Welcome to the troubleshooting sector for Windows 98. Hopefully you will find
something in here that will solve the problem you may be having.
Please check out all pages by clicking on the next page link as there is a lot
here to view. By clicking on the underlined statement below it will take you to
the details of how to carry out the task.
You may find
this application handy for changes in the registry.
RegEditX (Registry Editor Extensions) is freeware that enhances the Windows
Registry Editor. If you edit the same keys repeatedly, this is for you!
New buttons activate frequently
used commands, and a combo box stores a history of visited keys and allows quick
navigation back to them.
The keys are saved across
sessions and available the next time you use the Registry Editor.
Your computer cannot go on standby because a device driver or program won't
allow it. Close all programs and try again.
If you close all programs and attempt to put Windows 98 into Standby mode again,
you receive the same error message.
This can occur if a program, driver, or hardware device is preventing Windows 98
from going into Standby mode.
To resolve this behaviour, use the Power Management Trouble Shooter tool to
determine which program, driver, or hardware device is preventing Windows 98
from going into Standby mode.
Windows 98 Second Edition may hang when the machine is being suspended.
This is due to an obscure bug,
which exhibits itself when the path specified for the swapfile in the [386Enh]
section of the System.ini file includes a lowercase drive letter.
The name of the swapfile used by Windows 98 can be changed by adding a
PagingFile= line to the [386Enh] section of the System.ini file.
If the path specified for the swapfile includes a lowercase drive letter, it can
cause Windows 98 Second Edition to occasionally hang during a suspend.
To fix this:
Select Start > Run and type msconfig in the Open: box, then press OK
Select the System.ini tab
Click the + sign next to the [386Enh] section to expand it
Select the line PagingFile= and click Edit
Change the lowercase drive letter to uppercase
Click Apply and OK
When prompted, restart your computer
When you try to
resume your computer from Suspend mode, your computer may take 30 seconds or
more to resume. This behaviour can occur if you have a network adapter that is
not attached to an active network connection.
When your
computer enters Suspend mode, the drivers for your protocols are unloaded. When
you try to resume your computer, Windows attempts to load the drivers for your
protocols, and then bind them to the network adapter.
If an active network
connection is not found, a time out occurs and causes the delay.
To resolve this behaviour, you either have to connect to an active network
connection, or disable your network adapter:
Select Start > Settings > Control Panel, and then double-click System
Select the Device Manager tab, double-click the Network Adapters branch to
expand it, and then select your network adapter
Select Properties, click to select the Disable in this hardware profile check
box, click OK (twice), and then click Yes to restart your computer
LoadPowerProfile is Listed Twice in System Configuration > Startup
If you view your systems Startup
configuration in Microsoft's System Configuration Utility (access from Start >
Run, type msconfig in the Open box and press OK), you may notice two entries for
Power Management. Both listed as Rundll32.exe powerprof.dll,LoadCurrentPwrScheme.
If you view Microsoft
System Information > Software Environment > Startup Programs (access from Start
> Run, type msinfo32 in the Open box and press OK), you will notice that one is
loaded from the Machine Run protion of the registry, while the other is loaded
from Machine Service.
This is by design.
The first instance runs as soon as the GUI is up. This is so that power
management is running even if no one logs on. The second instance runs after
logon, and loads the user settings.
The suspend option disappears when the machine fails to resume 2 consecutive
times. Resetting the registry values will bring the option back.
It would be valuable to know
exactly what is causing the machine to fail to resume. You can visit the Windows
98 APM troubleshooting site for more information.
To recover the Suspend or Stand by Option:
Start the Registry Editor
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ VxD \ Vpowerd
Subtract 00000200 from the Flags entry
Set the SuspendFlag entry to 0
Restart Windows
Open and Explore options on Start Menu are disabled
You have to check
all the drive letters in the TweakUI appelet ( My Computer tab) from A: to Z: to
re-enable those choices when right clicking on the start button.
TweakUI can be found on your CD-ROM in the \tools\reskit\powertoy folder.
If you receive one of these messages during Setup, see Installing Windows 98 on
a System Running Windows NT and Installing Windows 98 on a System Running OS/2
in the Setup.txt (excerpt from) for more information.
