OT: need help installing Win98SE on new HD

[SpaceBadger]

My hard-drive is dying - it has been making strange noises and my "most-used" program lately is Scandisk - and more bad sectors are found almost every time it runs. I bought a new HD and decided to install Win98SE on it. The old/current/dying HD has WinMe installed as that was on it when I bought the computer and I have been too lazy to change. I chose Win98SE for the new HD because I already have it and it will run most everything I want to run, whereas I would have to buy a copy of XP and it seems that everyday brings new stories of what won't run on it.

When I first installed 98SE on the new HD there were a =lot= of items in device manager that it did not recognize or could not find drivers for. I got Online and found infinst_enu.exe at Intel's website, and after I ran that and also re-ran a driver installer from my WinMe CD it seemed that almost all of the unrecognized items were fixed. However there is still one device that is shown as "PCI Input Controller" with a big yellow question mark and black exclamation point showing that it is not properly installed. I don't believe this is a physical problem as everything works fine and shows up fine in device manager when I switch the cables and jumpers to use the old HD (as I have to do in order to connect to the internet, since the modem still doesn't work on the new setup).

Here is a combined screenshot showing device manager under both new HD and old HD. Two devices that are missing in the new setup are the Game Port for SB Live and the Net Adapter for NDIS 1394. Also, the connection arrangement for the modem is different - on the old setup (the one that works) there is another device between the modem and the PCI controller. It seems to me that any of these three might be the unrecognized "PCI Input Device", because they all are in that heirarchy in the connections. The modem is not working in the new setup, even though device manager says "this device is working properly" the modem cannot be found when I try to setup a DUN connection.

Any ideas on which device is likely to be the unrecognized one? Better yet, any ideas on what I need to do to get these missing devices installed properly before my old HD quits and dies on me, and I lose my ability to get advice or download drivers etc, since my modem is still not working under 98SE on the new HD?

Thanks for any help you can give.

SpaceBadger

[Fyron]

Try running windows update. It should work with 98, and usually finds all the drivers you need.

[openair]

he can't run windows update, because, as he said, he can't connect to the internet under win98


i bet the unknown is the Ethernet card. the game port and such might not even show up, or might be somewhere else...

and i sugest not using the WinME drivers, might be whats causeing ur problems, try finding Win98SE specific drivers..

[SpaceBadger]

Don't I need to be Online for the update to work? The modem isn't working with that setup. Oh well, I'll shut down and switch drives and give it a try - maybe it will be able to find what it needs on one of the CDs (although it didn't find it on repeated tries of removing the unrecognized device, rebooting, and suggesting various locations where I thought the drivers should be found).

SpaceBadger

[SpaceBadger]

My ethernet card is working fine under the new setup. My machine can "see" the others on the LAN, and vice versa, and share printers and files. You are right, however, that I cannot connect to the internet except by switching the old HD back into "master" status (I have the old one set as a slave in the new setup, for ease in transferring files).

I expect that unknown PCI device is one of the three that is missing from the new setup, either the Game Port, the 1394 adapter, or that extra link between the modem and the PCI Bridge.

SpaceBadger

[Fyron]

Go into the Control Panel and then into the properties for the LAN connection and whatever other internet connections are present and make sure that Internet Protocol TCP/IP and File and Print Sharing for Microsoft Networks are installed. If so, try removing them and then reinstalling them.

[Katchoo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Go into the Control Panel and then into the properties for the LAN connection and whatever other internet connections are present and make sure that Internet Protocol TCP/IP and File and Print Sharing for Microsoft Networks are installed. If so, try removing them and then reinstalling them.

The appearance (or lack therof) of the 2 above files wouldn't cause the kind of conflict Badger is seeing. You can remove all the TCP/IP, ICS, Netbios, IPX, and whatever else Windows associates to a specific NIC and the effect wouldn't be noticable through Device Manager. Windows would act like everthing is fine since it didn't know what Drivers/settings you wanted in the first place.

Badger, what's likely happening is that Windows is conflicting between devices; most likely between your Ethernet Card and Dial-Up Modem &/or Sound Card. Pop your other Hard Drive in (the one you can get onto the Internet with) and visit Linksys to get the latest Win98 Drivers for your NIC, and do the same with the Sound Card and Dial-Up Modem. Once you have these 3 Drivers you can safely delete/remove these 3 Devices from the Device Manager (inlcuding the unknown one with the "?"). Reboot, and as Win98 begins to redetect each Device, reinstall the Drivers one by one (either from a Floppy or on the Hard Drive. And make sure you unzip them if they come in ZIP format). Windows should install each Device correctly, and in turn everything should run correctly upon a final restart.

In truth you should be able to install the Drivers that you got with your hardware, without having to go on the Net to get updated ones, unless the Hardware is brand-spanking new, or was purchased Pre-Win98. The older Drivers should work fine in Win98, and once you're Online you can grab updated ones at your leisure.

Of course with Win98 just about anything can happen, so don't be surprised if nothing changes. Sometimes Windows will improperly assign IRQs and you'll end up with IRQ conflicts that shouldn't be there. Physically taking out a Dial-Up Modem from the computer, installing the NIC and Sound Card to get them running fine, and then re-installing the Dial-Up Modem (both physically and software) can sometime give Win98 the kick-in-the-butt it occasionally needs. In reality though you shouldn't have to take this drastic a step.

Something else to try would be to enter into the Properties of the Unknown Device in the Device Manager and disabling the Unknown Device so Win98 won't bother loading it. I've seen that work from time to time...

Did you install Win98 overtop of WinMe? If so you may have to wipe everything off the Hard Drive and give Win98 a clean install (again). When Win98 (or any Version of Windows) decides to do it's own thing and not co-operate in any logical manner then formatting can be the only recourse.

Hope this helps (and makes sense).

[SpaceBadger]

Whee, at least the modem is working now!

I switched back to the new HD and went through a few more iterations of: open device manager, remove the problem device, reboot, try to find drivers for "new device found" - no luck. Then while digging through CDs looking for something that might have the needed drivers, I found one that had some goodies to go with the SoundBLaster card. Since one of the possibles for the mystery device was the game port device for SBLive, I figured it might help, so put it in and ran it. Sure enough, on next reboot the mystery device was identified as the game port for SBLive and it said it was loading the appropriate drivers. No big thrill as I have never used that game port or even had a joystick ever connected to this machine. What I really needed right now was something to make the modem work.

Big surprise - I went back to fiddling with the modem properties in device manager and control panel, and when I ran a diagnostic thingy that had previously reported "modem not found" it now reported back info on my modem. I went to dial-up networking and sure enough, this time it let me create a connection file, and when I tried it out it worked fine. Yippee!

Dunno why that made any difference, unless there was some kind of conflict as I think Katchoo was suggesting.

Anyway, I now have working the stuff that I need - will eventually need to figure out why the adapter for the IEEE 1394 ports isn't showing up, but I've never used those yet and don't expect to need them until whenever I get around to trying to edit some videos.

Now to get on with moving everything else from the old HD to the new one - didn't want to spend too much time on that until I got stuff working right, just in case the fix required a reformat and reinstall.

Thank you very much for your advice and suggestions! I have been working on this almost constantly since yesterday morning and was getting very frustrated!

SpaceBadger

[JayBdey]

You should install XP, unless your system is older and can't run it. There really isn't any reason to still be using any of MS's older OS'es.

[Roanon]

I strongly advise against XP. There are a *lot* of reasons *never* to install the latest Versions of M$ software. If Win98SE works, fine, no reason to change it. For better performance on high-end systems and more stability under certain configurations, use Win2k.