I have an Intel PIII 450 MHz machine with 64MB SDRAM, 4 GiG HDD, 32x Samsung CD drive, SIS 6326 AGP. BIOS : Award Modular Bios Ver 4.51 PG Chipset : B687ZX BIOS Ver 1.2 I believe the spec meets the requirement for setting up Win 98 SE or Win 2000 Prof. But I am having trouble installing and setting up Win 98 SE or Win 2000 Professional. I went through the MS Win 98 and Win 2000 newsgroups, which suggests BIOS problem as one reason of failure. Do I need to upgrade the BIOS or there is problem in the set-up ? Where can I find the upgrade / details. Thanks DC

I don't think you need a bios upgrade. What kind of problems are you having?

One thing to check: Make sure that the anti-virus is disabled in the bios.

You say you can't install win98 or 2000. What exactly happens when you are installing? At what point do you get stuck? Bioscentral.com will tell you almost everything you ever wanted to know about the BIOS.

Problems while installing Win98 SE: -------- 1. The last stage of installation in the setting up of devices/searching for PnP devices - never completes successfully. It throws up a blue screen. If I reboot somehow that stage goes through (no idea how that happens). 2. After sufficient amount of time when I boot the machine it gives one of the following error : a) Windows protection error. Reboot the system. b) ...some error while loading/configuring CONFIGMG. Restart the machine. 3. When I shutdown the machine the screen goes blank and it does not show anything (proper shutdown message). 4. If I start the machine in SAFE MODE by pressing 'Ctrl' kay while startup the system fails to load HIMEM.SYS. Says invalid XMS memory at xxxxxx.xxx. 5. Somehow the Win 98 SE registry gets corrupt. I have installed a 3rd party registry checker and solved the problem. Problems while installing Win 2000 Prof: -------- 1. If I change CMOS setup and boot from CD after some setup file read the CD stops. The system doesn't hang but its a no go stage and I have to reboot. 2. If I somehow manage to run sartup by executing f:\i386\winnt or take a dump on another partition and run the setup the process or system hangs at some stage. 3. When I the setup program from the dump I get messages like cannot read file xxx.xx. These file names are not consistent and can stop at any file. During the dump process no file read error come up. I have run SIMMTESTER and Tufftest tools to check system and there is no problem. Scandisk flows through smoothly. These are few of them. Thanks DC

go into bios and turn off anti-virus and then set bios to default. if it works ok you can change bios settings one at a time till you find the one that causes the problem.

Hi, This may or may not help, but it sounds like there may be a conflict with the hardware setup configuration. Enter the BIOS setup and in the PNP configuration delow 'Plug and Play OS' there should be an item 'Reset Configuration' and it will be set to 'Disabled'. Set this to enabled, save changes, and try setup again. Next time you check the BIOS, this Reset Configuration will be disabled. This is because when you set it to 'enabled' the system reconfigures the hardware addresses and resets the item to 'disabled' With luck, Windows will install properly. You also mention using "SIMMTESTER and Tufftest" I have not used these and do not know how good they are. If you still have problems, it may be worth downloading these MemCheckers and run them overnight. Memtest86 or Doc Memory Also when you run 'Scandisk' have you done it in the "Thorough' mode? Also, do you have a 'Health' feature in the BIOS? If so, what is the CPU temperature when these problems happen? HTH