need help with a NDIS protection fault error

[Phisherman718]

on a new system I am helping a friend build.

Here's what we have...

A Gigabyte GA-8Iexp mother board with a Pentium 4 2.26 processor. We went with the WD 40GC caviar hard drive, a Plextor 40-12-40a cd-rw, a teac 3.5 floppy,a 8500LE ATI vidio card and a USR 3094 OEM modem. We are using his Windows 98 original CD from his first computer.

I have been able to get the system past the safe load by the step-by-step option and selecting NO when it prompts loading the NDIS and NDIS2 devices. As I am no expert, I think the devices are related to the network system integrated on the mother board. At least I am getting a "!" on it at the device manager.
I have disabled the ethernet option on the CMOS as well as the RAID controller(as I don't need it)

I have tried reinstalling windows 98 several times using the software from Western Digital to format and partition the hard drive, and a win98fat32 boot disk(once with a regular boot disk).

I also have updated the MB Bios by downloading the latest version from Gigabyte. Nothing seems to work. I have tried to locate a possible conflict by researching FAQ's on Gigabyte and Microsoft Windows own tech support site.

I haven't tried installing win98 using setup/pI yet as I don't know what that will do.

I will say that I am very disappointed with Gigabyte's support. There is absolutely no phone support and really no one to turn to. Everything has to be done by E-mail. When I can get back over to my friends house to get all the model numbers, etc I plan on E-mailing them if we still can't figure this out.

Another thing that may or may not have to do with this is I can't load the Chipset Drivers that came on the Gigabyte CD. It requires a supporting Operating System and Windows 98 will not work. It will accept Win98SE( which we don't have) but not regular 98. I must have missed that one on the web site when I was checking out the board.

Another thing that is difficult is that my friend uses AOL which will not install correctly, thus he has not internet to download and upgrade drivers, etc.

Sorry this is so long, but I'm trying to give as much info as I can.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!!

Steve

 

[Phisherman718]

I think I may have found a solution to the NDIS drivers on the Windows Tech site.
If your curious about this rarity, check it out. It is Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - Q243199.
I haven't tried it yet, but I think the download might work. What I think was happening with this new system is the system was trying to load windows before it loaded the NDIS drivers thus causing the hangup and stack overload problem. In the article I think they refer to the problem we are experiencing as racing because of the stack overload that follows the intermediate driver stall. Unfortunately, because it's a download you apply after you install Windows 98 I don't see how it will fix the registry problems it is causing during the bad clean install. I hope this makes sense as I'm not a computer wiz or anything.
Just a guy who, with the help of sites like this, is attempting to build his friend a machine.

Thanks,

Steve

 

[Phisherman718]

Well....I was wrong...but I was close . According to article Q312108 the reason I am having this NDIS protection fault is because I am using a processor greater than 2.2 with Windows 98. SOoooooo.... to fix this I have to contact Microsoft Support where they will, I suppose, walk me through getting past this limitation with the NDIS clock cycle. Thought I'd let you know.

Steve