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Troubleshooting the nVidia/Windows 98/VIA boot-screen lockup:

There are times with some older nVidia video cards (i.e. the TNT2, Vanta, Vanta-LT and M64) video cards installed on certain VIA chipset motherboards (particularly the KT266 and before) with Windows 98 that the system will halt either at or just before the logon screen or desktop with lots of small green lines at the top of the screen (looks sort of like grass). This is caused by a conflict between the Windows Plug-n-Play tape drive detection, the VIA driver and the nVidia driver. We have not experienced this with GeForce video cards or with the newer KT400 and later motherboards; however, it seems particularly prevalent in the KT133 and KT266 boards with TNT2 and Vanta video cards. The solution to this is to remove the offending INF and virtual device driver (.VXD) files from Windows. We recommend renaming them as opposed to removing them entirely just in case you ever need them in the future ' they are only needed if you have or are planning to use a tape- backup device.

First make sure you are able to view invisible files and folders: Open My Computer then the Hard Drive Select 'Folder Options' in the View menu Click on the 'View' tab at the top of the window Check the radio button next to 'Show hidden files and folders' Uncheck the checkbox labeled 'Hide extensions for known file types' Click the Apply button then close the window

Now open the Windows folder and the Inf folder Locate the following files and change their extension from .inf to .old pnpwfdc.inf pnpwide.inf pnpwtape.inf pnpwppt.inf Use the 'Back' button and go back to the Windows folder and open the System folder Locate and open the iosubsys folder (it is hidden and should appear 'greyed-out') Locate the following files and change their extension from .vxd to .old drvwq117.vxd drvwppqt.vxd drvwcdb.vxd Close the window and restart your system. The lockup should be resolved.

What this does is prevents Windows from actually seeing the conflicting component (driver) and thus eliminating the lockups. The necessary files are still there; only Windows won't see them.

Should you find that you indeed need the files for use with your tape backup, you can open the SYSTEM.INI file inside C:WINDOWS and append the following to the '[386Enh]' section: DMABufferSize=64

Once again, save and close the SYSTEM.INI file and restart. You only need to perform this if you need these files because you have a tape drive you are going to use on the system, otherwise it is recommended that you rename the above files to eliminate the problem.

About the author: CIO & Sr. Vice President of Tornado Computers