tgp1994 Posted June 17, 2011 Share Posted June 17, 2011 Greetings Windows 9x'ers,I've been having some trouble getting Windows 98 SE working on my (rather old) Gateway 400SD4 laptop, and I was having quite a bit of success up until I had to start installing drivers.After I had most of them installed, I was only able to boot into windows some of the time. If I did a step-by-step boot, the booting process seemed to have halted after loading the msmouse.vmx driver.Now, it doesn't boot into windows at all, with the same issue. I can still get into Safe mode ok, and if I look at the bootlog, the last thing mentions loading a RESERVED and ROOT device, then that's it. It just stops.If anyone can help with this, that would be great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
herbalist Posted June 18, 2011 Share Posted June 18, 2011 I had a similar appearing issue with an old Compaq. The boot process appeared to stop after loading msmouse.vxd. It turned out that this was not the case. Msmouse was just the last vxd to be loaded. Use the selective startup to stop loading individual vxd's. Mine proceeded to boot when I stopped loading ndis.vxd and/or another similar vxd. Changing network drivers fixed the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgp1994 Posted June 18, 2011 Author Share Posted June 18, 2011 (edited) I had a similar appearing issue with an old Compaq. The boot process appeared to stop after loading msmouse.vxd. It turned out that this was not the case. Msmouse was just the last vxd to be loaded. Use the selective startup to stop loading individual vxd's. Mine proceeded to boot when I stopped loading ndis.vxd and/or another similar vxd. Changing network drivers fixed the problem.Hey. I used to have a Compaq running Windows 98 too! The case was one of those form factors that actually gave meaning to the term "desktop", poor thing was supporting a gigantic CRT monitor.I tried step-by-step booting and skipping all .vxd's, although it still sits there after asking about msmouse.vxd. I'll try going into safe mode and doing the selective startup.EDIT: Not only selective booting, but diagnostic booting will not allow me to get back into the OS. (Diagnostic disables next to everything, right?) I was actually able to boot into the machine ok for a good part of the day today, but after installing the graphics drivers, I am once again experiencing issues. I suppose the obvious plan of action here would be to uninstall the graphics drivers, although I kind of want them... I'm finding it hard to deal with this 640x480 resolution Edited June 18, 2011 by tgp1994 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
herbalist Posted June 19, 2011 Share Posted June 19, 2011 What video card and graphics drivers are you using? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgp1994 Posted June 19, 2011 Author Share Posted June 19, 2011 What video card and graphics drivers are you using?It's an ATI Mobility M6, driver ATI2DRAG.DRV at version 4.13.01.9066. But I guess I was misled by this mysterious issue again; after letting the laptop sit for awhile, I booted back up, reinstalled the same drivers, rebooted, and it booted up fine once again. This thing has at least three fans, but despite that, the laptop gets very warm. I'm almost beginning to think that this may be a heating issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted June 19, 2011 Share Posted June 19, 2011 I'm almost beginning to think that this may be a heating issue.Partially disassembling laptops (if needed) and THOROUGHFULLY cleaning the fan and all air ducts/intakes/etc. is part of the "standard maintenance".I have seen more than one laptop where a little bit of thermal paste between processor and heatsink made miracles, as "original" tends to dry up (and same applies to GPU)jaclaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgp1994 Posted June 19, 2011 Author Share Posted June 19, 2011 Partially disassembling laptops (if needed) and THOROUGHFULLY cleaning the fan and all air ducts/intakes/etc. is part of the "standard maintenance".I have seen more than one laptop where a little bit of thermal paste between processor and heatsink made miracles, as "original" tends to dry up (and same applies to GPU)jaclazAbsolutely. I actually took it apart about a year ago and did just those things, after which the laptop sat in the workshop until now.For another update, the laptop is once again booting up consistently and without error. All drivers are installed. How weird. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TmEE Posted June 20, 2011 Share Posted June 20, 2011 It may be worth doing a memory test on the machine. I once had similar problems on my PC, and one 512MB stick had couple of bad bytes on them. sometimes booted fine, sometimes failed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgp1994 Posted June 29, 2011 Author Share Posted June 29, 2011 Sorry for bumping an old thread, but it seems like it definitely is heat related.I installed an old version of Debian on the laptop, which seems to cause the laptop to run at colder temperatures than W98 did. So I guess that's my inexplicable answer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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