W98 won't boot with new drivers?

[Silverflame]

This happened with the 5.41 drivers, and now it is happening with the new 5.50.

I begin with using pd_uninstall to uninstall the current drivers. Then I reboot. I install VGA drivers, reboot again. Then I'm ready to install the 5.50, so I run the setup.exe file.
After it finishes, I have to reboot once again. Then when I enter w98, I go about my normal business, but then suddenly it freezes. So I reboot. This time though, it doesn't even make it all the way into windows, just stops with the hourglass right before loading icons and background.
Each time I reboot, the same thing happens.
So I uninstall the drivers (using safe mode).
Reboot. Install VGA drivers. Reboot. Install 5.50 drivers. Reboot. SAME thing, freezes before entering w98. The same thing happens when I try installing 5.41, or even 5.11.
HELP, now I'm running 16 colors!

[HollyBerri]

Could be a few things.

First, boot into Safe Mode (you can get there, right?) and try the following:

Open C:\bootlog.txt in your text editor.

It's a big file, and hard to read, but if you have a problem like corrupted fonts or missing device drivers it will tell you.

Look in the Device Manager and see if you find any obvious conflicts.

Open System Information (Run==>msinfo32) and choose Hardware Resources==>IRQ and see what IRQ the G400 is on, and whether it's sharing with something. Copy the list and post it in your next post.

Now you could also have a bad/incomplete download, but we won't worry about that now.

I also find that you should install the VGA drivers immediately upon using the Matrox uninstaller (go to Display Properties and change your adapter type to Standard PCI VGA adapter) before rebooting that first time.

Also I recommend that the first reboot (after you uninstall the G400 drivers and change to VGA) should be into Safe Mode, where you can check the Device Manager for ghost devices and can delete any such ghosts you find before running the Matrox setup.

I think what is most probably happening is that because you have no display adapter set when you reboot, Windows has to look for the VGA adapter, but meanwhilst is loading other devices. So it puts all the devices on the various IRQ's, but then, when you run Setup, it has to set an IRQ for the G400, and it is forced to choose one that is sharing with something that doesn't like sharing with the G400 (you got an SBLive!, by chance?).

Whatever these 2 devices are, they are both trying to be used at boot and they can't, so Windows locks.

We need:

details of your system.

IRQ list.

Don't worry, I had a similar problem installing the Aureal Vortex drivers the other day, it was tedious to track down, but easy to solve.

All is far from lost.

-----------------------------
Holly

[paulcs]

This sounds like an IRQ issue to me. If it is, it may happen every time you install new video or sound board drivers. I think you may want to free up some resources by disabling devices you never use.

If you don't run DOS games, and you haven't already, you really should disable Soundblaster emulation in both Windows and in DOS. If you don't know how to do this, we can talk you through it. Soundblaster emulation takes up an entire IRQ and it does not like to share. It only works with DOS games, and disabling it will not adversely effect you Windows performance.

If you have a COM port you are not using or you don't use USB, they can be disabled, which will free up IRQ resources.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net