Thread: 98 SE and video cards

  1. #1
    5|-|1+|-|34|) ober's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Posts
    4,429

    98 SE and video cards

    ok, so I spent a good 6 hours trying to get an OS installed on a computer saturday nite. And here was the problem:

    I built the computer 2 years ago and everything worked great... had Win 98 First edition on it and it was all good. I installed a Diamond Multimedia A200 8mb video card and it worked.

    Fast-forward to this past sat nite. The guy wants a new, bigger HD, more RAM, and an upgrade to 98 SE because of stability issues (all on my recommendations).

    No problem, I order all the stuff, throw it in, and begin to install windows on the new drive. I get 98 SE installed, install the video driver, reboot. Nothing. It comes up to a black screen during boot and just sits there taunting me with that damn hourglass.

    OK, no big deal. I start over and decide to try and trick it. I installed First edition again, updated the video driver and rebooted. It worked fine. yay. Now to trick it, I used a 98SE upgrade and installed 98SE over 98FE. reboot. BAM. Same problem. Black screen, f-ing hourglass. BOOO!! I'm ........ed.

    so... next best option? I installed XP Pro. But I had to reformat and reinstall 98 FE because my XP disk is an upgrade. It starts, goes through the prelim and reboots... comes back up, doesn't show me a damn thing, but crunches away and I figure it's installing. Sure enough, an hour later it reboots and XP is installed... it picked a TOTALLY different video driver and it works perfectly.

    I just find it strange that 98SE couldn't use that video driver. I even tried downloading an updated driver from the website. Anyone ever seen this?

    sorry so long... but I wanted to share this with you guys.

  2. #2
    PC Fixer-Upper Waldo2k2's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2002
    Posts
    2,001
    chalk it up to DOS and VxD i suppose.
    I've had all sorts of weird stuff happen with win98(fe/se). It just pukes on some things and im not sure why. I've had it run nearly as stable as nt/xp on the box im using now...on another box it barely runs at all. Hardware seriously messes with 9x, oh well, glad everything worked out for you.
    PHP and XML
    Let's talk about SAX

  3. #3
    eats only heads
    Guest
    Do they mention anything about it at the company website. At any rate I suppose it wouldn't hurt to upgrade from a 8mb video card to something better.

  4. #4
    eh ya hoser, got a beer? stumon's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Posts
    323
    Is the card PCI or AGP?
    The keyboard is the standard device used to cause computer errors!

Popular pages Recent additions subscribe to a feed

Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 3
    Last Post: 06-16-2006, 04:52 PM
  2. Two Video Outputs
    By drdroid in forum Tech Board
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 01-14-2004, 07:31 PM