Allocate IRQ to PCI VGA: No (maybe I should set it to Yes?)

Try that, yes.

Also try and REMOVE the CD-drive and boot once w/o it.
Try to dissable sound and boot without it and work that direction.

If you boot in failsafe, does the system run smoothly?

To be honest, i THINK this is a windows-issue more then a BIOS-issue.. might be that windows tries to claim IRQ's that BOIS allreay have distributed.

Fresh Windows installation after HDD repartitioning, never been connected to Internet so far.

I have installed Everest and saved report to a file. The RAR of the file is attached to the message.

EDIT: Did what Titan advised.

-Allocate IRQ to VGA: Enabled.
It did nullify lockups I experienced on system shutdown, no other effect was noticed.

-Remove CD drive
No effect noticed.

-Disable onboard soundcard
This is weird. :werd: After I shorted the jumper clearly pointed by the motherboard manual as "Open: enable onboard soundcard. Short: Disable onboard soundcard/modem", the PC did take really long to just show me the HDD parameters (FAR worse then the "normal" speed), and then displayed a message "Primary slave ATAPI incompatible". System was unable to boot.

-Boot in failsafe
System booted much faster then normally.

Finally, I tried disabling the onboard LAN. Guess what, the machine worked faster and without the slowdowns. However, Windoze has shown me a nice BSOD (and a couple more) shortly.

It seems that the network adapter is the cause. And that sucks, cause the computer must have one and we cannot afford buyng a new one.

A PCI-Ethernet card costs in the ranges of 5 US$ and up.
That is one way of solving it.

Now that you have isolated the problem (onboard Ethernet);

What about BOIS-settings? Can you manualy assign the ethernet to a IRQ?
Tried some OLDER drivers?
Tried Windows Generic drivers? (Usualy they work surprisingly well)
Tried uninstalling, and just let windows search for new P&P?
What settings is there in BIOS for this?

NOTE: EVERYONE ELSE; If you don't have ANYTHING USEFULL to say; DON'T!

No (see the last answer).
I did not, it was hard enough to find working ones. In theory, there should be a set on the driver CD that came with the manual, in practice they didn't work. The ones for plain 98 were not accepted by OS, and those for 98SE had an installer required - which promptly reported that it misses some files and crashed.
I didn't. Guess that's the next thing I'll do.
And it detected the card back again and used the previously installed drivers.
There are none.

BTW: Can you tell me what exactly does DMA enabled/disabled setting in the BIOS do?

I believe that is for the sound card... its used when setting up a sound card in Dos games.

Heh? Isn't DMA Direct MEmory Access?

I suppose you're right, actually. Probably used in sound card setups for allocationg them memory.

WHAT IS A DMA?

A DMA or Direct Memory Access are pathways provided by the hardware to allow the hardware direct access to the computers memory. See DMA Listing for listing of DMA channels.

I REALY sugest you take a look at http://www.computerhope.com/irqs.htm#04

It states that IRQ 9 should be used for network.

Theire list looks ALOT different from your IRQ-setup.

Also: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000681.htm


Drivers: Are THESE the once you've downloaded?
http://www.pcchipsusa.com/support-pc...s.asp#M748LMRT

(direct link to LAN-drivers: http://www.pcchipsusa.com/LAN/WIN98.ZIP)

Also: specific Davicom-drivers: http://www.pcchipsusa.com/lan/davicom9102.ZIP

My drivers came right from the Davicom site. The ones from PCChips didn't work.

IRQ's could not be changed, it seems.

I did a defrag, and the computer accelerated a bit in result, but there is still a huge pause during the boot.

Now, I don't seem to be able to reset the drivers for the LAN card. Is there a way to do that without having to reinstall the whole damn Windows for the 4th time over? :wall: