Help; reinstalling w98 error message

I tried to reinstall w98 from the cd (currently useing w98se) which I do periodically to clear up some laggy performance in the operating system.

This time everything went fine until the final restart where I got the 'windows' screen for a bit then a black screen with this message:
"while initailizing device COFIGMG
windows protection error. restart your machine"

I did a ctl,alt,delete and the comp restarted to the 'safemode menu'. I restarted again from safemode and got the same error message. I read in the help section (in dos i think) that start up problems with devices may be solved by using the power switch to restart so I did that 3 times. But alas the error remained.

so I did a start in safemode cmd prompt and did a scanreg /restore to get back to an old registry which put be back at square one...

but i would still like to reinstall w98....anyone able to help with that error message?

I can't think of anything new or different to the machine, no new hardware at all and only some basic software stuff like upgrading to the latest ie5.5 version.

thanks,
drew