While initializing device IOS

From My Big Bad Wiki

Scenario: All of sudden you see that nasty error message after a reboot when you would rather be seeing your Windows 98 bootup screen. I don't claim to have all the possible answers to this one, but I'll share how I fixed my problem. It took me hours of research to get it fixed, so maybe I can save you lots of time.

For starters the motherboard was based on the VIA chipset.

• During bootup use F8 to get to the startup option menu. Choose the step by step boot up method. Choose yes to everything EXCEPT viagart.vxd. Make sure you type an N for that one. Once you get all through that it should actually boot up. If it bombed out after doing that, I'm not sure if I can help. That worked for me.
• Now if the system booted up properly, go in to the c:\windows\system directory and either delete or rename the file viagart.vxd. This is so in case you reboot before you finally fix it you don't have to go through the whole step by step procedure. Instead, during normal boot up, you will get an error about it missing, but that's OK. Hit any key and it will boot up.
• Now head to http://www.viaarena.com/ and download the latest VIA Hyperion Drivers. Remember my fix is based on having a motherboard with a VIA chipset, if yours does not, or if your not sure, I don't recommend continuing.
• Now for the most important thing. If your running any type of antivirus, disable it right now before you go any farther. This is what burned me. The system I was repairing had Symantec anti virus on it and installing the VIA software did not work properly. I was right back to square one.
• With anti virus disabled, now install the VIA software you just downloaded. I chose the normal install which installed all of the VIA software. When it's complete, it wants to reboot and that's fine, let it.
• Now if all went right, it should reboot fine. Just keep in mind that when it goes back into windows, it'll probably want to find some new VIA hardware, which is fine. Just point the dialog box to c:\windows\system and you should be good.

Did this help you?

Please send me a comment letting me know if this helped you at all. I've had folks actually want to donate a few bucks for helping, and I want make it known that this information is provided for free.