win 98 slow boot up

[DHB]

Hi guys,
small problem,i'm setting up my machine for a dual boot. XPpro works fine but 98 is very slow when starting up. basically when i boot into 98 it gets to the blue win98 loading screen, then sits there not doing anything for between 1 - 3 minutes. then it carries on loading and goes through to windows. i searched the forum and found a few surgestions -

glc recommended in another thread unbinding tcp/ip from network cards, which i tried but did'ent seem to have any impact.

another surgestion was that it may be something in the startup slowing it down, but this is a completly new install of 98 SE, only the motherboard drivers and graphics card drivers r installed, nothing else.

at first i thought it was probably to do with the 2 network adapters on the a7n8x, but something has now changed my mind. i actually just tried watching a mpg on a music cd, and it only got 1 second into playing it before stoping and displaying an "out of memory" error message. even if i reboot it will only play around 20 seconds of video before displaying the same error msg. I know there are problems with win 95 and large amounts of memory, as i have 1 gig of twinx (overkill i know) do u think this cud be the problem? i seem to remember a thread where some1 advised to put a line in a system file that specified a cache limit or something to that effect, do u think i need to do this?

thanks for the help

dhb
system specs -
athlon 2600 333
asus a7n8x deluxe
1 gig coarseair twinx 2700
WD 120 gig 8mb
ATI raedon 9700 pro
using on-board sound
anything i missed?

[newme]

i found this thread (http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58709&highlight=windows+98+memory) hope it helps

[Markoman01027]

DHB,

You need to run MSCONFIG, run their Selective Startup and run only the required programs at boot up. Although you probably tried this, I assume you have not, and this may help speed things up.

Buggy drivers loading up during Windows can also slow things down. I suggest you update all of your drivers, and see how things go. If not, you may have a device that is slowing things down with 98. What you can do, is remove the sound card drivers, power down, take out the sound card, power up the computer and see how it goes. Do this with each PCI card, and disable any onboard sound/lan/video that you don't use.

I have seen this happen before, and it came with a driver lagging things up. Hope it works!

[DHB]

cheers fellas, newme that was the article i was thinking of, thanks!

mark, i actually did'ent try the msconfig as i assumed it would'ent be the problem as it's a completly fresh install with nothing installed apart from drivers, even without the drivers installed it still reacts exactly the same. I will try editing the system.ini and let you know the results

thanks again

[DHB]

just to update, adding the vcache line solved the out of memory problem i was getting, so now windows is usuable. startup still seems quite slow though i took a look at the msconfig (which i have not really used before) so i'm assuming i should just try playing about with it and unchecking things that i think r probably not essential. Any guides on editing or playing with the msconfig utility would be welcome as i get the feeling that if i uncheck something i should'ent windows will go south. i will also try getting new drivers as the operating system is fairly old and the hardware is new, so some sort of hardware conflict is quite possible. mark, i wud also try ur tip about the pci cards except i don't have any, only my agp graphics. but i may try disabling the on-board stuff that i do use, just so i can establish what the problem is. but all in all a 2 minute wait is no big hassle, it could be worse :D

many thanks

[Markoman01027]

DHB,

Unhook or Disable your optical drives and see how that goes. Yes, if you are not using anything onboard, disable it..aswell as any serial ports and com ports that you do not use, aswell as any firewire ports if you got any that you dont use aswell as any usb ports you got that you dont use.

[mountaineer]

I remember that someone posted a start up guide link from a guy named Viper. Lets see if I can find it. URL=www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup-pages/startup-full.htm]try this out[/URL]

[glc]

Are you sure that you don't have TCP/IP on any of the network adapters?

[mike breck]

In Win9x, you don't need anything ticked in MSCONFIG>Startup (I would keep System Tray ticked) for Windows to start.

As Markoman01027 has suggested, go into the BIOS and disable any function that you don't use or need i.e. firewire, SATA, both or one NIC (if you only use one), Speech Reporter, etc.

In fact, I would try disabling both the onboard NICs in the BIOS and see how that affects the problem in Win98. It's easy enough to enable them again.

HTH

[crow]

You need system tray or the computer will not start.
-
Len

[DHB]

thanks for advice guys.
glc no i unchecked the tcp/ip binding on both of them but it had no effect. (none that i noticed anyway)
i have disabled everything i do not use, which is basically the sata and nic's. i was planning to do what u surgested mike and disable the stuff that i do use, just to try and establish what the problem is.
thanks mountaineer, i will take a look at that guide, it's just what i wanted.
i will try everything surgested at some stage (lol bit busy at the mo comming over to the usa in 4 days, whats the temp in florida at the mo, i read it was hitting 100).
but thanks again for all the advice, u guys helped me build my new pc and now i almost got it tweaked to perfection :D