pnpisa.sys problem

Hi, This weekend was my first experience with NT. After installing it (dual boot - win95) it didn't recognize a single device (other than cd-rom and hard drives of course).I used the latest drivers. And I'm stuck using a generic vga driver. Yuck!

Following someone else's recommendation, I tried using pnpisa. After rebooting, NT was locked up hard during the reboot. Same thing when trying to use last known good config.
After messing with it, the only thing I could do was re-install WITH format. Without formatting, NT would not install properly.
I went thru this whole episode TWICE after using pnpisa.
Any ideas? Could it be an issue with my BIOS?
Thanx for any assistance.
Andy