# Windows 98 Install Freezes



## boweasel (Nov 5, 2006)

Got an old Win98 PC with a Maxtor hard drive (I don't know the exact model number), whose OS had become corrupted.

On another PC I created a boot floppy, used it to boot into DOS, did an fdisk, created the DOS drive and partition, formatted the drive, then put in my old Win 98 CD-ROM.

The install goes so far, then it reboots. When its finished booting I enter the product code and the install continues.

At some point where it says its loading system files and something about plug and play devices, the install just stops. It's always at about the 14 minutes remaining mark. The little magnifying glass stops circling, and it seems fairly obvious that its not going to start up again.

There is a message in the lower left hand corner of the screen that says to turn the machine off if the install hangs up, but it gives no indication of what I should do on the subsequent reboot.

Removing the CD and allowing a normal boot just gets me to a solid blue screen. I can do a Ctrl/Alt/Del to bring up task manager, but that means almost nothing in W98.

I can boot in safe mode, but that just gives me a solid black screen with 'safe mode' in each corner.

I don't know what to try next.


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## SDFOX 7 (Apr 29, 2007)

My guess is that the Windows 98 CD-ROM disk (or source device you are using, like USB) has scratches or a defect. You may need to try using another disk or source device.

This seems the most likely cause considering it happens at the '14-minute mark' every time.

Safe Mode likely won't help because there is no CD-ROM support for Windows 9x in Safe Mode.

I would try copy all files from disk to hard drive, then try installing. This may work since all the files on the disk are mostly .CAB files. You can do this using the following syntax at the MS-DOS prompt:

*a:\copy r:\*.* c:* (where *r:\* is your CD-ROM drive)

or *a:\copy r:\win98\*.* c:* (where *r:\* is your CD-ROM drive)

This tells MS-DOS to copy all files on the disk (**.** is the wildcard for all files) to the hard drive

then type *c:\setup.exe* If successful Windows will try running setup from the hard drive instead of the CD-ROM.


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## boweasel (Nov 5, 2006)

and it made no difference, except that it now stops at the 11 minutes remaining mark. 

I created a directory on the C: drive called Win98 and copied everything from the CD-ROM Win98 directory and then ran Setup from C:\Win98. When it passed the 14 minute mark I really thought we had it... 

It seems like their should be some way to run Setup without having it set up any hardware or plug and play devices. I mean the only hardware attached to the Win98 tower is a mouse, a keyboard and a monitor, all of which work just fine already. 

So since there are no plug and play devices, what could possibly be making it lock up? And is there no 'work around'?


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## Jedi_Master (Mar 13, 2002)

Howdy folks...

boweasel...

Several things come to mind, could be bad memory or bad hard drive or a hardware device that is confusing the setup...

I would go here and download the diags for the maxtor drive create the boot floppy and run it, and also go here here download memtest and test the memory, if they prove good try changing the video card (since I see there are no other cards on the pc) and see if the install goes through...


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## boweasel (Nov 5, 2006)

Thanks Jedi_Master, but your post just opened up another problem:

When I go to the Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities website you provided a link for, I see that Maxtor has a utility called Maxtor PowerMax v4.23 with a size of 1.03 MB. Perfect, since I don't have CD burning capability on this XP machine...

So I download it to a floppy, plop it in the old 98 machine, run the command (pwrmxen.exe) only to get the message that "This program must be run under Win32".

How do I do that on an old Windows 98 PC that, so far, can only boot to DOS? 

I doubt it could be memory. This PC had 3 sticks of RAM, and since that seemed a little heavy for Win98, I removed 2, thinking that might be the reason why 98 won't completely install. I've attempted to run Setup with each of the 3 sticks without any change in the result...


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## Jedi_Master (Mar 13, 2002)

you have to double click on the downloaded file pwrmxen.exe do not run it from a floppy drive and it will create the bootable floppy, then boot with that and then run the diags...

And I'd still run the memtest...


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## boweasel (Nov 5, 2006)

Thanks Jedi... Have already run the advanced test - and the drive passed. I'm currently running some sort of burn test whereby you set how many passes the utility should run thru on the disc, and it said that each pass could take 30 minutes. I arbitrarily set it at 4 passes. I'm not sure what that will tell me...

Will attempt the memory check when this is done....


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## boweasel (Nov 5, 2006)

Okay so the Maxtor HD passed the Advanced test, and the Burn In test (4 passes).

On the Memtest86 page I obviously have no clue what to do. I downloaded - Pre-Compiled Memtest86 v3.4a installable from Windows and DOS to my XP which created a memtest34 zip file. I unzipped, got 4 files and really don't know what to do with them...


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## mark069 (Oct 25, 2008)

My guess would be that your installation CD is corrupted.


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## boweasel (Nov 5, 2006)

mark069 said:


> My guess would be that your installation CD is corrupted.


I don't really think so. I think I would have gotton some sort of error when copying the modules from the D:\Win98 to C:\Win98.

I think its probably something with the MOBO, and maybe if I install Ubuntu it'll be a little more forgiving...


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