy works. Can you boot BeOS from a CD? >That bit about loading MCDEX really throws >me. If you're booting BeOS, you should >*definitely* not be seeing that. Sorry about that. See my ealier comments. Additionally I removed the windows splash screen at startup. It may normally be hidden. Again I don't see that message booting from a floppy or since I removed the startup references to the CDRW (for troubleshooting purposes). I also swapped video cards with no difference. Does Be take a long time to boot the first time? Is there a problem installing Be on the D: drive (D: is just a drive. no windows directory) thanks

Check Frizbe.com to see if your processor is supported by BeOS. Some AMDs aren't. Have you tried installing it within the same partition and same hard drive as Windows 98? That's the default install and a good beginning point from figuring out your problem. It should install into a windows folder and be able to launch right from the windows 98 desktop. To install and boot it on a different drive, it may need to be on a dedicated BeOS partition so it can use the BeOS bootman. Keep posting your progress. -Bob

The only thing I see is that you may have trouble with the PIO thing. I read somewhere something about it. I will look for exactly what it was. Anyway,,,, With what we hope is a good bootfloppy, when you see the "loading...." comes up go and press the spacebar and choose safe mode options. If you don't get to see anything on the bootup then you will have to get another bootfloppy for R5. R4 and R5.1 won't work. What size is the floppyimage file? That may be bad somehow. Your floppy disk must have every bit correct since the entire disk will be filled by an assembly language boot loader. Try this if you can also. Get a dos/win(9x/me) bootdisk and copy two files to it. Loadbeos.com and zbeos. Boot to dos prompt and run loadbeos and see how far it gets.