Hi all,
For something to fill in my spare time I build older systems from bits and pieces I've accumulated over the years. They are for the elderly so they can get use to using PCs and the net.....

The system I am working on at the moment has me stumped and would appreciate any help.
After putting the system together, I formatted and did a fresh install of Win 98SE, everything seemed to go without a hitch, Until 1st boot into windows I get a black screen with a few icons trying to show here and there....Then the system freezes
I rebooted the system in safe mode (no problems) to see if I could check any issues in Device manager. There were no Exclamation marks next to the hardware everything seems to be fine. Checked out System Information and noticed the IRQ are all free. I'm thinking this is the problem.
So I installed the VIA 4x1 chipset drivers and updated the BIOS for this M/B
Reinstalled win 98se same thing again..
Ready to give up, I installed my copy of Win XP and it is running perfect...
Can anyone shed any light as to why Win xp would work and not Win 98

Thanks in advance for any help

The specs are as follows:
GA 6VXC7-4x Socket 370
PIII 866
PC133 Sdram
PCI Riva TNT
Creative soundcard
Generic case and 400w power supply
20 GB IDE hard drive

This behaviour is normally caused by an incorrect driver.
What was originally installed on the system? Windows ME? Tried putting ME on it and seeing what happens?

It sounds like you are missing the display drivers. You can get the drivers for the Riva TNT from the legacy section at nVidia but that was a very popular card in both AGP and PCI so you can find the drivers on many sites. Game sites often host the driver files for older cards.