First of all I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!!

If you need any turkey let me know because I've got tons of leftovers!! hehe.

Okay, I have an ECS k7s5a mb v3.1 with amd 650cpu/128mb/15gb hdd/52x cd-rom/16mb ATI PCI video card/56k PCI modem.

Original problem - user somehow corrupted 98 - booted with multiple errors. I fdisked /mbr, formatted and reloaded 98se from the original 98se cd-rom. Upon loading the motherboard cd it comes up with an error saying "registry corrupt". After I reboot I notice that the cd-rom drive does not appear in my computer although it is listed in the bios?!?!?!

I started over following the same steps and received the same results.

I tried Winme and received the same error message upon loading the motherboard cd.

Downloaded the latest via 4-in-1 drivers from the viaarena site and I get the same error message!!!

My question is, since I'm using a PCI video card and a pci modem, do I really need the via 4-in-1 loaded? I'm not using an AGP video card so I don't think I need the "agp" gart thing or whatever it is - do I?

I'm about to toss this board and go buy a new one but I don't understand why it won't work. Anyone else have this problem?

Thanks in advance for all of your help!