cannot install windows

[Kenjura]

machine:
intel 440bx motherboard (ga-686bx)
intel pentium 2 400 mhz
maxtor 5400 8gb
diamond viper v770
soundblaster awe 64
netgear fa10tx
128 mb ram Kingston pc100 cas (unknown)

problem:
The machine recently crashed to the point where the hard drive had to be reformatted. Eindows 98 won't re-install. It gets right up to the 100% mark in setting up windows 98 setup wizard before crashing. We've tried multiple installs of 98 (a totally separate copy of 98se). The drive checks out fine with scandisk and it works fine in other computers.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[GregMal]

Here's some things I'd try:
1st: Have the minimum hardware installed. Take out the soundcard, nic, and modem if you have them. 2nd: Copy the Win98 install and cab files to a directory on the harddrive and install from there.
Greg

 

[Souka]

Sounds like a piece of hardware is screwy....assuming this is the case:

Remove everything but the FD, HD, Video Card, keyboard, mouse, motherboard. Load Win98

If this works....add one piece of hardware at a time and power-up. Keep doing it till the flaky piece of HW shows up.


Also, make sure BIOS settings are correct (especially the option for "PNP OS INSTALLED: YES"
If not sure, choose the "Setup Defaults". Worry about tweaking later....

 

[zogg]

If removing hardware still doesnt work then you have to boot from the startup disk and enable cd rom support. Then navigate to the tools\oldmsdos directory on the windows cd. Xcopy the win98 directory to partition on your hard drive like d:\win98. Do it like this.

x= cdrom drive on your machine.

x:\tools\oldmsdos xcopy x:\win98\*.* d:\win98\*.* /s /v

the s switch is for subdirectories and the v switch is verify.

Now boot from the boot disk but hit shift and F5 keys at the choice of booting with or without cdrom support. Now you are at a command prompt. You can then go d:\win98 and do the setup. If it still gives an error then goto safemode command prompt only and do the install, it will be slower but should work. at least it always does for me when I have a problem like that.
Good luck.


zogg

 

[Kanly]

If your bios has a virus protection option, make sure that's not enabled.

 

[Milito01]

This happens to me all the time. Usually my problem is I have the bios virus protection set on. A couple of times it appears as if it has frozen at 100 percent, but if you leave it alone for a while, it will actually continue the installation.