Problem w/Win98 & Hyper Threading P4?

External Since: Apr 09, 2004 Posts: 1

I've been building my own pc's for 12 years now but am stumped with a
current problem.

I'm trying to set up a dual boot Win98SE & XP Pro on a P4 2.8 HT using
an Intel GPFL mobo. I previously ran XP Pro for a month with no
problems, then realized I needed to dual boot and so wiped the HD,
repartitioned and formatted and began this dual install. I have
partitioned a 200G WD drive so that one gig is FAT32 for the W98 OS
(first partition on drive), and the remainder of the drive NFTS for XP.

But the W98 install has problems, and once installed the loading takes
forever and often hangs. By "forever" I mean get up, go away, come back
later and maybe it has progressed, maybe not. I do have 2 gigs of RAM,
but at the point in the 98 install when the initial setup done from boot
floppy is complete and it is ready to reboot from the hard drive, I go
into the system.ini file and in the [386Enh] section add the line
"MaxPhysPage=1F3FF" which limits RAM to 500 megs. Still after 3 attempts
to install 98SE the pc hangs during the OS loading.

Then I wondered if the Hyper Threading could be a problem for 98 and
have disabled that in the BIOS. But still the OS will hang or load very
slowly.

Any ideas? Thoughts appreciated.

My next plan is to take the 15 Gig drive, currently primary channel
slave, and repartition it as a primary-active, and make it the Primary
Master and set up 98 on it. I believe I can install XP pro on the 200
Gig connected as Primary slave? (I know W98 won't run from there but I
think XP Pro will?)

External Since: Apr 05, 2004 Posts: 13

289425 wrote:
>
> I've been building my own pc's for 12 years now but am stumped with a
> current problem.
>
> I'm trying to set up a dual boot Win98SE & XP Pro on a P4 2.8 HT using
> an Intel GPFL mobo. I previously ran XP Pro for a month with no
> problems, then realized I needed to dual boot and so wiped the HD,
> repartitioned and formatted and began this dual install. I have
> partitioned a 200G WD drive so that one gig is FAT32 for the W98 OS
> (first partition on drive), and the remainder of the drive NFTS for XP.
>
> But the W98 install has problems, and once installed the loading takes
> forever and often hangs. By "forever" I mean get up, go away, come back
> later and maybe it has progressed, maybe not. I do have 2 gigs of RAM,
> but at the point in the 98 install when the initial setup done from boot
> floppy is complete and it is ready to reboot from the hard drive, I go
> into the system.ini file and in the [386Enh] section add the line
> "MaxPhysPage=1F3FF" which limits RAM to 500 megs. Still after 3 attempts
> to install 98SE the pc hangs during the OS loading.
>
> Then I wondered if the Hyper Threading could be a problem for 98 and
> have disabled that in the BIOS. But still the OS will hang or load very
> slowly.
>
> Any ideas? Thoughts appreciated.
>
> My next plan is to take the 15 Gig drive, currently primary channel
> slave, and repartition it as a primary-active, and make it the Primary
> Master and set up 98 on it. I believe I can install XP pro on the 200
> Gig connected as Primary slave? (I know W98 won't run from there but I
> think XP Pro will?)

I seem to recall that win98 has a problem with processors faster than
around 1.8G. I don't remember the details but I belive there was a fix
for it. That may not be your problem but it might be worth digging it up
on google.