Nightmare On Windows 98 Street

by ComputerBob

October 7, 1999

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost
For want of a horse, the rider was lost
For want of a rider, the battle was lost
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost
And all for the want of a nail.

-- An old English nursery rhyme

Last week, it took me 7 attempts over 14 hours, in a two-day period, to finally install Windows 98 on my PC at home.

And you may not believe what turned out to be the cause of all the problems I had.

A few months ago, I became a "Microsoft Mentor". As a Mentor, it is my job to support other faculty members in the instructional uses of Microsoft software. One of the benefits of being a Mentor is that Microsoft gave me about $1000 worth of software for free, including Microsoft Office 2000 Professional and Microsoft FrontPage 2000.

One of the things I've learned from experience is that you often get a cleaner, more stable installation of software if you install it from scratch, instead of upgrading an older version of the software. So, I decided to blow away the Microsoft Office 97 applications on my PC and install Office 2000 from scratch. Then, I decided that, as long as I was doing that, I might as well blow away my whole Windows 95 hard drive and install the latest version of Windows 98 Second Edition (SE) from scratch before installing the new Office suite.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Start with a brand new operating system, installed from scratch, and add a brand new Office suite, also installed from scratch.

So, I borrowed a CD of Windows 98 SE from the college where I teach (we have a site license for Win98 SE). I backed up the files on my PC's hard drive, formatted it, and installed Windows 98 SE from scratch.

Everything seemed to install fine. I didn't run into any error messages. After about 45 minutes, the installation was complete, and Windows 98 "booted up" for the first time. Almost. When I saw the Windows 98 Welcome Screen, I breathed a sigh of relief. About ten seconds later, the Welcome Screen disappeared, and I sat facing a black DOS screen with a flashing cursor. Flash. Flash. Flash. That's all she wrote. No Windows 98. Obviously, Windows 98 had set up something incorrectly, and that something was now keeping Windows 98 from booting up normally. So much for having a "Plug and Play" (plug and pray) operating system.

I restarted my PC and went into Windows 98's Safe Mode. Windows 98 started right up in Safe Mode. Safe Mode starts Windows 98 without any hi-res graphics, while disabling several of the devices that can cause the operating system to hang when they're not installed correctly. That gives you the opportunity to troubleshoot and then change or remove the offending device to solve the bootup problem. In Safe Mode, I went into Windows 98's Device Manager, to find out what device had caused the bootup problem. As I read the list of devices, they all grinned and told me "No problem here, boss!"

So, I restarted my PC again. This time, it booted right up into Windows 98, without any problems at all. I considered the possibility that something hadn't configured correctly the first time, but then had been fixed when I restarted my PC. For a few seconds, I felt a little better.

Then I restarted my PC again. This time, it hanged at the DOS screen, just like it had done the first time.

So, I restarted my PC in Safe Mode again. Again, Windows 98's Device Manager told me that none of my devices had any conflicts, and that every device was running normally.

Hmmm.

So, I restarted my PC again. This time, it booted right up into Windows 98, without any problems at all.

Then I restarted my PC again. It hanged at the DOS screen again, just like it had done the first time.

Several more restarts confimed the fact that my PC was in an infinite loop that consisted of three different events:
    1) Hanging at a DOS screen
    2) Booting into Safe Mode
    3) Booting normally into Windows 98

With apparently no option to correct whatever was causing the problem, I decided to format my PC's hard drive and reinstall Windows 98 SE from scratch again, hoping that whatever had caused the problem would go away.

An hour later, my PC was stuck in the exact same 3-event loop.

So, I formatted my hard drive again, cleaned the Windows 98 CD, and reinstalled Window 98 a third time. A few minutes later, my PC was back in the old 3-event loop.

So, I formatted my hard drive again, removed my PC's modem, and reinstalled Windows 98 a fourth time. A few minutes later, my PC was back in the exact same 3-event loop.

After formatting my hard drive again, removing my PC's sound card, and reinstalling Windows 98 a fifth time, my PC went right back into the exact same 3-event loop.

If you think these steps are monotonous to read, imagine how you'd feel if you had to spend hours and hours actually DOING all the steps I did!

I formatted my hard drive again, removed my PC's sound card, modem, and connection to my Uninterruptible Power Supply, and then reinstalled Windows 98 a sixth time. A few minutes later, I was once again being mocked by the infuriating Triad of Failure.

I finally decided that I must have been bitten by one of the many Windows 98 SE installation bugs that I had read about on the Internet, and that Windows 98 simply didn't like one or more of the components in my PC. That's when I decided to try installing the Original Windows 98, instead of the reportedly much-more-picky Windows 98 SE.

So, I took the Win98 SE CD back to school and traded it for an older Original Windows 98 CD.

After formatting my hard drive again and installing the Original Windows 98, I once again sat facing a black DOS screen with a flashing cursor. Flash. Flash. Flash. Ha. Ha. Ha. Not. Even. Close.

What else could I do? I formatted my hard drive again, removed my PC's sound card, its modem, and the connection to my Uninterruptible Power Supply, then installed the original Windows 98 a second time. Flash. Flash. Flash. You'll. Never. Fix me.

At times like these, I begin to wonder if I really want to work with computers any more.

At that point, it became clear to me that there must be something actually WRONG with the my PC's hardware. I thought back, wondering what, if anything I had changed or added to my PC since the last time I had reinstalled Windows 95 on it. The only thing I could think of was that I had added a second hard drive to it a couple of months earlier.

Grasping at straws, I opened my PC's case, disconnected the second hard drive's data and power cables, and then started it up again. Flash. Flash. Flash. Give. Up. Loser.

Obviously, the other hard drive hadn't been the problem.

Then it occured to me that maybe there was a loose cable causing Windows 98 to find and then lose one of the devices that are connected to my PC. My PC is a tower case, pinched between my desk and a storage cabinet, so I had to lean way over the top of it and peer down into the darkness to find the web of cables connected to its back panel.

One by one, I felt each cable and confirmed that they were all connected.

But, then something caught my eye.

A tiny letter "K" and a tiny letter "M", carved side-by-side into the metal back plate of my PC.

Have you ever noticed that your PC's mouse connector and your PC's keyboard connector are exactly the same kind of connector?

Yes, for the past 2 months -- ever since I had added a second hard drive to my PC -- my mouse had been plugged into my PC's keyboard port, and my keyboard had been plugged into my PC's mouse port.

I switched the connectors and then powered up my PC. Original Windows 98 booted right up with no problems. So far, so good. I restarted my PC. Original Windows 98 booted up again with no problems. I restarted it again. Original Windows 98 booted up a third time with no problems. I restarted it twelve more times. Every single time, Original Windows 98 booted up with no problems at all.

Windows 95 hadn't cared that the mouse and keyboard had been plugged into each other's ports. Apparently, Windows 98 does care. Very deeply.

The next morning, I drove back to the college and traded the Original Windows 98 CD for another CD of Windows 98 SE. When I got home, it took me about 45 minutes to install it, and it booted right up and worked great from then on, without any problems at all.

Until three days later, when a defective Microsoft Office 2000 installation CD corrupted a bunch of files and trashed my entire hard drive. I was forced to install Windows 98 SE all over again, and then spend over an hour on long distance, convincing a first-week tech support person to send me a replacement Office 2000 CD.

But that's a whole other story.