wilkes

Sorry, in my last post, I meant to say I WOULDNT delete anything under "modems" since your modem is working fine.

Thanks

-JSH

GoWilkes,

As to your question concerning deleting things from device manager in safe mode, I would only delete things I knew were duplicates, or causing problems. For example, I would delete all things under "audio/game controllers", "USB controllers". Don't delete anything under the "System Devices". I also would delete anything under "modems" since it appears that your modem is working fine.

On the other issues, when your system is searching for these drivers (PCI to ISA Bridge, etc. ) you may have to manually specify the exact directory on that particular CD. When it is searching for a driver, try selecting "Specify a location" and then navigate to the drivers directory on the mobo CD. Another good directory to try is the \WIN98 directory on the Windows 98 CD.

The "PCI Audio Device" is your sound driver, even though its built in. It is still referred to as a PCI device, so this is normal. The driver would have to be on the motherboard's driver CD, but it may take finding the driver manually. In other words, you may have to click on "PCI audio device", then "update driver", then select "Specify a Location", then navigate to your mobo CD. On the mobo CD, the drivers are probably in seperate folders. I would look for something like "\Drivers\Audio" or something to that extent.

If the mobo CD is made for several different models of mobo, then there might be SEVERAL different audio drivers on the CD and you'll have to pick the right one. This allows a company to just make one CD and throw it in every different model mobo they sell.

Worst case scenario, (and I've had to do this hundreds of times), if the driver CD doesn't work, or you lose the driver CD altogether, you can crack open the case and look at the brand name/model of the audio chip on the board. Most of the time, the chip will be close to the audio ports that stick out the rear of the board, but not always. For example, you might see a chip with "AD1981B" which would specify an Analog Devices brand on-board sound card, which are pretty common. You can then do a search at google for "AD1981B driver" and download the latest driver. The audio driver you have dpends on what brand of board you have, however.

The audio chip is usually very small for on-board audio, so sometimes it takes a flashlight and a good set of eyes to read the numbers off the chip. You may have better luck all around to simply download all the drivers directly from the mobo manufacturers website. All you'll need to know is the brand name and model of your board. This way, you'll get the latest and greatest drivers for your hardware.

Hope this is of some help.
-JSH

Except for the modem, I don't have anything in any of the PCI slots (and the modem's working fine, because I'm online with it right now). The video card is an AGP, and everything else is either USB or onboard.

When I boot up, here are the 5 things it's trying to install (in order):

- PCI to ISA Bridge
- USB 2.0 Hub (this plugs into one of the onboard USB slots)
- PCI Host Bridge
- PCI Multimedia Audio Device (odd, because the only sound card is onboard)
- Unknown (no idea on this one, but probably the Palm Pilot)

I remember when I first installed the mother board that I had to install the PCI to ISA Bridge using the CD that came with the mobo. I tried this same CD to install it, and that's when I first got the Error 69. Afterwards, I found that I get the error 69 no matter what hardware I try to install, as if there is an IRQ conflict (but there's not).

I'm tempted to go into the Device Mgr in Safe Mode and just delete everything I don't recognize, but I'm worried that this will mess something up that I can't repair. If I have to go to the trouble of buying a new hard drive to back everything up, though, I would rather just reformat and install Win 2000 or something... when I have 4 hours to kill, that is.

GoWilkes,

Are you sure it isn't PCI slot? Do you have any PCI cards that might not be properly seated? Looking back and noticing it happened when you moved the box makes me think one of your cards may not be pushed in all the way. Try taking each card out, at least enough to clear the motherboard's PCI connector, then re-inserting it.

Thanks, guys.

Smitty, I tried your idea in the beginning, but it looks like the problem starts with the onboard sound card. I can't take it out, of course, and the computer won't recognize any driver for it. The other errors I get are for oddities like "PSI slot."

JSH, when I'm in safe mode, the Device Manager has a lot of things listed that I don't recognize by name. Because of this, I've been worried that I'll remove something important. Is that a legitimate concern, or is the worse thing that's going to happen is that it will need to reinstall the driver?

If that does not work, you can try "tricking" windows 98 into reinstalling over top of itself. This way, it just replaces the win98 files which may have gotten corrupted. To do this, boot to a win98 CD or floppy and get to a DOS prompt.

Go to the windows directory on your C: drive and rename or delete "win.com". The reason for this is because when you re-run the win98 setup, it looks for win.com to see if windows is already installed. If it finds win.com, it will simply throw an error saying windows is already installed. By deleting it, you trick it into not seeing your windows installation. Now navigate to your win98 CD and run setup.

It is VERY IMPORTANT to note this next tip. When you start the win98 install, it may see that a Windows directory already exists, so it may suggest installing windows to "C:\windows.000". You DO NOT want to do that. Just delete the ".000" leaving only "C:\windows" This way, you will reinstall windows into the same directory where it already resides, thereby keeping all your program settings, data, and everything intact. The setup will simply replace all the windows system files and (hopefully) fix the problem. Once setup has completed, reboot and it should boot right up to your desktop just the way it was.

One of these methods should solve the problem unless something is SEVERELY screwed. I used to run 2 retail computer repair shops, and was the manager for Campus Computer Services for Western Carolina Univ. I can attest that this method works wonders. I have used it to repair hundreds upon hundreds of win98 systems.

Keep us posted as to your progress.

-JSH

Reboot and enter safe mode, then go into device manager. Doing this in safe mode will show you all the driver entries that have ever been made. In other words, when you look at, say, the modem driver, it may have 3 or 4 entries named something similar to:

-56k FaxModem
-56k FaxModem #2
-56k FaxModem #3

and so forth. This happens because when a problem occurs where windows randomly decides it needs a driver, it will just add it to the list, but the old driver is still actually installed. Most of the time, you won't see the older existing drivers listed unless you enter safe mode. This can cause conflicts and all sorts of problems.

Delete ALL INSTANCES of the problem device drivers and reboot into normal mode. This will allow the system to install fresh copies of the drivers with no risk of some drivers being duplicates.

-JSH

I am not exactly sure why it tried to reload the drivers in the first place, but here is what should fix the problem:

1. remove as many of the devices as you can. If they are USB, this should be easy.

2. Make sure you have all the appropriate drivers available on disk or hard drive.

3. Delete all the problem devices from device manager.

4. Add and configure each device one at a time. If you have several internal drivers, you may have to do them together.

One of my home computers is running Windows 98 FE, which I like because it's generally pretty fast.

Recently, I temporarly moved the computer to a different room. When I moved it back, though, the strangest thing started happening; when I reboot the computer, it tries to install several pieces of hardware that's already been installed.

Here's the really odd thing: when I try to install them, I'll get to the point where it tries to load the driver, but then says "Error 69: unable to install driver."

I've looked all over Google for information on this error, but am finding very little. Some people say that it's the wrong driver, but I know for a fact that it's not. What's worse is that I get this error on 5 pieces of hardware (including the USB hub that runs several other items, the onboard sound card, etc).

Thoughts?