I am coming in on the tail end of this discussion that I wish I had seen
earlier.  I have had some success in the following  when attempting to
put an existing win98 installation in a new pc/motherboard/radical
hardware change.  It may not work depending on what you have done.

1.  boot to safe mode
2.  open device manager
3.  remove "plug and play bios" - should be found in system devices
4. reboot

I cannot promise it will work, but it forces win98 to redetect all
hardware upon next reboot.  Those wizards out there who know how to use
real mode regedit might be able to guide you through deleting the key if
you are currently in a no-boot situation.

Please let me know if it helps.

Jacob Wahlman

-----Original Message-----
From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Venkat Viswanathan
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 8:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCBUILD] win 98se problem


Thanks a million Dean kukral for your exhaustive and very encouraging
reply. Thanks also for [log in to unmask] for providing a link to ms dos
command  which i had asked for and also to David Gillet, Joseph Marty
and Lynn Tracy for their posts.

I followed Dean's advise and since the dell HD was connected as a single
device with a cable with only two connectors (one for the mobo and the
other for the HD) i assumed it will be jumpered to master and so did not
change anything but changed the non working pc HD jumper to slave and
booted.

It all went very well including the bios and dragging and dropping
directories, files etc. to free space in my non working pc HD.I was
elated at the ease of operations suggested by Dean kukral and my ability
to follow them.

But alas when i went back to my main objective of reloading win 98 se on
my non working pc HD it simply won't load with various error messages
mainly of correcting cross linked files. i suddenly realised that i had
moved and emptied my "program files" directory(after renaming it to
program files-1) to free space. probably i should not have done this
because i remember having read sometime ago in this forum that the os
and program files directory should reside in the same logical drive.

So i again went back to dragging and dropping the program files-1
directory from dell HD to non working pc HD and tried to reinstall win
98se but till now am simply unable to do it. possibly the existing
windows directory has become too mangled up with so much fiddling
around.i am sure there is enough space because during "set up" windows
checks for free space and did not report anything and just ticked it ok.

so i tried to copy and empty windows directory(shift+ cick and drag and
drop in dell HD) but windows will not allow and said "access denied"

so the position as of now is (especially to lynn who wants to help but
would like to know what is it that i am trying):-

(A)installed a new mobo and cpu, connected up(1)my old HD with win 98 se
(2)my old lg cd rom,(3)old sony dvd player (4) old samsung cdrw  and
booted up about 20 days ago. bios showed primary master ide=my old HD,
slave ide=lg cd rom, secondary master ide=dvd player slave ide=cdrw.

(B) however when i went to device manager i found that only my hd was
recognised as disk drive (along with floppy drive of course which also i
had connected separately in the floppy channel on the mobo)and my cdrom
under cdrom drive heading. in other words windows did not recognise my
dvd player and cdrw.

(C)At that stage i fiddled around by changing jumpers etc in the various
drives, and possibly also with some windows system files(frankly can not
remember what i did with system files but sure nothing that would
corrupt it.

(D)Suddenly one day windows froze with only the logo on screen and would
not load.

(E) That is when i sent my first post to the forum.

(F)I am still in the same position and as stressed by Dean wish to avoid
reformat since i do not have much of my data backed up(very foolish of
me)

very sorry for the annoyingly long post but any help will be greatly
appreciated. God bless and allof you have a nice day.-- venkat
viswanathan

 PS:-regarding David Gillet and Joseph Marty's posts both have a point
regarding dell system because i have an old HP ide cable with connectors
marked for mobo, primary ide, slave ide and i connected it reversly to
my dell HD  JUMPERED TO MASTER but bios showed "none"in master?

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                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>