Change your BIOS to very conservative settings and reboot several times
(disable all the goodies like caching and BIOS shadows, slowest RAM clocks,
etc.).  If the problem goes away, you can add one or a few more aggressive
settings back in and repeat the reboot & run test until the failure recurs.
This would identify which setting is not stable.
First, though, try setting HALT ON ERRORS to NONE and reboot (leave other
BIOS settings as-are)...may be a false or non-problematic error halt causing
your stoppage.
Also you could make sure you have Win98 patches loaded and check mobo mfg.
site for any required BIOS flashes for your system.
As for # of times to reboot to verify, that should be the number of
consecutive times you've ever successfully booted plus one.
Martin Kurr
email [log in to unmask]
> From:         Ken & Barbie[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Subject:      [PCBUILD] Boot Problem
> Hello, I have recently put together a new system.
> Consist of the following:
> Abit 55T31 oem socket 7 mainboard (ebay special)
> ATI xpert 98 8mg video card
> 64mb pc100 ram
> WD 8.4gig ide drive
> Intel 233mmx
> Win 98
> My problem is that when the system begins to load windows, the
> computer hangs, the drive light begins to flicker and the system stops
> loading. At first I thought it was the CLabs awe sound card,
> which I removed. I have checked for conflicts, ran msconfig, loaded
> the system without config.sys & autoexec.bat, removed video drivers
> but still have the same problem.
> What confuses me is that it seems to be random, sometimes it runs
> fine, other times it will not boot, which after reseting, the system dumps
> into safe mode.
> Any advise will be greatly appreciated.
> Thanks, Ken Cornell
> [log in to unmask]

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