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My experience installing Windows 98SE


BenoitRen

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I've been observing problems when some device shared IRQ with the ACPI controller. Looks like some devices do not want to share IRQ with others. Also, it is a good habbit to not to use IRQ 9 (ACPI controller is using it) if not necesary. Besides that, ACPI was not causing problems to me. My Windows 98 computers were working days without a crash, quite often.

I do believe some boards or devices do have problems with ACPI or APM. But, I'm using Intel based boards mostly. The last ACPI related conflict was caused by using the same IRQ 9 by Intel hardware monitoring software and TV tunner card. It happened on Windows 95, as far as I remember. I moved the TV tunner to the other slot, and everything was working fine. The SCSI controller was working correctly on the same IRQ 9 line.

Edited by Sfor
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888, Win 9x/ME is known to have issues with ACPI/APM, at least for some hardware scenarios.

It has been discussed before, both here and elsewhere. Just google for it and you'll find lots of

info on it. See, for instance: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...45373&st=51

But most places imply you need to do a clean reinstal with "setup /p i" to get rid of ACPI and

most don't tell you that you can remove the APM device and Windows will not spontaneously

reinstall (redetect) it (for setup /p i see: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q186111/). My wish

was to point out that it IS possible to remove ACPI/APM from an already installed and

configured system, without a reinstall. But, in any case, it is a procedure that ought to be done

only when necessary. I am a firm believer that you shouldn't try to fix what isn't broken, of course.

I never talked about "spontaneous reboots" after >7hrs... What I was talking about are "black

screens of death", crashes in which windows returns to a DOS mode text screen and halts, after

printing the message "Windows Protection Error. You must restart your computer." These things

usually happen because of missing devices at boot time (by far the most common cause, as you

can find googling for it) or with faulty hardware, specially bad memory. But it usually hapens at

boot time, while the condition I described happens long after the system is up and running, usually

after 7 or more hours. I never found it described elsewhere and it took me a long time and much

trial-and-error to trace it back to ACPI/APM. I know for sure it is a problem on some ASUS and SOYO

boards for AMD processors, having VIA chipsets.

Edited by dencorso
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thx 4 links, dencorso.

I still think its a very rare occasion when such circumstances may arise to need to disable ACPI or APM.

As I said earlier, it never happened to me while hundreds of computers set/fixed/build.

IMHO it have to be really bad bad luck to someone if it happens ;)

And as Sfor noticed, it is general rule of thumb not only ACPI/APM related:

sharing resources is never good idea...

Edited by 888
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I don't think the "Windows Protection Error"s I

mentioned are software related, as I've seen them happen on plain vanilla instalations having

just windows and nothing more.

Ah, It had meerly seemed very odd to me which is why I'd initially shot it down to a software issue. My apologies :)

Then again, let

me ask you: in a desktop, what's the use of ACPI or APM? There is no battery which charge

must be preserved at any cost to worry about...

2 Words - Device Life :)

If you leave the pc running for a time, shutting down the hard disks will help extend life through not running them. This will also reduce wear from heat damage depending on your disk and heat output as higher RPM disks run much warmer than their slower counterparts. Also shutting down the disks help the components inside the pc cool more as there is one less device producing heat and less strain on the power supply (which will also then produce less heat). Comes in very useful if you've multiple hard disks as the non-primaries [usually] won't be used so often and so will be turned off untill they are next accessed.

Shutting off the monitor will reduce burn-in effects on an idle CRT display (which also blur a bit the older they get) or the wear on an LCD (display gets dimmer when they wear out).

In all cases you also cut on power use thus reducing the electric bill a small bit. Surely you could just shut off the computer and/or monitor but there are those times you might just need it running. :)

Edited by Chozo4
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Ah, It had meerly seemed very odd to me which is why I'd initially shot it down to a software issue. My apologies :)

Apologies accepted :)

Then again, let me ask you: in a desktop, what's the use of ACPI or APM? There is no battery which charge must be preserved at any cost to worry about...
2 Words - Device Life :) [...]

