Hung at Win98 load screen...again

[Monstermile]

Ok I hate to be vague on all the problems I have had but this is an ongoing thing now. Reference this thread if you have the time. It explains my original problems which somehow cured themselves and I got my system up and running.

Then I started having issues with my modem. Reference this thread.

Well I tried installing the modem from my other system which didn't work either. Now for some reason it just hangs at the Win98 screen. It won't go any further. The h/d just its there and clicks away.

If anyone has time to skim through the original threads I would very much appreciate it. I am at my wits end with this system. I need to know if this second mobo is junk, the hd, both or something else.

Thanks

well I understand you hate to be vague but after reading 5 pages of threads to see if I can help I stioll have no clue what the problem is? I'm assuming you got the hdd issues resolved and are now omly having issues with a modem?

Its hanging at start-up even after the modem has been removed? take the modem out and boot to safe mode. Go into your device manager and remove any modem drivers. Resart your computer and make sure there are no issues before trying to install the modem again. I ran into a similar issue and had to replace some of my virtual device drivers as they had been corupted.

[Monstermile]

I got the original hd/mobo resolved. How I still have no idea. After all I was going through it just started up fine and let me install. I dunno. All was fine until a few days after I installed the Earthlink software. That is when the modem issues started. I took the modem out and put in the one from my old system but it wouldn't recognize it. So I put the new one back in and now I am at this point. Hanging at the Win98 screen. I am clueless but willing to try anything at this point.

So how exactly do I manually get into safe mode?? Believe it or not I have never had a need to except when it has kicked me into the option of booting in safe mode.

[DoctorReno]

To get into Safe mode restart your computer. Just as the POST ends and the Win98 splash screen comes on you need to press F8. In fact you might want to be rapidly pressing F8 before the POST ends so you don't miss the small "window" of time allowed to get into Safe Mode.
From Safe Mode R click on My Computer and select Properties then Device Manager then click on the modem and select delete. From safe mode you also might want to go into the control panel and select add/remove programs and see if you can uninstall any software that EarthLink tried to install.
Then restart your machine and hopefully it will load into Windows with no problem and you can try again.

[Monstermile]

I'll give it a try. Thanks guys. I'll post back tomorrow with the results.

[Monstermile]

Ok I physically removed the modem and tried to boot into safe mode. Nothing. Still hangs at the Win98 load screen. The hd lights stays on and it just sits there making a ticking sound just like it was doing before I tried safe mode.. Already ran diags on the hd last week and it passed.

[phlatline]

Ok, here's what I've got, maybe it'll help.
Hit F8 b4 splash screen, then type MSCONFIG, remove ticks from autoexec.bat/config.sys, ok out, & reboot.

[Monstermile]

This is really weird. I let it sit at the splash screen while trying to boot into safe mode just to see what would happen. On the screen now is this....

While initializing device VKD:
Windows protect

WTF????

[phlatline]

VKD is the acronym 4 Virtual Keyboard Device Driver. Shut off comp, make sure keyboard is plugged in/plug in different keyboard, try restarting & see if that removes the error mess.

[Monstermile]

Just an update. I got it to run scandisk last night before I went to bed. Apparently there are a bunch of bad sectors. Ran through like 700 checked and the bad ones started one right after the other. Says the files in the bad sector are from the windows system file. Got a feeling maybe something in earthlink, or the drivers for one of these modems corrupted windows.

Should I just start from scratch?? Also would some of my problems go away if I upgraded to XP??? Is Win98 just not that compatible with newer hardware??