aptiva clean install woes

[joeroni]

I bought two identical pc's.Both are IBM Aptiva 2153-e3u,
K6 350MHz(512KB) 64MB 8GB HDD IDE PCI/ISA Microtwr(2X4) ATI onboard graphics and sound. They came with no ram or hard drives.I threw 64 mb ram in each and new used hard drives.
Checked fdisk and both hdd's had only one partition each.
None hidden. Format C: both.Went well. Put full retail win 98se in and tried to clean install.Got as far as installing then all hell broke loose.Says wrong drivers for vga then halts.Then wrong driver they don't match.Then wrong something else and so on.Retried again and again to reinstall and had to format C again and again.
Did checks on net and seems these computers originally came with recovery cd and something called ConfigSafe and so on.
But I installed new hdd so do they have a chip or something that stops you from installing without their disks? I checked the bios over and over again. Nothing.
It seems that the Aptiva has some way of stopping me from useing any disks that are not from IBM. Like recovery disks or something.Its not the hard drives but something from the board or chip or bios that prevents me from installing. Is that possible? If it is what can be done about it.
How can I do a fresh install of Win 98 on these.

 

[micker377]

Did you try the both mem sticks in one computer (64 is kind of short)? Can you find exactly which ATI board is emulated on the mother board? You may have to put these drivers in at the "Hit F6 to install any third party drivers" spot in the installation. You can also try putting in a regular video card and turn off the onboard video until you get Windows installed. Have you tried the IBM site to see if you can d/l the necessary disks?

 

[joeroni]

Yes I have checked the IBM Aptiva site for drivers but it does this while Im trying to install windows 98se onto a clean hard drive.It gets passed the serial number asking.
Then when windows starts to install drivers for hardware it has trouble and says it doesnt match what computer has and automaticly stops installing.Says different things each time.Windows protection error.and sometimes dosn't match vga.sys.Other times it just stops or freezes and so on.Tried installing windows 98 ten times to no avail.
Windows disc is new and checked it on other PII and its ok.
Seems like IBM Aptiva must have on board chip or something to keep everyone from useing anything else but their recovery disc.What is ConfigSafe.Well I'll try again.

 

[jaydeebe]

try fdisk and delete all partions. Create a new partion. insert the win98 startup disk. reboot the machine. Format the drive. then run setup.

Jaydeebe BSc (hons)
MCSA 2k
MCSE 2k

 

[billy71]

I ran into a problem trying to install Windows 98 on an Aptiva 2176, except different from your problem, it just froze up at the logo screen. Found some info on the net looking for Windows 98 freezes on installtion of 2176. Tried everything except copying the installation disk to the fixed disk that would probably have worked for me as I think the problem was with the CD, I won't bother to go in to what I did there as it created a problem too. I didn't want to use it but Millenium installed with no problem and is running fine.

 

[TekTippy4U]

try the AMD update from MS, for the known AMD 350 issues..., but they say it's resolved with 98

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=192841

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=240075

I think there's an issue with EZ-Drive if you used that utility on the new HDD

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138899/EN-US/

as an aside...you may want to load SMARTDRV right before running the installation from CDROM, as it enables buffering (disk cache) - see if it's in the \Win98 Dir on CDROM (standard 98 boot floppy doesn't contain it, but something from

http://www.bootdisk.com

may).

Also when Setup fails, shutdown by pressing the power button, wait 10 sec and power up - setup should skip the failure point and resume ahead of failure. Do this again during setup if necessary. Also a Detcrash.log file gets generated in the Root drive, which can be reviewed in DOS.

YOu may want to copy the \Win98 Directory to HDD
C:\
MD WIN98
CD WIN98
E:
COPY E:\WIN98\*.* C:\WIN98 /s
now run setup from C:\Win98

still probs?
Fdisk from scratch and Wipe all partitions
Reboot
Create New Primary, set it Active
Reboot
Format (make sure Scandisk runs - this is Vital, if it doesn't, invoke it at this point Scandisk C:
Copy over CDROM files as above and run setup again

TT4U

Notification:
These are just my thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions.
Backup All Important Data/Docs

 

[MiklK]

why not just buy a Recovery and Diagnostics disk from IBM for like 20 bucks? Then you can do whatever you like with your own retail Win98 copy. On my Aptiva i've found it much easier to just load the OS (and all their other junk) off the Recovery CD and load my own complete Win98 version afterward.
(I know it's not the most technical of advice, but it is my experience with Aptiva).
mikl

(A bird in the hand greatly interferes with typing.)
Mikl

 

[ollietek]

ConfigSafe was a third party bit of software that did a rudimentary kind of "System Restore". I think you can ignore it in your rebuilding game.