Win98 boots to black screen

[pmachine]

Hi,
I need some help with a video driver. It is a ATI Radeon VE on a dual boot Win98/Win2k machine. I can boot to Win2k but when I try 98 all I get is a black screen. I have disabled video drivers and started in Safe Mode. At this point I am running on the basic video drivers. Have tried to reload ATI drivers but it doesn't seem to work. Any help would be gfreatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Pmachine

 

[dakota81]

Sounds most like the display drivers are set to use the tv-out port, and not the monitor port. Hook the machine up to both a monitor & a tv at the same time and you should be able to switch the display back to the monitor.

I've run into greater problems with my media computer & video outputs; the easiest procedural way to get this done is have something hooked up to each output on the video card to get the correct switch, then you'll just need the monitor once that's corrected.

 

[pmachine]

Thanks dakota81,
I did hook up a TV to the computer but still nothing. My main frustration at this point is trying to load the drivers from the ATI CD. Since I can only start in Safe Mode I cannot run the CD to load the drivers. I do remember having problems loading the drivers for this before. This has been a problem for at least 8 months I just give up on it and try again some other time. I was on line looking for a new driver to download and can't find anything for the ATI Radeon VE card. I thought I might be able to boot to Win2k download driver, and then drop it to W98 desktop, boot 98 in safe mode and open downloaded driver from there. But I can't seem to find a driver to download.
Thanks for your help though,
Let me know if you have any other ideas,
Paul

 

[dakota81]

This is the driver download page for that video card:

http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/...ME98driver&submit.x=13&submit.y=15&submit=GO!

 

[dakota81]

If you were installing from the original machine, I wouldn't doubt that you're having problems with the drivers... when the Radeon's first came out, their driver functionality was an utter joke, a shame, massively screwed up your performance & stability.

They're must better now, I haven't run into a single problem with the latest Catalyst 3.9.

 

[pmachine]

Well I uninstalled all ATI products and drivers from my system, 98 & 2000. Restarted, downloaded the wxp-w2k-catalyst-7-95-031028m-011774c file from ATI and installed under W2k, all works well, I then downloaded wme-catalyst-7-95-031028m-011774c to my W98 desktop restarted in 98 Safe Mode and proceeded to install wme-catalyst during installation I received this error message:
"Severe!
Setup was unable to complete the installation. Try to setup your display with a stndard VGA driver before running setup."

This has been an ongoing message and problem. When I go into My Computer/Properties and check the video it has a red X through it. ???
I am at a loss, spent hours upon hours with this and just can't seem to get it going.
Paul

 

[dakota81]

Well, it's always a good recommendation to reload Windows 98 from scratch from time to time; maybe now's a good time? I used to reload Win98 on my own computer twice a year even if it seemed fine.

Sometimes it's worth 3 hours reloading an OS versus days debugging it.