I'm trying to install win98se on an old P3 500Mhz, 128 meg ram, 4gig drive, and the board is an Asus P3v133.

I use my trusty old boot disk which I've used to install win 98 dozens of times on dozens of different machines. For the first time, this disk will not work on this machine described above. I tried creating two different boot disks from two other win 98 machines, none work.

So here's what I have eliminated:
Its not the disk drive, I've tried several others, same problem.
Not the drive cable, same reason as above.
Its not the disk. It works fine on other machines and will boot up nicely.
I can insert my memtest disk in this machine and it will boot that up so it can boot a floppy disk, just not any kind of windows 98
boot disk.

I'm at my wits end because I can't find a reason for this. The computer recognises the
drive at boot up, the bios recognises it. Its listed properly as a 1.44 3.5 drive.

So I have a boot disk that works on every other machine I own except this one. I've never encounted this before where a computer refuses to boot.

It sounds like its loading for a few seconds but I don't get the menu that comes up whichs asks if I want to boot with or without the cd drive. The green light on the drive just stays on the drive keeps running but nothing happens and I have to shut down the system.

The only other thing I can possibly think of is to download another boot disk from bootdisk.com

Any ideas at all?

Asus P5N-E SLI
Intel Dual Core E6750 2.66Ghz
Asus EN8600GTS 256Meg
2 gig Crucial 800Mhz DDR2
WD 320 gig SATA 2
Lite On 20x20 DVD-RW
CoolerMaster Mystique case w/500 watt PSU

What shows up in Device Manager? Any Yellow ? or ! ?

Remove Drive in Device Manager and reboot.

Check Bios to ensure A: is in Boot Device list before HDD.

There is nothing to learn from someone who already agrees with you.

This is a blank hard drive. I'm trying to install windows 98. The boot disks hangs/freezes at boot.

Asus P5N-E SLI
Intel Dual Core E6750 2.66Ghz
Asus EN8600GTS 256Meg
2 gig Crucial 800Mhz DDR2
WD 320 gig SATA 2
Lite On 20x20 DVD-RW
CoolerMaster Mystique case w/500 watt PSU

Boot into bios and set boot order to floppy drive first.

Try disconnecting the hard drive.

And you may want to format and re-create a new boot disk again, making sure you do it on a DOS/Win9x machine (not an NT/2K/XP machine). If that one doesn't work try creating from this one (98bot10a.exe):

http://support.mpccorp.com/download...

It boots and looks for the CD-Rom as "R" drive. If you get it to work, then fdisk/format and copy the contents of the Win98 folder to a freshly created directory on the HDD (i.e. "C:\Temp98") and run Setup from there (it installs significantly faster...)

Post back your email address and I'll send you a bootdisk file that only loads himem.sys and the cdrom driver. That's all you need to install windows. I've noticed that sometimes all the aspi drivers the generic bootdisk loads can cause problems.

Thanks daveincaps, you can use this one:

windsor_kijiji
at
yahoo.ca

I've tried the ones at bootdisk.com and I get the same result, the disk runs for a few seconds but nothing happens on screen, then the disk access noise ceases, the light stays on and nothing happens resulting in shutting down the computer manually.

I'll also try the one T-R-A posted

Asus P5N-E SLI
Intel Dual Core E6750 2.66Ghz
Asus EN8600GTS 256Meg
2 gig Crucial 800Mhz DDR2
WD 320 gig SATA 2
Lite On 20x20 DVD-RW
CoolerMaster Mystique case w/500 watt PSU

Problem solved. Here's how:

Decided to take a hard drive from another win98
system and install it on this computer. After loading all the drivers for the new system on this hard drive, I created another boot disk based on this system. After rebooting with this new boot disk, low and behold it works. Installed original blank hard drive and I'm in business.

However, the question still remains, why did
boot disks from other win98 machines (I tried 2) refuse to work? What was so special
about this P3 system that it would refuse any other boot disk but one that was created
from its own system?

As I mentioned in my original post, I've installed win98 on dozens of systems over the years and this has never happened before. One boot disk fits all so to speak until I came across this system. There's nothing out of the ordinary about it but something about it refused to acknowledge a boot disk from another win98 machine as well as every boot disk I tried from the net.

Any ideas on what may cause that? Its got me stumped. At least I know the computer works and that it can boot a windows 98 boot disk.
As long as it created it itself, it would work. From any other source, nada.

Asus P5N-E SLI
Intel Dual Core E6750 2.66Ghz
Asus EN8600GTS 256Meg
2 gig Crucial 800Mhz DDR2
WD 320 gig SATA 2
Lite On 20x20 DVD-RW
CoolerMaster Mystique case w/500 watt PSU

It was probably the fault of the floppy drive on the system used to create the bootdisk rather than the drive on the Asus P-III. A bad drive can screw up a good disk with a single usage. A slight misalignment in the writing drive may have left you with a disk that wasn't usable in every other drive. And although it may not make sense, I think just reading a disk in the affected drive may cause the same problem. Bootdisks seem to be more sensitive to the problem.

