g400max: cant reboot win98se with network installed which works without g400-driver

[the.cunning]

My System:
Chaintech 5AGM2 (VIA), K6-2 450, 128 MB PC100
Matrox Millenium G400 Max
Realtek 8139 100 mbit LAN card (PCI)
Creative Labs SB16 PnP (ISA)
My Prblem:
I'm getting blue screens and hangups everytime I try to reboot or shutdown my Win98-SE.
MS Win98SE Patch against Shutdown Problems (found in Matrox-Tech-Support) doesn't help. My windows forgets all the changes wich require rebooting.
So I cant setup the way I want to (Switch on the 32Bit Z-Buffer in Powerdesk Options for example). In addition i often lose files on my HD because of crashes when trying to reboot.
After reinstalling (several times) I got to work the g400 (with newest drivers: 5.52) without any other drivers (LAN) installed.
After many retries I even got my Network card to work. When I now enable file-sharing in LAN I get back to these reboot crashes.
If I use another Graphic Card (ET6100 PCI) or if I use the Standard VGA driver for the G400 my network adapter works without any prblems and I can reboot my System.
I've got the same problems with my old LAN Card (Realtek8029). With this older LAN card I often get blue screens while working in windows - so the new one is already one step better . Also this network adapter works fine when not using the g400-drivers.
I already tried many different combinations of drivers for the g400 and the lan cards. Nothing helped - i just found additional problems .
In my System every device as got an IRQ for itself and the g400 gets one (11) from the bios. So I dont have any conflicts or IRQ sharing.
I've got Linux installed with graphic drivers , network adapter and OpenGL-hardware support of the g400 and everything is working very well.

[the.cunning]

I also tried a ISA NE2000 compatible NIC now. The same shit (sorry). Please HELP! I like that Matrox Card but I need my Network. Sorry for having written as much - please try to find time to read all this - Thank you!

[Maggi]

Is that network card occupying the slot right next to your AGP port ?

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Cheers,
Maggi

Despite my nickname causing confusion, I am not female ...

[Bilbo]

I used to get the same thing with an ISDN card and w98. It was the network drivers.
Worked fine in w95, blue screen on shutdown or restart in w98.
Only way I cured it was by getting a new ISDN card. (Diamond said they wouldn't support w98, so if I wanted 98 then it was new card)
You say you have tried various combinations of drivers, but have you got a true w98 version for your card? Realtek seems to be a default driver for a few network cards (Kingston to name one).

Bilbo

[mynx]

I read a windows list that mentioned problems with realtec cards. As Bilbo said make sure you are using the card manufacturers drivers and not the windows generic realtec drivers. There are also warnings about cheap NE2000 compatable cards. I have had many problems with them.

[the.cunning]

i'm using the opposite PCI slot to the AGP for my NIC. But I think that can't be the problem, because I get the same Problem when using an ISA card.
The drivers I am using for the NIC are the Win98 drivers from the Realtek (chip manufacturer) web page. For the ISA card I used the NE2000 standard driver coming with Win98.
I wonder why I can use the Network card but as soon as I myself enable file sharing I get these reboot hangups (blue screen->hangup).
In the matrox.com tech-support I just found one event on this: ...some network cards may also cause such problems. Just use a simple driver without any special things included, dont install anything but the driver (no software (something like that is written there). But what can I do to share my files? I've already tried out 3 kinds of NIC (okay, 2 times Realtek chip). Hmm..

[the.cunning]

Not only that I cant share files to network. As soon as I have accessed network one time i cant reboot anymore. Does anyone have a Chaintech 5AGM2 Mainboard running together with a Matrox G400? I've already got the latest Bios and also tried latest VIA Drivers. And I dont think its the NIC's fault because I tried 3 different kinds. Should I try using Win98 first edition instead of SE or Win95 or switch from german to english version? HELP!!

[Björn]

i have had a similiar problem some time ago (Realtek 8029, G400, MVP3 board.. etc) and suffered Blue Screens regularily, even the described crashes. I then contacted the german Matrox Support and they advised me to set my AGP aperture size to 16 MB (or 32 for 32 MB cards), boot, switch off Busmastering for the AGP in the Powerdesk, reboot. Well, it worked. don't ask me why.

After a time i enabled Busmastering again and since then my system freezes on shut-down, wether Busmastering is on or off, but it boots without a complaint, not even trying to scan the drives.

As said before, don't ask me why...

Bye
Björn

[the.cunning]

Now set AGP size down to 16 MB in my Bios and things seem to be working much better. Just read that I should have set it to 32 MB for my 32mb-G400max. Will try that now and then try to use my NIC. Support me by praying or something like that! Thanx for help - CU!

[the.cunning]

Okay - Network works perfrectly now. But if I set AGP aperture size to 32 MB (for my 32 MB g400max) I get a black screen with frozen white mouse pointer when trying to reboot. Anyway everything seems to work fine with AGP aperture size set to 32 MB. Thanx to everyone who helped me! CU

PS: Tell me, if you know something about my black-screen rebooting with AGP aperture size set to 32 megs!