On 25 th jan jacob Walhman wrote "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 I find that the only similar entry in my device manager is "acpi bios" under "system" I will very much appreciate if you can let me know if both are same and if so how do i reinstall if i remove this item from the device manager? thanks a lot and have a nice day-- venkat viswanathan The NOSPIN Group Promotions is now offering Mandrake Linux or Red Hat Linux CD sets along with the OpenOffice CD... at a great price!!! http://freepctech.com/goodies/promotions.shtml