How to install Win 98 on a mainboard with nForce 4 chipset.

[Kwibus]

How to install Win 98 on a mainboard with nForce 4 chipset. This article may contain usefull tips for installing windows 98 on other mainboards as well.

Dencorso asked me to make a post about how I installed Windows 98 on my computer. As an illustration what can be tried to install windows 98 on a computer that does not officially support windows 98.

As I am reinstalling windows 98 this post should grow to contain all the necessary steps. I will also try to clean up my post then to make it a little more readable. Feel free to ask questions.

First the system specs:

The main board is an asus A8n-E with nForce 4 ultra chipset socket 939

It has an onboard sound and network card

memory: 2x 512 and 2x 1024 mb of ddr400 ram still running at 167 Mhz for the moment.

processor Athlon 64 x2 3800+

graphics Gforce 6800 pci-E

harddisk 300gb pata seagate

I am not using the onboard sound and network card yet

Instead I have a Aureal vortex 8820 sound card and an realtek 8139 network card.

I also have a adaptec scsi controller

on the Scsi controller I have a cd burner and a dvd drive

I also have an ide CD ROM (This probably is just temporary but I could not boot from the cd when it was in the scsi drive)

The windows verion used in win 98 SE

Chapter Two: Installation of windows 98

1 insert the cd rom in the cd rom drive and boot up from the CD

If you do not get a choice to boot from either hard disk or CD.

check that the cd rom drive is selected as the first bootable device in

the Bios. I have also had problems with booting from scsi drives so you

may need an ide cd rom drive.

2 select windows setup.

If you have multiple optical drives the setup program may install the

driver for the wrong optical drive. You will get an error stating that the

windows setup files could not be found. Either place the windows cd in the

drive for which the driver has been installed.

Or physically remove the other drive by detaching the cables from the rear of the drive.

3 continue the setup as normal and select the options you want

After restarting the computer you may get the error: insufficient memory to initialize windows. This may be caused by having to much Ram in your computer. Windows might give an error when more than 512 mb of ram has been installed but usually Windows 98 works with up to 1150 mb of ram.

To solve this reboot the computer you should now see the start up menu.

Select command prompt only

now type cd windows\command and press enter

now type edit and press enter

Press alt and F simultaneously.

Then select open

go to the directories field by pressing the tab key.

Select the two points by pressing the up arrow and press enter

press shift tab to go to the files column

Now select the system.ini file

under [386Enh]

add the line : MaxPhysPage=40000

and under [vcache] add the line: MaxFileCache=524288

To be on the safe side you could use more conservative values like 20000 for MaxPhysPage and 131072 for MaxFileCache.

Press alt + F again and select save

then press alt+ F again and select exit

Now reboot the computer.

And continue the installation normally. (you could of course also remove the memory)

With the installation on my Asus A8N-E mainboard the computer stops responding during the detection of non plug and play devices this is “normal”. Just reboot your computer.

If the computer hangs again after a reboot try to start up the computer in safe mode.

If you now get the insufficient memory to initialize windows error again you should do the following.

Instead of safe mode choose step by step confirmation.

Select N for the processing of config.sys and select Y elsewhere.

You need to keep booting up your computer like this until you reach step 5 You can then select run in the windows menu and type msconfig go to the config.sys tab and uncheck the check box in front of the line:

device=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\display.sys con=(ega,,1)

4 After setup has reboted the computer a few more times Windows will be loaded and show a lot of found new hardware

Windows will now try to install a lot of devices for most of them it does not have the correct drivers. I prefer to just skip installing them for the moment and install them when windows is fully booted up so I can use find to locate the needed files.

5 Congratulations you should now have a very basic win 98 installation

Edited June 30, 2009 by Kwibus

[Kwibus]

I still have a few questions for all the people out here with more knowledge of win 98 than me.

First: Have other people experienced problems with installing windows and multiple optical drives? I have never heard about it before perhaps it is because I have scsi drives?

Second: I have to disable config.sys while booting up the computer.

The line device=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\display.sys con=(ega,,1) causes the problem

what is it's function? And any idea why it causes the windows to hang?

[eidenk]

If I am not mistaken from your posts in the thread where you initially posted, the one big problem is that disk read/write speed is unfortunately very slow.

As for your questions, I have always used Windows with two optical drives plugged on the secondary IDE channel without any problems and I don't know what the line you have in config.sys is for precisely.

[Drugwash]

Here is some info on display.sys: link.

[dencorso]

Well, Kwibus, I glad you agreed to start this topic! What you learned in the process of getting your system to work is precious and ought to be shared with all Win 9x/ME users. You rock!

Moreover, your experience with the Win 2k drivers in Win 98SE can very well result in some much needed Unofficial drivers for nForce4 motherbords, which can be of help for many other users. Some of our members are very skilled in the creation of automated installers, so that once those drivers that work are known, and what is needed to do to install them is described, an unofficial pack can be created. And we help extend some more the life of our beloved 9x/ME systems.

I hope to be able to contribute more effectively to it in the next few months, because I have an ECS GeForce6100M-M2 V. 1.0A motherboard (which heart is a MCP61S, a combined GeForce6100/nForce405 in one chipset) which I'm meaning to install for a long time, now, and I believe I'll find time to do it, at last, in the next few months.

memory: I think it is 2x 512 and 2x 1024 mb of ddr400 ram

This can be easily established for sure, without ever opening the case! Download and install the latest CPU-Z and run it. It will tell you how much memory the system has, how many sticks are in it, how big each stick is and (sometimes) even the stick's brand name.

If the computer hangs again after a reboot try to start up the computer in safe mode.

If you now get the insufficient memory to initialize windows error again you should do the following.

Instead of safe mode choose step by step confirmation.

Select N for the processing of config.sys and select Y elsewhere.

You need to keep booting up your computer like this until you reach step 5

You can then select run in the windows menu and type msconfig go to the config.sys tab and uncheck the check box in front of the line:

device=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\display.sys con=(ega,,1)

I have two comments here:

i)You've used a much more complicated procedure than need be to solve this issue.

You could instead have simply edited the config.sys with edit, in dos mode, at the time you edited the system.ini

It would be enough to add a "REM " to the beginning of the offending line, so that it became:

REM device=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\display.sys con=(ega,,1)

and the line will be ignored, during IO.SYS processing of the config.sys.

ii)To understand what that command was meant to do, in case it worked right, you should consult the great MS-Dos7 Commands online manual (now only available thanks to the good old Wayback Machine!). It's the best command reference for DOS to ever be available on the net, and yet it is very little known.

Edited June 28, 2009 by dencorso

[rloew]

To understand what that command was meant to do, in case it worked right, you should consult the great MS-Dos7 Commands online manual (now only available thanks to the good old Wayback Machine!). It's the best command reference for DOS to ever be available on the net, and yet it is very little known.

The manual is currently online. You don't need to use the Wayback Machine.

http://www.lagmonster.org/docs/DOS7/index.html

[Kwibus]

I had a look at my memory CPU-Z identifies it as ddr400

My Mainboard which is set to auto for the memory timings however sets it up as ddr333 ram.

I have had a busy week so I did not have much time to work on this topic I hope to be able to spend some more time during the rest of the week