Windows Protection Error in Windows 98SE using this BIOS

[M5864]

Hello, hope I'm at the correct place. I've spent hours on this today and hopefully you'll be able to help as it appears it's possibly a Multi-Floppy BIOS related conflict with Windows 98SE.

Windows 98SE Error that I'm encountering:
◦ While initializing device IOS:
◦ Windows Protection error. You need to restart your computer.

Background:

1. I have a texelect quad-flop card which is using "Sergey Kiselev’s BIOS we use on this card: Multi-Floppy BIOS Extension"
2. The motherboards On-board floppy controller is Disabled in the Award BIOS on a GA-6BXC v2.0 motherboard. Drives are set in Award BIOS as A:\1.2MB 5.25 and B:\1.44MB 3.5. These are the correct drives and are attached to Drive Port 0/1 on the quad-flop. I have another 1.44MB attached to Drive Port 2/3 also. 3 Floppy Drives in total.
3. NOTE: In a pure DOS 6.22 setup, the card with Multi-Floppy BIOS enabled works fine and it can see all the drives. In Windows is the problem.

Issue:

1. With the quad-flop set to use the Multi-Floppy BIOS (i.e. card Dip switch 7 ON), Windows 98SE will NOT boot in normal mode - it will produce the error above and halt. Even on a fresh installation of Win98SE, it will install fine but on the first reboot, the same Windows Protection Error occurs. BUT, Win98SE WILL boot in Safe Mode using these same settings and it will see all 3 drives. Here's the interesting part of Safe Mode though. It labels the drives A:\ (my 1.44 attached to port 2), B:\ (my 1.2 attached to port 0), C:\ IDE drive, D:\ (my 1.44 attached to port 1). BUT it leaves out the CD-ROM drive which is usually D:\
2. With the quad-flop set to NOT use the BIOS (i.e. card Dip Switch 7 OFF), Win98SE WILL boot in normal mode and Will see the first 2 drives attached to Drive Port 0/1, it will NOT see the 3rd drive attached to Drive Port 2/3.

Other:

I've searched everywhere and tried everything I can think of. I found the exact same issue mentioned here, but this is for Windows 95: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=95774.

My goal is to be able to use this quad-flop card in both DOS and Windows 98SE.

Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

[skiselev]

Thank you for the bug report. The Multi-Floppy BIOS was never validated with Windows or on any systems newer than 386 AT. So I am not surprised seeing such errors.
I'd think that the ideal way to use quad floppy setup would be disabling Multi-Floppy BIOS and using the built-in Windows driver instead, if it can be configured to support such floppy configuration (for example, Linux can be).
I am on vacation right now, and I try to reproduce the issue after I return home

[M5864]

Hello, thank you for your response. After extensive troubleshooting and no clear solutions, I finally came across a very old link that explains Windows 9x does not support more than two floppy disk drives. If there are more than two, it triggers the error I mentioned earlier: https://web.archive.org/web/20070714164248/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/268084

My final solution was to add a manual switch that turns off the Floppy BIOS at the hardware level on the Quad-Floppy card so that I can turn it off to use Windows 9x without having to open up the case and flip dip-switches.