Windows 98 installation freezes

[meg911]

Trying to re-install Win98 on a P3/450, 128 (clean installation). Basically the whole setup is working fine until the very final steps when the personal settings are set-up.
When set-up reaches the point of "Setting up personalized settings - Default channel set-up" it simply freezes. Absolutely no movement or activity anymore. Anybody ever come across such a thing? Never happened to me whenever I installed previously.
I thought that perhaps it was due to hardware added since the last time, but then, what's the internet channels to do with any hardware settings?
Thanks for any assistance.
Michael

 

[meg911]

Addendum to the problem description above:
I have been notified that listing the additional hardware might be useful (Device Manager in Safe-Mode(!) does not report any conflicts). Anyway, here it is:
- Dawicontrol SCSI Adapter
- Teac CD-RW
- SB 1024
- Maxtor 40GB, jumpered as primary slave.

Re. this last item: Primary master and slave have been converted to EZMax disk manager. Before the new installation I formatted/partitioned the C-partition of the master with Fdisk and Format. The D-partition on the master is still set-up as Non-DOS partition managed by EZMax. Could this potentially interfere with the Win-Setup. If yes, which is the easiest way around it, without losing the data on partition D?
Thanks for your help.
M..