SU0011
Your hard disk is password-protected. You must first remove the password
protection. For more information, see your computer documentation.
SU0013
To set up Windows 98, your
startup drive must be an MS-DOS boot partition. If your startup drive is
formatted as HPFS or NTFS, you must create an MS-DOS boot partition before
running Setup.
For more information about
creating an MS-DOS boot partition, see your computer documentation.
You may also
receive this error if you have third-party partitioning software such as EZ
drive or Disk Manager installed. If so, reboot your system and run Setup from an
MS-DOS command prompt. For more information, see Upgrading to Windows 98 - a
Guide
SU0018
"Setup
cannot create files on your startup drive and cannot set up Windows 98. There
may be too many files in the root directory of your startup drive, or your
startup drive letter may have been remapped."
The root folder of
a drive can hold a maximum of 512 entries (files or folders). This message
indicates that Setup has detected too many directory entries in the root folder
of your computer, and Setup cannot create the files it needs to set up Windows
98.
Move or delete some files from
the root folder of your drive, and then run Setup again.
Note: Files with long
filenames use more directory entries than files with 8.3 filenames. Because the
number of entries in the root is limited to 512, the root directory can fill up
with fewer files if long filenames are used.
SU0167
A file or folder called Desktop exists on your computer. Rename or move
your current Desktop folder, and then run Setup again.
SU0410
Setup cannot open a required
file, possibly because the file is missing or damaged, or because your computer
does not have enough memory.
If you have already
created a Startup Disk, quit Setup, shut down your computer, insert the Startup
Disk, and then restart the computer. Then, run Setup from the MS-DOS command
prompt.
SU99xxxx
SU99 is a
prefix that is added to all errors that Setup does not have a specific error
message for. These errors are often caused by low conventional memory.
If you have already created a Startup Disk, quit Setup, shut down your computer,
insert the Startup Disk, and restart the computer. Then, run Setup from the
MS-DOS command prompt.
When
you try to install Windows 98 or a component that requires copying files from
the original Windows disks or CD-ROM, you may receive one of the following
messages:
Setup has detected the following decoding error:
Could not decode this setup (.CAB) file. Setup will
attempt to recover from this situation, click OK to
continue.
Setup cannot copy all of the files from your Windows
98 CD. Clean the Windows 98 CD with a soft cloth,
return it to the CD-ROM drive, and then click OK. If
you receive this message again, read the CAB Errors
section of the Setup.txt file. This file is in the
Win98 directory of your Windows 98 CD.
These errors can occur for any of the following reasons:
Your Windows 98 CD-ROM may be damaged, dirty from smudges or fingerprints, or
may be scratched.
Your CD-ROM drive is not functioning properly. The CD-ROM may vibrate too much
for the laser to accurately read the data.
Your computer is over-clocked.
Extracting files from the Windows 98 Second Edition cabinet files is
memory-intensive. If your computer is over-clocked beyond the default settings,
it can contribute to decoding errors.
Computers that are not
over-clocked but have a cooling problem can also experience decoding errors.
Your computer has bad or mismatched RAM or cache.
For example, you are using EDO and non-EDO RAM, or you are using different RAM
speeds. Even if Windows 98 seems to run without problems, the additional stress
of extracting files and accessing the disk may contribute to decoding errors.
Your
computer has Bus Mastering or Ultra DMA enabled in the BIOS and in Device
Manager. The data may be moving too quickly for the system to keep up.
You are using a third-party memory manager.
There is a virus on your computer.
To resolve such error messages, follow these steps:
Remove the CD-ROM from the CD-ROM drive, rotate it one-quarter to one-half a
turn, reinsert the CD-ROM into the drive, and then click OK.
Remove the CD-ROM from the CD-ROM drive. Clean the CD-ROM with a soft cloth,
reinsert it into the drive, and then click OK.
Check your computer for a virus using virus-detection software.
On one of your hard drives, create an empty folder and name it Win98.
Copy the contents of the Win98 folder on the CD-ROM to the Win98 folder. If you
are unable to copy the contents of the Win98 folder on the CD-ROM to you hard
disk, the CD-ROM may be damaged.
