I have changed mobos "under" Windows many, MANY times… and THAT is the problem.

This install of Win98 has lasted since early 1999 - including… many, many registry hacks (which I am still putting back in now) mobos / procs:

• Abit BH6, Celeron overclocked to 550
• Abit BH6, Celeron overclocked to 850, then 950
• Abit KG7-Lite, Athlon XP 1600+
• died on Abit NV7-133R, Athlon XP 1600+

hard drives:

• 20 GB on the mobo
• Promise 66 RAID 2x20 + 1x40
• Promise 66 RAID 2x40 + 1x80
• Promise 100 RAID 2x40 + 1x80

video cards:

• no-name PCI plus voodoo2
• TNT2 (forgot which one, it was only a week)
• voodoo3 3000
• geforce3 ti 450 (gainward)

The list doesn't include 2 SCSI cards (ISA, then SCSI), the various CD-Burners (2), ZIP drive, scanners (3), cameras (2), mp3 player, X10 control hardware, and everything else that would bloat the hell out of the registry!

So it finally caught up with me, I am reinstalling Windows right now…

To answer all questions -

• I will NOT go to XP as my home OS. Maybe in a VMWare window with

Linux watching it very VERY closely. I considered Win2K but found out a game I like ("Alice") doesn't work there… I have also had problems with Ghost on my laptop with Win2K…

• The tape detection was crashing VCOMM because Windows was looking

for a parallel-port tape drive (my theory)

• And the kicker, something that people NEED TO BE AWARE OF WITH

THIS MOTHERBOARD - installing the nForce drivers from the nVidia web page KILLED win98. I did an absolutely fresh install, ran it, BOOM no booting, total lockup. In safe mode, I went in and deleted the "new" not working PCI video - I assume the nForce installer pokes something in the registry to tell Windows that the video is there, but the 133R has it disabled, so Windows tries booting and just says "WTF?" - bootlog.txt showed it dying on video init.

Problem: I have an 80GB Maxtor hooked up to the on-board IDE using a nice fancy 80 pin rounded cable. My problem is that when I cold boot, it ID's the hard drive as a "MAXTOR ROMULUS" and then says error with the drive. I hit ctrl-alt-del and it reboots, properly IDs, and boots fine. Any ideas? I have messed with the IDE delay, up to 3 seconds didn't fix it…

Solution: Turns out that drive didn't like to be the 'Slave' without a 'Master'. Never saw that before and I have had Master-less drives before…