You are right, of course! :blushing: My apologies :)

I think I've had more experience with ASUS A7V600s, A7V400s and Soyo K7VTAs than is healthy, but they were rather popular around here, are pretty robust... and have issuses with ACPI/APM that usually go undetected because they mainly affect uptime...

But, more recently, I've found a scenario where this problem is easy to detect: if one installs eMule, and it consistently crashes the system after about one and a half hour or less, this is also due to the ACPI/APM issue! But much easier to detect!

Anyway, I think I've had more bad experiences with ACPI/APM than would be my fair share...

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Ah, It had meerly seemed very odd to me which is why I'd initially shot it down to a software issue. My apologies :)

Apologies accepted :)

Then again, let me ask you: in a desktop, what's the use of ACPI or APM? There is no battery which charge must be preserved at any cost to worry about...
2 Words - Device Life :) [...]

You are right, of course! :blushing: My apologies :)

I think I've had more experience with ASUS A7V600s, A7V400s and Soyo K7VTAs than is healthy, but they were rather popular around here, are pretty robust... and have issuses with ACPI/APM that usually go undetected because they mainly affect uptime...

But, more recently, I've found a scenario where this problem is easy to detect: if one installs eMule, and it consistently crashes the system after about one and a half hour or less, this is also due to the ACPI/APM issue! But much easier to detect!

Anyway, I think I've had more bad experiences with ACPI/APM than would be my fair share...

More than month ago I setup system based on A7V600.

I included emule as well (owner is a polish guy and he said this is the most popular filesharing soft among Poles, thus he need it to get polish-language content) and as always I enabled ACPI/APM on this box.

I haven't heard any complaints from him so far, last time we spoke his box was running smooth for 3+ weeks straight (emule).

Are you sure?

(edit: I fortgot this is 9x forum; I set it up with Win2K, perhaps thats why it works fine)

Edited by 888
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On windows 98SE, when you input the cd do NOT run Setup and go with CD-rom support (well the option that takes you to command prompt, type in "cd win98" so your in the windows 98 directory of the cd (equivalent to I386 folder on XP) and type "setup /?" there is a syntax where it skips the disk checking so it will get past the cannot read last cluster problem :)

graphics card... install it manually without the ATI program, cant really remember how to do this as i havent been on windows 98 for along time. Control Panel > Add hadrware and the inf needed is in the ATI temp folder bin > driver

Edited by legolash2o
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What they all said about driver order and things, and doing the Via Hyperion drivers first. A little tip there. Install WinZip or WinRAR or whatever your favorite extraction program is and extract the files from the Via file. Copy the AGP folder to the C: root directory and manually use Device Manager to update the Microsoft standard PCI to PCI adapter in the System Devices section to the one in the Windows 95 folder of that Via AGP directory. This will give you AGP acceleration and Direct 3D texture acceleration that will otherwise run at PCI bus speeds if using the 98SE version Via's installer uses. The Windows 95 VXD driver works fine on 98, whereas Via uses a .sys driver in the default installation that doesn't allow AGP acceleration. Choose the AGP 2.0 3.0 Compatible Driver if that's what your board has. If your motherboard has a 4X slot, that's the one. If only a 2X slot, you can use either driver but the plain Jane one without the 2.0, 3.0 support has better compatibility with older motherboards.

Before rebooting (say no), install the Hyperions from the normal Via setup.exe and uncheck the AGP driver. Restart when done.

Then install Internet Explorer 6 SP1 and Direct X 9.0c. Doing those will also install Windows Installer 2.0 which should help the ATI installer as well.

Then install a downloaded from ATI Catalyst driver instead of that ASUS provided one. Make sure to get it from the Windows 98 or Windows Me (they're identical) sections of the website. The ATI setup should work fine. The Control Panel and Smartgart offer nice controls over your card, the 3D settings, and color and video settings. It's just nice to have them. It does not require DotNET to be installed as the later XP Catalyst drivers do. If you want DotNET, install it before Direct X so the managed Direct X will give applications more control over the hardware, increasing performance. Be aware there are Service Packs and security patches that need to be applied if you do install DotNET. They do funky things to Windows startup until the ATI driver is installed, then things return to normal.

