Win 98 reinstall problem

My faithful Gateway win 98 computer died but managed to retrieve the hard drive with the operating system win 98 SE and cobbled together a new system out of parts, found bought, salvaged. When I went to boot up from the hard drive, win98 found new devices (not surprisingly) and I ended up with lots of conflicts.

SO I decided to clean install win98 from the CDs and it tells me that I can't as the new (old) hardware isn't a Gateway. I tried the workaround from the Cabs still on the hard drive. But same problem.

Is there a way around this? I paid for the OS have all the disks and security numbers etc I'm not scamming anyone here.

Dins

 

If it's a Gateway restore CD, you'll probably continue to get conflicts. Try booting safe mode, uninstall most (if not all) the stuff in the device manager, reboot, and see if Win98 will reinstall everything. But chances are, you're gonna have troubles. Did you format the drive or just hook up the HD to different hardware?

hd2k

 

Well more complex. I installed the win 98 as boot drive directly to new hardware and booted and experienced as mentioned.

Then tried booting using win98 CD to format but wouldn't allow.

SO installed another, smaller drive.
Switched it to master boot, with win 98 drive as slave.
Booted using floppy.
Formatted new smaller drive.
Then tried to install 98 on new drive from (now) slave 98 drive from Cabs dir. No go.

SO to be clear, if I reinstalled the original win 98 drive as the boot drive (master) I should try uninstalling devices in safe mode and reboot and see if 98 reinstalls them without conflict? Is there anything I should leave alone in this uninstall process?

Dins

 

In my experience, nothing is sacred unless it's things like disk controllers or system devices. Pretty much anything you could add yourself (monitor, mouse, keyboard, CD drive, floppy, video/sound/network (unless onboard) modems and even ports) can be removed from the Device Manager BUT make sure you have the necessary drivers for EVERYTHING you want to be installed before removing anything and that you have the drivers on media that the computer will be able to read. (And it never hurts to do mouse and keyboard separately! ) BUT since you're playing around with specific install disks, I would advise not to remove anything that's still part of the system until someone more knowledgeable advises you to, even if it has a problem, except Dave has said pretty much everything is okay. I haven't had much to do with using proprietary disks on a mixed system like yours and I'm not sure what it's looking for that it isn't finding that's causing it to complain.

But yes, put the original 98 hard drive in, boot into Safe Mode and remove all the problem and no longer existent devices and then see if the mucked up and new ones get found and reinstalled. Don't be surprised to find more than one of something that you only have one of, for instance 3 monitors. Safe Mode is a great place to find out what the computer thinks it still has.

Also, it could be helpful to give a quick rundown of what devices have died and been replaced.

 

Proprietary Restore disks are unique to the manufacturers hardware that shipped with the system. Some may not even run the restore process if some of the (main) hardware has been changed. The drivers on these disks are geared specifically to the hardware. (Motherboard chipsets, hard disks, and the bios as well.)

Proprietary manufacturers (Dell, Gateway, HP (incl. Packard Hell & Comcrap), IBM/Lenovo, etc) usually take a generic _bare bones_ motherboard, and put a _tailored_ bios on it. These bios's will accept/control minor hardware changes, but will balk or not work properly with too much change. Given this (controlling) factor, even a retail O/S CD can/will present problems which may not normally be present on "generic" type systems.

It sounds as though this is the type problem you're running into. You may have success by picking up a retail 98(SE is what I'd recommend) and attempt an install. (These can be found for not much these days as the O/S is almost ten years old.) Odds are you'll get away with it on that system, with a "full install" CD.

However be aware of the motherboard/chipset/bios limitations. You may end up going to all sorts of expense just to get things to work, whereas a new (read used - new to you) generic motherboard (which will accept your current CPU/Memory) can be had for a few dollars. (Form factor will have to fit your enclosure of course.)

That and a retail 98 CD should present no/few problems without mega-dollars expenditure fighting with all the other hardware.

 

Thanks for all your advice.

Dins

 

Just to re-state; Try it with a retail (full) 98SE install CD before you start looking for a motherboard. It'll probably be fine with just that. You'll have a "clean" CD, not Gateways 98 which is tailored.

 

Well I have had some success. Looked at the device manager in Safe Mode and there was a lot of devices installed twice, though not clear which were causing the conflicts.

Cleared all the devices except for the system ones...left those alone, then rebooted and installed all the devices (re)found. It all worked!

Finding a full verions of 98 on CD (that I would trust) seems unlikely but now I don't have to worry... at least for the moment

Thanks for your help hopperDave, chooker and Dan

Dins

 

:clap:hyper:dancer

BTW, if you want to clear all the hardware entries from the registry to really clean things up; (Procure the drivers for all your hardware that 98 doesn't use "stock" drivers for first.)

Open Regedit and navigate to the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum

Right click on the Enum folder icon (on the left pane) and choose Delete, OK on the confirm. Close out Regedit. Shut down windows and restart.

What this does is clear all the old hardware settings. When you boot, windows will run it's Hardware/PnP detector to find all your hardware (mobo, controllers, etc.). Load the drivers as required.

No confusion about settings for equipment that isn't connected anymore, thus no double registry entries.

 

Thanks for that Dan

 

You're welcome.