Several people have reported floppy drive problems since upgrading to or installing Windows 98, even when the floppy drives worked perfectly under Windows 95 or previous versions of Windows and MS-DOS. To help aid this problem:

1. Right click on My Computer on the desktop.
2. Click on Properties, then Performance.
3. Then click on File System.
4. Click on Floppy Disk and if there is a check in "Search for New Floppy Drives Each Time Your Computer Starts" remove it.
5. Then click on Removable Disk and make sure write-back caching is not checked.

This may also help with Zip Drives and other removable media such as tape backup, Jazz, and other non-hard drives and CD-ROM/DVD drives.

Everyone at one time or another, has probably installed a program that insists on loading itself on startup, even if it isn't in the Startup group. This could be due to it loading from WIN.INI or the Windows registry. A good way to stop specific programs from loading is to use The System Configuration Utility (MSCONFIG). To run it:

1. Click Start, then Run,
2. Type in "MSCONFIG" (no quotes) and press ENTER.
3. When it comes up, click on "Startup"
4. Check or uncheck items you want to load or not to load.

This is very useful if you have a program or programs that you only want to run sometimes or not at all. Then you can almost always load the program from the Start Menu anyway, or simply re-enable it to load on Startup again at any time if you change your mind.

If you see a "Standby" option when you load the shut-down menu in Windows 98, chances are that your system supports one of the two standards (APM or ACPI). Microsoft has recommended that users close all programs, including virus scanners, utilities, and other applications if the system is not suspending or resuming properly. They have also suggested that users upgrade to the latest version of their system BIOS (your vendor has more information). If you have APM support, but the system isn't suspending/resuming properly, try these steps, rebooting after testing each one:

1. Right-click on "My Computer" and choose "Properties." Click "Device Manager" and then click the plus sign next to "System Devices" in the list. Click on "Advanced Power Management support" and then click "Properties." Next, click on "Settings" and then place a check in "Force APM 1.0 mode." Close "Device Manager" and reboot your system. Once it has loaded back up, close any programs that launched on startup, and select "Standby" from the Shut Down menu.

2. Make sure Power Management is disabled in your system's BIOS. Consult your vendor for information on how to adjust this setting manually if you don't know how. Then try suspending the system in Windows 98 again. If this doesn't work, try the opposite. See if the system will suspend/resume using only the BIOS set to manage power resources, and disable Win98's control over it by using the "Power Management" applet in the Control Panel.

3. If you have an NIC (Network Interface Card) try disabling it or removing it from the system. According to Microsoft, network cards can cause many power management problems with Win98. This option may not be a realistic solution for many people, but it might narrow down what is causing your problems.

4. If the failure is a "Your computer cannot go into standy" error, try clicking "Start" then "Run" and type in C:\Windows\Susfail.txt (path may be different). In some cases, this will list what driver, if any, that caused suspend/resume to fail.

5. Try going to Microsoft's web troubleshooter for Power Management problems:
   http://support.microsoft.com/support/windows/tshoot/apm98

6. Try suspending just one hardware element - such as your monitor or hard drive. Does it suspend/resume properly? Continue this for all your hardware, until you are able to find out which device caused the failure.

7. Disable USB (Universal Serial Bus) and see if the system suspends/resumes properly.

8. There is a utility called the Power Management Troubleshooter that you can try to use to diagnose what is causing harware failure on your system.

   This is available on your Windows 98 CD-ROM, but also a *newer* version is available online.

   The newer version is available at this location:
   ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/pmtshoot.exe

When wanting to do a clean install of Win98 yet bypass the check for an older version of Windows.

Boot your system from a boot diskette (Windows 95/98 startup disk, or DOS bootable diskette). Create a file in the root directory of your boot partition named:

The file can't be a zero-byte file, so edit it and put rem on a single line with no spaces in front of it.

This should bypass the check for previous version of Windows by fooling the system into thinking that NT is installed.