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Hi. After installing Sound blaster PCI card under Win98 and rebooting PC, Win 98 just hangs at the boot screen. I can still get into safe mode and have tried uninstalling Sound Blaster PCI from add remove programs but unfortunately cant get win98 to load normally anymore. I have the onboard SoundMAX audio which is still enabled in bios and drivers installed on win98 so i guess i could use that instead of Sound Blaster. The Sound blaster card is now removed from motherboard but win98 still hangs on boot up.
Can anyone help?
Boot to your BIOS and find a setting labeled "reset system configuration". Enable this setting, save and exit. This will allow Windows to reallocate your system resources, hopfully solving the problem. Enabling this setting shouldn't cause any adverse affects.
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You might also try restoring a previous registry. Boot up and hit F8 to get to the boot menu. Choose 'command prompt only'. At the c:\> prompt type scanreg/restore and enter. Choose a registry to restore with a date from before you installed the new card.
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Hi.
I am also running WinXP on a dual boot with win98 and i cannot find the scanreg.exe under the win98 partition. It says bad command or filename and i have also tried searching for it. Would using the last known configuration for XP fix the win98 boot up?
I haven't yet tried restoring BIOS settings to default, i'll leave that as the last option.
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The setting I referred to doesn't reset the BIOS settings to default. What it does is allow the IRQs to be redistributed, thereby clearing up any conflicts. Soundblaster cards are resource hogs and could have been utilizing multiple IRQs. ALL your BIOS settings will remain as is.
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Just tried the Load Setup Defaults in bios without success. Anything else i could try? I would rather not reinstall win98 since i have dual boot.
When i installed the SBPCI drivers disc and before i rebooted win98 before the crash i noticed that it placed windows media player icons on desktop. Is it possible that it may have tried to install an older version of media player over the new version i had already installed? Could that cause win98 not to boot?
Interestingly i cant even get the bootlog option or command prompt to work at all it just freezes even though safe mode command prompt and safe mode work.
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I have now tried restoring the registry with scanreg/restore also. I had to use system file checker to restore the scanreg.exe file from win98 disc as it was missing from windows\command for some reason. I then booted to safe mode command prompt and was able to restore the registry to a week ago when there were no boot up problems. This however has still not resolved the boot up hang.
Any other ideas?
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RESET configuration data in the BIOS. This IS NOT the same thing as reset to defaults. Look for this setting and enable it.
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I have looked for that option but my ASUS P5VD1-X motherboard bios doesnt appear to have it.
The manual containing bios instructions can be accessed from asus website:-
http://support.asus.com/download/do...Could it be called something else?
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I can’t find that setting either.
On page 78 of the manual is the setting for PnP OS yes or no?
If no, are the IRQs all assigned to PCI device?If set to NO, then try YES, save and exit.
One other question, have you attempted to boot into safe mode?
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It was already set to yes. I have tried changing to no but that doesnt solve it either.
Yes, i can always boot into safe mode just cant get into normal mode. As soon as win98 logo appears it hangs.
Anything else i could try before i have to reinstall win98?
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Before you install an add-on sound card you should first disable onboard sound. It might not be too late to try this from Safe Mode but first I would try this idea:
Physically remove your add-on sound card.
Right click My Computer/Properties and go to Device Manager. Double click "Sound Video & Game Controllers". Now remove the entry for your sound system.
Reboot. With a bit of luck it will restore the sound back to the onboard (as you've now back dated the registry) and you can then go through the add-on card ritual BUT disabling the onboard sound first.
DerekW
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... second thoughts re #13.
I think it would be better to remove the sound entry FIRST, then power off and remove add-on card, then reboot etc.
I'm hoping this might fix the lock-up.
DerekW
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Hi Derek. Unfortunately that doesnt work either. There are no add on sound cards installed on motherboard and they are all removed from win98 device manager and i have also disabled onboard sound in bios too. It still locks up at normal mode. The only way i know of to resolve it is to format and reinstall win98 but i am running a dual boot and would rather avoid a reinstall right now.
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If Win98 will boot to Safe Mode you must have a conflict somewhere than Windows can't resolve.
When you tap F8 to go to safe mode you also have a choice to boot with step by step confirmation. Diong this should show you what setting is causing the problem, as Windows will lockup at that point.
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0theHill
At step by step confirmation i chose 'y' for every option until it said load EMM386, at which point when i pressed 'y' it freezes. What does that mean?
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EMM386 is a windows memory manager. I am not sure if it is needed or not. Because no one else has been participating in this thread, save Derek and me, I suggest you create a new post "system freezes at EMM386". One of the Windows gurus here should then pickup on this and help out. How did you remove the Soundblaster software?
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Got it! Added 'REM' at start of EMM386 line in config.sys. Then ran step by step again. It loaded past each option until it said it couldn't find country.sys then display.sys at windows\command. I booted into safe mode and checked the directory and found them inside windows\command\ebd. Why were these two files moved here? Anyhow i copied them to windows\command were they are supposed to be (i think). Rebooted win98 normal mode now boots correctly.
Now it appears to be fixed it still doesnt answer what caused the conflict in the first place. Sound Blaster PCI seemed to cause a problem with EMM386 when i installed it.
Thank you for help all.
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ebd = emergency boot disk. Those files are always there. The ones in the normal location must have gone missing.
Unless you shut down and play DOS games then remming out emm386 should be fine.
DerekW
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... is emm386.exe in c:\windows ?
Maybe that went missing too which caused it to stop there.
DerekW
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I haven't used ANY Creative cards in five years because they are resource hogs and thier drivers are buggy. Onboard has gotten pretty good. Only downside is that it uses CPU cycles. That can be mitigated by spending more on a faster processor instead of the SB card. If you have more problems you might consider installing Windows on top of itself. You need to be careful you don't create a new folder when doing that.
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Actually, EMM386 is a DOS memory manager - config.sys & autoexec.bat are not normally required for Win9x, although some soundcards did have to be configured that way
"Why were these two files moved here?"
They weren't - those are used to create a bootdisk (EBD=emergency boot disk) - autoexec.bat & config.sys are only executed if they reside in the root of the boot drive (C:\)
If I know the answer I'll tell you the answer, and if I don't, I'll just respond, cleverly
--Donald Rumsfeld
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... and I'm slow to the mark - I think I was briefly stunned by the inclusion of that bootlog
If I know the answer I'll tell you the answer, and if I don't, I'll just respond, cleverly
--Donald Rumsfeld
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Resinstalled Sound Blaster PCI on motherboard, booted win98, reinstalled drivers, and rebooted win98. Same thing happens - EMM386 caused win98 to hang. REM EMM386 and win98 boots fine and sound blaster PCI card is now working properly.
Still puzzled as to why EMM386 causes win98 to crash as an older PC i have installed it on never crashed at bootup?
As long as i know how to get it to work. Thanks to everyone who pointed me in the right direction!
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It may have been trying to setup DOS sound for games etc.
It's not unheard of that some of those SB drivers can be a bit weird. Sometimes they seem to shove XP/NT drivers onto W98SE and need kicking into sanity.
Whatever, glad to hear you fixed it and thx for popping back to let us know.
DerekW
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It is possible (on some systems) for EMM386 to cause problems by trying to claim a memory address already in use by a device (or vice versa). To workaround, you'd identify the contested range of addresses and use the 'exclude' parameter
Although usually not required, in most (but not all) cases it does no harm
If I know the answer I'll tell you the answer, and if I don't, I'll just respond, cleverly
--Donald Rumsfeld
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