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.