Windows 98 Very Unstable on Pentium 4 2.53 \ VOGONS

Windows 98 Very Unstable on Pentium 4 2.53

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First post, by Tatsuya

Posted on 2019-05-11, 13:18

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Hi, I recently built my first 98 gaming PC. After installing all the drivers and patches the computer is incredibly unstable. Something as basic as copying files over from a CD-ROM will be enough to make the computer blue screen. Of course the sole reason I wanted to build this in the first place was to play games. Games that run in software render run just fine. But games that use hardware acceleration, mainly Direct3D always just crash to the desktop, or just lockup the whole computer. I've tried ruling out problems with the process of elimination. The network card isn't causing the problem, neither is the video card as I swapped it with a different AGP video card. So my only sources of the problem lie at either the power supply, the RAM, the sound card, or the processor itself. So what would be causing this problem?

Specs:
Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz
512MB RAM DDR
Nvidia GeForce2 Ti
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1

Reply 1 of 9, by Garrett W

Posted on 2019-05-11, 13:29

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You can rule out the processor. A CPU either works or it doesn't, it can't be producing erratic behavior such as this.
A likely culprit could be bad capacitors on your motherboard, take a good look at the ones located around the CPU socket and the AGP slot, if any of them are bulging or worse yet, have leaked, then they need to be replaced. RAM could also be an issue, I'd suggest letting memtest86+ run just to be sure.
Lastly, what power supply are you using?

Reply 2 of 9, by Tatsuya

Posted on 2019-05-11, 13:35

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I've checked the capacitors on the motherboard, luckily none of them are bulging or have leaked. And the power supply I am using is a Channel Well Technology CWT-250ATX 250W.

Reply 3 of 9, by darry

Posted on 2019-05-11, 16:39

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I second the memtest recommendation, but I would not exclude the CPU as a possible culprit as I have experienced a brand new one with bad L1 cache.

Reply 4 of 9, by .legaCy

Posted on 2019-05-11, 17:13

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maybe its the ram or psu, i would go with a corsair vs450

Reply 5 of 9, by mr_bigmouth_502

Posted on 2019-05-11, 23:13

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What motherboard are you using? That's a big factor when it comes to stability.

Reply 6 of 9, by Deksor

Posted on 2019-05-11, 23:39

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What video driver version do you use ? Latest Nvidia drivers for windows 9x for GeForce 2-3-4 are really shitty. Use a older version like version 4x.x

It might not solve the whole stability issue, but games using d3d crashing to the desktop while working well for software rendering really screams bad Nvidia driver to me.

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Reply 7 of 9, by JonathonWyble

Posted on 2019-05-12, 00:14

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Do Pentium 4 CPUs even support Windows 98? Because I thought Windows 98 only goes up to Pentium III processors. But I P4s do support Win 98, so I don't think that could be the problem.

1998 Pentium II build

Reply 8 of 9, by Tatsuya

Posted on 2019-05-12, 01:57

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Found out that the culprit was a bad RAM stick. Now everything works fine. Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Reply 9 of 9, by .legaCy

Posted on 2019-05-12, 02:50

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JonathonWyble wrote:
Do Pentium 4 CPUs even support Windows 98? Because I thought Windows 98 only goes up to Pentium III processors. But I P4s do support Win 98, so I don't think that could be the problem.

Yes windows 98 is supported by intel 865 for example, which is a chipset that supports pentium 4 cpus.
The processor itself has nothing to do with compatibility, the only thing is that pentium 4 that have Hyper Threading don't make use of the feature under Windows 98, as long as the cpu is on the x86 architecture it should be compatible with Windows 98, the chipset of the motherboard may not.

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