Woohoo! Mostly fixed (was Got a new computer and need help...)

[Fenlock]

I throw my vote with Krieg

Get a beta of WindowsXP x64 and use it for the stated year. It will have far better hardware compablity than Windows 98.

/F

 

[Raloc]

In a word, yes Win98 is causing your problems. Ditch it quickly. You might be able to play the Sims 2 in Cedega. It's $15 for a 3 month license, and is fairly good software. That and a Mandrake 10 install would have you up and running in less time than Win98 install.

 

[Rackhir]

Yes SATA is a known problem for Win98. You need to install a SATA driver for the MB, during the instalation process. At some point very shortly after you boot off of the CD, there should be something asking if you need to install a 3rd party driver. Hit what ever the key it says it is (its f6 in w2k, iirc) and then feed it a floppy with the SATA Driver on it. Whom ever makes the motherboard should have a driver available for that most likely.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

Actually, all I had to do was unplug the new hard drive that came with it (the S-ATA) and the hard drive from my old computer stopped freaking out.

Still some weirdness, my new video card (a lowly FX5200) seems to be installed twice, once as a 250 megabyte card and once as a .5 megabyte card. And Neverwinter Nights doesn't seem to like the onboard soundcard (Realtek something or other). And oddly, the hard drive only connects at a rate of 100 as opposed to 133 like in my old PC, so it's slower. But it works, and the Sims 2 looks much better. They actually now have fingers, instead of mitten like clumps. And cast reflections in mirrors.

Maybe try to uninstall the video card and then reinstall it. Or go into the BIOS at startup and disable onboard video (that may be what's causing that)

Get a Soundblaster (or whatever the newer technology is) soundcard from Creative Labs. I've got an old Soundblaster in mine that works great! Then disable the onboard sound on the motherboard.

The hard drive speed is dependent on the system bus speed. This can be changed in the BIOS. Check your motherboard manual thoroughly before doing this or any of the other BIOS changes mentioned above!!

If you search ebay, you can find WinXP Pro fairly cheaply. I got an OEM copy (no retail box) for abt $125+shipping.

Win98 isn't designed for today's technology. You need XP. Pro especially. It will format the hard drive in it's own format, which is different from 98's. But will run a second drive that is still in 98's FAT32 format without any problems.