This is just a guess on my part but I think it could be memory related
I remeber back in the old days of dos and windows 3.1 something about setting the config.sys
It's a file that can be manually edited
I remember something about himem.sys and having to install it first
There are some samples online that you may want to campare with but then you have to learn how to edit the file so I am not sure you want to go into that

I know it takes a long time without smartdrv installed I forgot to install it recently and after about 5 minutes I realized this is going to take forever and rebooted and installed smartdrv from a windows 98 floppy