>During startup, the console would display the modules after it loaded them. People attributed failure to load the next module as a failure of the last one visible.

Then why didn't they print a message before loading a module? This is really simple stuff, and would immediately show the problem. This is pretty normal in printing to logfiles in software: print messages both before and after an action is taken, so if it gets stuck in the action, you see that it never succeeded though it was started.

I don't know the specifics to mup.sys you mentioned or Win98 at all, but isn't this pretty much the same for every OS/application debugging? The message can't be updated to the screen until the process has completed. I thought it typical debugging knowledge that you look at the processing after what ever the last completed message was. It's kind of common sense when you actually think about the logging process.