Win98 I have a bunch of problems (W98)

[travel124]

I was having alot of errors and called support they said to format and reinstall windows 98, of course I did not backup at the time. After installing 98 I lost my config sys info and autoexec.bat info.

In my system properties devive manage i have errors with an eclamation mark under other devices. 1-Intel Firmware Hub
2-Pci Ethernet controller
3- Pci Multimedia Audio Device


I have tried to reinstall 98 and also reistall driver, update driver with boot floppy and cd and even windows update but no luck.

I went to the registry and alot of things are no longer there as far as, keys and values. I have been trouble shooting for days and cannot fix anything.
I am lucky long enough to stay online to try to find some help after awhile my screen gets all blurred and i cant read it or I get some crazy error, or the puter just shuts down........I think I really messed this up.....can you help?

[gangsta]

It sounds to me the problems you are having have nothing to do with re-installing windows so I can not really understand why those idiots at microsoft are telling people they need to reformat their disk & re-install windows.

When you re-formatted you lost the hardware configuration files in your old INF directory for those 3 devices (and all others if you have them too).
So unless a device driver is part of the windows CD, you need to locate a proper driver.

Of course the driver could be the right one but windows will still mis-configure the device.
Delete the affected (!) devices from the Device manager & reboot into safe mode.
The next time you go back into normal mode windows might detect any or a bunch of them, just cancel, and let it load the desktop as usual.
Do this at least 2 more times (reboot).
Now in the fourth boot let Windows install the devices if it detects them or install the drivers yourself if not detected.

One way to trouble shoot is to disable (from the bios) 2 of the three affected devices , and then re-enabling and installing them one at a time to check if they work this way. If each one works while the others are disabled then you might have a conflict you need to resolve from the BIOS.

If there are no conflicts, they should be installed right this time, after te multiple reboots.
However if the conflicts still exists you need to check that these devices are properly enabled in the BIOS (if they are onbaord).When a device is not enabled windows cannot detect it.

If you formatted the entire C: drive as you say then there is no chance of recovering the old Config.sys & Autoexec.bat. If you did not format; a backup should still exist even if you installed windows on top of it. (like autoexec.bak etc)

Now this blur error is strange, you might have installed the wrong VGA & motherboard chipset drivers?

If so go back to your motherboard/PC install CD, and re-install everything one by one after you delete each affected thing from the Device manager, reboot, and re-install.

You should keep doing that until you are done.
The reboots are very important because it allows windows to re-configure itself. And the safe mode boot actually fixes things when they go wrong.

the sound chip may require in addition adding a line in Autoexec.bat to intialize before windows starts. Check the sound chip installer program.

If your motherboard continues having problems go to the chipset manufacturer website (say if you have an Intel 440BX chipset then you go to Intel's site, or if you have VIA MVP etc you go to VIA's site).
Then download the latest version/fix for your specific chipset type. They should also have some diagnostic utilities that could be of help to you.

Now for customized or OEM brands then you go to that specific maker for help.

If you have an overclocked CPU , the overclocking may have been causing your windows problems and you need to go back to normal speed.