If you are still
receiving CAB errors in Windows 98, you can manually extract all the Setup files
from the Windows 98 CD-ROM to your hard disk and run Setup from there.
It requires approximately 300MB of free hard-disk space to extract the Windows
98 files. You can use the Ext.exe utility to extract the Windows 98 files. This
utility is located on the Windows 98 Startup disk and in the \Oldmsdos folder on
the Windows 98 CD-ROM.
To manually extract the Windows 98 files, follow these steps:
Insert the Windows 98 Startup disk into the floppy disk drive, and then restart
your computer
At the command prompt, type ext
When prompted for the location of the cabinet files, type the path to the Win98
folder that you created in step 4 above
When prompted for the files to extract, type *.*
When prompted for the location where the files are to be extracted, type the
path to the Win98 folder
Note: This does not extract the files in the Precopy1.cab and Precopy2.cab
cabinet files
After all the files have been extracted, run Setup from the Win98 folder on your
hard disk
If the above steps
do not fix the problem, you can try to slow down your computer by changing your
computer's CMOS (BIOS) settings. Bus mastering, external/internal cache, RAM
settings/timings, and other settings contribute to the speed at which your
computer runs.
For information about how to
change these settings, consult the documentation for your computer.
Device
drivers, system patches, or hot fixes you installed using the Windows Update
feature, can be uninstalled using the Restore page from the Web site.
If you are unable to connect to the Windows Update Web site, you can uninstall
the latest updates by using Update Wizard Uninstall found on the Tools menu of
Microsoft System Information ( Select Start > Programs > Accessories > System
Tools > System Information).
Existing files and drivers are automatically backed up before the new ones are
installed.
If your having problems with your Video, first make sure you have the
latest drivers for your graphics adapter.
In Windows 98, graphics hardware acceleration features can be turned off when
system performance indicates incompatibility problems:
In Control Panel, open System, select the Performance tab, and then click
Graphics
Drag the slider to change the Hardware acceleration setting, as summarized in
the list below. Then click OK
The default setting is Full, which turns on all graphics hardware acceleration
features available in the display driver
The first notch from the right
can be set to correct mouse pointer display problems. This setting disables
hardware cursor support in the display driver by adding SwCursor=1 to the
[Display] section of System.ini
The second
notch from the right prevents some bit block transfers from being performed on
the display card and disables memory-mapped I/O for some display drivers.
This setting adds SwCursor=1
and Mmio=0 to the [Display] section of System.ini, and SafeMode=1 to the
[Windows] section of Win.ini
The last notch from the
right (None) can be set to correct problems if your computer frequently stops
responding to input, or has other severe problems.
This setting adds SafeMode=2 to the [Windows] section of Win.ini, which removes
all driver acceleration support and causes Windows 98 to use only the
device-independent bitmap (DIB) engine rather than bit block transfers for
displaying images
When you have
enabled PC Card Power Management, sometimes your modem may not work when you try
to use it. However if you try again, it works right away.
To resolve this, you have to set an extra dely:
Start the Registry Editor
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ Class \
Modem
Select the key for the modem you are trying to use
Select Edit > New > DWORD Value from the menu
Name the new value ConfigDelay
Set the Value to 3000, for a 3 second delay
Close the registry editor
If you try to connect to a secure Web page, you may receive an error message:
Internet Explorer 4:
An error occurred in the secure channel support
Internet Explorer 5:
The page cannot be displayed.
Cannot find server or DNS Error
To fix this:
Select Start > Settings > Control Panel, and then double-click Internet
Select the Advanced tab
Under Security, make sure that the following check boxes are selected:
Select Start > Settings > Control Panel, and then double-click Internet
Select the Connections tab, click Connect to the Internet using a local area
network
Under Proxy Server, click Advanced
Type the appropriate proxy server address and port in the Secure box, click OK
(3 times)
Troubleshooting Windows 98 Startup Problems and Error Messages
For more information on
Troubleshooting Windows 98 Startup Problems and Error Messages, see Microsoft's
Knowledge Base Article No. 188867, or use Microsoft's Startup and Shutdown
Troubleshooting Wizard.