When I've had that same partial bootup problem, creating a new bootdisk usually solved the problem. But since it seemed like you'd addressed that possibility, I thought it might be the driver problem.

The only thing that I could think of thats different from this machine as opposed to others that I've put windows 98 on is that this P3 had a fairly recent CD-RW but even then, I had tried disconnecting that as well as the hard drive to see if I could get to the boot menu but it still wouldn't work. Bios did recognize it properly.

Very strange problem. I can't think of a logical solution for it.

Asus P5N-E SLI
Intel Dual Core E6750 2.66Ghz
Asus EN8600GTS 256Meg
2 gig Crucial 800Mhz DDR2
WD 320 gig SATA 2
Lite On 20x20 DVD-RW
CoolerMaster Mystique case w/500 watt PSU

To verify things, try reading floppies created on a different computer with the floppy drive in the computer in question. Sometimes a head can get knowcked out of alignment. Teh drive can write floppies and read what it wrote but can't read floppies from other sources.

I'll give it a try but as I mentioned above, I tried several different floppy drives on the computer in question, several different disks which worked on other computers and the only one that would work was an old memtest disk that I had lying around and for the heck of it, I tried booting with some old NT boot disks which worked.

I could not get any flavor of win98 boot disk to work until I did as I described above which was to hook up a working win98 hard drive to this computer and create a boot disk with it. Then it would work. In fact the disk that I used was one that refused to work with this machine when it was created with a different win98 machine.

Only once it created its own boot disk would it recognize it. Stubbon, picky machine I guess.

Asus P5N-E SLI
Intel Dual Core E6750 2.66Ghz
Asus EN8600GTS 256Meg
2 gig Crucial 800Mhz DDR2
WD 320 gig SATA 2
Lite On 20x20 DVD-RW
CoolerMaster Mystique case w/500 watt PSU

Not sure if you MEAN you tried several flopy drives or just tried floppy DISKS. What it was stating is that it is easy for the heads to get out of alignmenent. I have had to pitch several drives over the years due to that problem. IF you menat you tried several floppy disks in the same floppy drive that would indicate the drive heads are out of alignment or there is some other issue with the drive.

Several disks AND several drives. A nice combination of both which tells me its not just a general drive read error. I suppose its possible that I do have several bad disks and several bad drives but again, I come back to the same problem, once this computer created its own boot disk using a disk I'd already tried several times it would work.

Asus P5N-E SLI
Intel Dual Core E6750 2.66Ghz
Asus EN8600GTS 256Meg
2 gig Crucial 800Mhz DDR2
WD 320 gig SATA 2
Lite On 20x20 DVD-RW
CoolerMaster Mystique case w/500 watt PSU

If you have created a boot disk from the computer in question why not compare the files on that disk to your usual disk to see what differences, if any exist.

mmm I concurr with the suggestions that this sounds like a discrepancy between two floppy drives and respective head alignment (as mooted by various others above); one or both drives are misaligned - either due to wear or a knock etc...?

Often an issue with tape decks; and not unknown with floppy-drives.

Disk-media would be a lesser possibility - but not impossible or unknown.

Atarileaf - here's a different slant to your question. If I create a boot disk from a computer with W98 already installed, that boot disk will not work on a new install. But if I create a boot disk during a new install, that disk will work on any subsequent new install. Go figure!

The catch 22 of course is that I never get into the installation in order to create a new boot disk.

The first part is incorrect though and this was in my original post too. I've used the same disk to boot several computers of various configurations successfully until the one mentioned here.

Here's another one for those who think its a disk read problem with the disk and/or floppy: I took my original disk, the one that wouldn't work on this P3, took its floppy drive that refused to read said disk and used both on another computer. Guess, what? Worked great first time.

So the same disk and drive that wouldn't boot one computer worked on another. If it was a read error, it wouldn't read the disk in one computer and not the other. I'm sure this is some strange anomaly that can't easily be explained by a simple head alignment problem.

Asus P5N-E SLI
Intel Dual Core E6750 2.66Ghz
Asus EN8600GTS 256Meg
2 gig Crucial 800Mhz DDR2
WD 320 gig SATA 2
Lite On 20x20 DVD-RW
CoolerMaster Mystique case w/500 watt PSU

I still recommend you compare the two floppies for differences. There has to be something required for the P3 system that is missing from the floppy you usually use. Compare file size and date in addition to name.

That's an odd one then. Did you use the same cable? Also most bios offer boot sector virus protection. That might be only for hard drives and is usually left disabled. But if it's enabled and works for floppy disks also then maybe that's the reason.

Could be Dave. Never thought of that one. I'll have to check the bios and see if boot sector virus protection is on or not.

I did try several cables though. No effect.

Asus P5N-E SLI
Intel Dual Core E6750 2.66Ghz
Asus EN8600GTS 256Meg
2 gig Crucial 800Mhz DDR2
WD 320 gig SATA 2
Lite On 20x20 DVD-RW
CoolerMaster Mystique case w/500 watt PSU