Windows 98 Black Sceen

oldwindowsrock

Okay so this is probably a simple solution but, I have downloaded the Windows 98 SE OEM from Winworld. I have encountered a problem with the installation, I have a PC that is compatible because I have installed it before. There is a black screen after the hardware configuration, It shows no activity in the hard drive and the display is functioning correctly. So i'm asking does anyone know what could be happening, and how to fix it.

SomeGuy

Do you mean the hardware detection during the GUI first stage of the setup? Does it actually finish hardware detection? If not then you should just be able to reboot and re-run setup and it should pick up where it left off (skipping a problematic device).

You might try temporarily disabling extra hardware devices (any not needed for setup to complete) in the motherboard BIOS setup and/or temporarily remove any unneeded expansion cards.

oldwindowsrock

Thats the problem, It sometimes does and doesn't. I can boot into safe mode fine, but whenever i restart into normal mode it goes to the black screen. It goes black after the Hardware Detection, and its a laptop.

yourepicfailure

I'd check for disk activity.
If there is, 98 probably tried loading an incompatible graphics driver.

ScottBeebiWan

oldwindowsrock wrote:

Thats the problem, It sometimes does and doesn't. I can boot into safe mode fine, but whenever i restart into normal mode it goes to the black screen. It goes black after the Hardware Detection, and its a laptop.

Depends.
If you finished the installation successfully, then you set the screen resolution and color depth too high for your VRAM. I encountered this in VirtualBox and raising the VRAM in settings made it work correctly.
If you're still in the setup program and your system isn't bootable yet, it's probably because you didn't manually disable something in a dialog that appears after that, that would make 98 assume you have something and freeze while looking for it. I also encountered this in VirtualBox while using VT-X acceleration.

oldwindowsrock

There is no disk activity, the light turns off after the Windows 98 logo. It will stay like this for hours on end, does anyone know what to do?!?

oldwindowsrock

Okay for anyone who has the same issues this is how I fixed it. Install MS-DOS 7.1, the put the cd (Windows 98) into the rom go to the cd drive and type setup. Then when you get to the black screen boot into safe mode and delete all the communication options (the ones with the little phone). Then install your graphics drivers and done.