It started when I added a second hard drive to my system. I installed Windows 98 which went as expected but the computer would lock up and stop responding midway during bootup if the Win98 CD was not in the Yamaha CDRW drive. The CD had to be in the Yammie before Windows started to boot. If I put it in the CD drive, it locks up. If I put any other CD in the Yammie, it locks up. I was unable to figure this one out so I kept my old hard drive as the boot drive instead. One day while browsing some computer newsgroup, I read something about BOOTLOG.TXT. This file is a log of the last successful boot. If you hold the Control key while Windows 98 is booting, you will get a boot menu with the following choices:
1. Normal 2. Logged (\BOOTLOG.TXT) 3. Safe mode 4. Step by step 5. Command prompt only 6. Safe mode command prompt only
I chose BOOTLOG so I could compare a successful boot with a non-successful boot (using Notepad+ to open both files and Tile Windows Vertically). The unsuccessful boot stopped at "Initing aic78u2.mpd". This file is in BASE5.CAB and is version 3.00a in Win98. The floppy that came with the motherboard contains version "3.01S3 Beta001" and is the version used with my old drive, which is why the old drive would boot but the new one wouldn't even though they both had the same version of Windows 98 installed. Of course I have no idea why version 3.00a HAD to have the Win98 CD in order to boot.
When I shut down Windows, my computer would do so quietly and quickly (Soft Off) and I could press the small Standby button to Soft Power On. One day, it ceased working - I could no longer use the Soft Power On. I checked the BIOS and Power Management settings in Windows and the reason is still a mystery to me.
Go to Mystery - Part Three