I used ATI cards for a long time on Windows 98, 98SE, and Me and the last 9x official ATI Catalysts worked great for me as long as I did that little trick with the Via AGP driver first.

If your PATH statement in AUTOEXEC.BAT has been customized, you'll need to check it before restarting after the ATI install. ATI's installer will in those cases double up on the entries so you'll need to remove the redundant stuff so Windows won't get confused by it. When you check it out you'll know what I mean. Just open sysedit from the run box and check it out before rebooting. If no PATH statement was there before hand, ATI's installer will set it up correctly. It needs to be

SET PATH=%PATH%;

and then whatever ATI puts there. If something was there before then it will repeat that part, which messes the command up obviously.

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[...]

But, more recently, I've found a scenario where this problem is easy to detect: if one installs eMule, and it consistently crashes the system after about one and a half hour or less, this is also due to the ACPI/APM issue! But much easier to detect!

[...]

More than month ago I setup system based on A7V600.

I included emule as well (owner is a polish guy and he said this is the most popular filesharing soft among Poles, thus he need it to get polish-language content) and as always I enabled ACPI/APM on this box.

I haven't heard any complaints from him so far, last time we spoke his box was running smooth for 3+ weeks straight (emule).

Are you sure?

(edit: I fortgot this is 9x forum; I set it up with Win2K, perhaps thats why it works fine)

Hi, 888!

You are quite right!

This ACPI/ACM issue is found only in Win 98SE and ME (perhaps also in Win 98, but it doesn't install it by default).

If you deploy eMule with Win 2k or XP, you'll not see it (because it's not there, in these OSs).

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  • 7 months later...
The Windows 95 VXD driver works fine on 98, whereas Via uses a .sys driver in the default installation that doesn't allow AGP acceleration. Choose the AGP 2.0 3.0 Compatible Driver if that's what your board has. If your motherboard has a 4X slot, that's the one. If only a 2X slot, you can use either driver but the plain Jane one without the 2.0, 3.0 support has better compatibility with older motherboards.

Eck (and anyone else!), what's your opinion on using this Win95 VXD driver with an AGP 3.0-compliant 8x slot? The VIA board I have has a KT600 chipset, and the card I'll use with it is an NVidia GeForce FX 5500 (256 MB), probably with MDGx's unofficial NVidia drivers.

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  • 10 years later...

if i suspect a system isn't operating particularly well, such as no indication of battery status, i just end up starting from scratch and installing with acpi disabled, the "Setup /p i" command does this and most of the time, the systems run fine like this, with usually just the battery status not working, although it's possible some device(s) may not be detected in device manager, i really wouldn't know much of this in detail as it's something i test on my own on a specific system, and usually i'll update my archive to include installing with acpi disabled or if it ran fine with the default acpi enabled which is normal setup command, then that would be a bonus, although, the normal setup for allowing acpi will not always exactly install acpi, at least through indication of device manager, and even if it does, it doesn't guarantee battery status, although there may be some third party battery status software out there that may do this on 98SE / 9x systems, i have not been able to find a specific one yet. i noticed the battery status not showing and acpi entries not evident in device manager being more common in windows 95 which makes sense because acpi support in windows 95 is more premature. 

Edited by cov3rt
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I've installed 98SE using "setup /p i" on my ThinkPad T42p, and the battery status works fine right after the installation.

In fact, if you look deep enough in the drivers list for ThinkPad T4x series for Windows 98, there is an INF file that basically does "setup /p i" and is recommended by IBM themselves.

I can't really find a reason to install 98SE without the "/p i" switch, maybe if someone really wants hibernation, but that's dangerous on FAT32 anyways. APM gives you the standard shutdown/restart/standby functionality, what benefits are there to ACPI for 98SE anyways, apart from hibernation/VBox support? (I would never recommend installing 9x on VBox)

Edited by MrMateczko
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