Clearly installation didn't go fine.
One problem you might have is device drivers. Drivers for W2k are
unique; W98 drivers will NOT work. This is true for motherboard drivers
and peripheral card/device drivers.
Your new W2k may be hitting a stone wall as it attempts to
load/configure drivers not designed for W2k. Make sure you have the
necessary board/card/device drivers; you may have to go to various
manufacturers' websites to download a bunch. Sadly, if it's an older
machine (or a machine designed specifically for W98) W2k drivers for
some devices may never have been written. Further, in some infrequent
cases, such machines can have hardware components that simply don't meet
W2k's exacting performance/reliability criteria. That's why Microsoft
maintains an evergrowing Hardware Compatibility List on their website
for their W2k-like advanced systems.
One fairly easy way to check whether your hardware can run W2k is to
boot your W98, stick the W2k CD in the drive, navigate to the CD's \i386
directory, and run:
[CD:]\i386\winnt32.exe /checkupgradeonly
This will not start a W2k install; the winnt32 installer will simply
analyze your system and give you a report of real and potential problems
found, along with some advice about what you can do about them. It just
takes a couple of minutes.
Note: the 16-bit installer, winnt.exe, doesn't have this parameter.