Installing Windows98se

[dnt462]

Ok. Let me try to explain what I want to do.

I have a netbook, so i have no cd drive, and as the title says, I am trying to install Windows 98se on it.

I have a 160gb hard drive, though I have other OSs(OSes?) on it, and a gig of ram, both of which I know cause problems.

I have a 98se disk, and I have read some threads on those problems, but some of it still makes no sense.

When I installed Windows 7 on my laptop in november, I copied the iso to my xp istall and somehow ran it from there. So I was wondering if I could do that now for 98.

Another thing is that I am also running Ubuntu, with grub as my boot loader, Which I expect complicates things abit.

I'm sorry if this doesnt make much sense in it current form, Its late for me.

I hope, but expect you can, help me.

[sp193]

Ok. Let me try to explain what I want to do.

I have a netbook, so i have no cd drive, and as the title says, I am trying to install Windows 98se on it.

I have a 160gb hard drive, though I have other OSs(OSes?) on it, and a gig of ram, both of which I know cause problems.

I have a 98se disk, and I have read some threads on those problems, but some of it still makes no sense.

When I installed Windows 7 on my laptop in november, I copied the iso to my xp istall and somehow ran it from there. So I was wondering if I could do that now for 98.

Another thing is that I am also running Ubuntu, with grub as my boot loader, Which I expect complicates things abit.

I'm sorry if this doesnt make much sense in it current form, Its late for me.

I hope, but expect you can, help me.

OK - I can't try this anymore, but it worked for me when I used a older laptop (But a tad too modern for Windows 98SE):

1. Copy the WIN98 folder from the Windows 98 CD, and place the entire folder on the partition which you want to install Windows 98 on.

2. Somehow boot into MS-DOS. Either use a USB diskette/CD drive, or simply use a USB device (Use the HP formatter or similar to install a MS-DOS 5.00 or above bootdisk files into a USB device, and then boot to the device).

3. Launch setup.exe from within MS-DOS once you've booted up.

BTW you may need to disable the Smartdrive disk cache which setup attempts to start (Run setup with the /C switch).

FYI using the GRUB (Installed with Ubuntu right?) boot loader seems to make things easier as it's easier to reconfigure it to include Windows 98 as a bootable OS than Windows NT's boot loader.

EDIT: I need help on a similar task.

I want to install Windows 98 on my Compaq CQ40-538TX, but setup always freezes when the "Setup is copying the necessary files..." message is displayed. Disabling the Smartdrive disk cache seems to make setup go a bit further (It'll actually copy the files), but never gets past that message.

I can't find out what's wrong... maybe because this laptop has 3GB of RAM, and the HDD is a 250GB (And the partition is located somewhere along the 200GB range).

Does windows 98's MS-DOS 7.10 have the issue where it won't work properly when it's loaded past the 8.4GB range (I remember 1 version of MS-DOS 7 with this issue)?

Edited June 16, 2010 by sp193

[dencorso]

Easiest way:

Open her up and pluck two memory sticks for installation purposes only (leave just 1 GiB).

Then follow one of these procedures.

Then set

MaxPhysPage=40000 ; (1 GiB)

MaxFileCache=131072 ; (128 MiB)

in system.ini.

Then put those two memory sticks back, and it should work reasonably.

Then you may delve deep into the two threads linked from my signature, in order to tweal 98SE until it becomes working great (of course it would be best if you did this before starting, but it may take a long time to get acquainted with their huge contents, so the above is a possible way to actually start by getting it to work).

[NoNameNeeded]

Ok. Let me try to explain what I want to do.

I have a netbook, so i have no cd drive, and as the title says, I am trying to install Windows 98se on it.

I have a 160gb hard drive, though I have other OSs(OSes?) on it, and a gig of ram, both of which I know cause problems.

I have a 98se disk, and I have read some threads on those problems, but some of it still makes no sense.

When I installed Windows 7 on my laptop in november, I copied the iso to my xp istall and somehow ran it from there. So I was wondering if I could do that now for 98.

Another thing is that I am also running Ubuntu, with grub as my boot loader, Which I expect complicates things abit.

I'm sorry if this doesnt make much sense in it current form, Its late for me.

I hope, but expect you can, help me.

First of all you should find out if there are still Win98-drivers available for your hardware (graphics card, sound card, chipset drivers etc.) and if there are none (which is very likely) forget about installing Win98 on a real computer.

If you still want to use Win98, consider installing it in a virtual machine like VMWare Player (it's for free).

It even supports USB-devices and it also comes with virtual "hardware" that Win98 can handle.

[jaclaz]

Open her up and pluck two memory sticks for installation purposes only (leave just 1 GiB).

Open her up and pluck ...?

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pluck

With all due respect , "Open it up and carefully remove..." does sound better , unless we are talking about Jack the Ripper

jaclaz

Edited June 21, 2010 by jaclaz

[dencorso]

With all due respect , "Open it up and carefully remove..." does sound better , unless we are talking about Jack the Ripper

Point taken.

[sp193]

Easiest way:

Open her up and pluck two memory sticks for installation purposes only (leave just 1 GiB).

Then follow one of these procedures.

Then set

MaxPhysPage=40000 ; (1 GiB)

MaxFileCache=131072 ; (128 MiB)

in system.ini.

Then put those two memory sticks back, and it should work reasonably.

Then you may delve deep into the two threads linked from my signature, in order to tweal 98SE until it becomes working great (of course it would be best if you did this before starting, but it may take a long time to get acquainted with their huge contents, so the above is a possible way to actually start by getting it to work).

I tried those. The installer still froze up. I didn't even see the familiar "Windows 3.x"ish setup screen (I only saw "Setup is copying the necessary files..."). Even after playing around with all the options (Switching off the Smartdrive cache, disabling memory and HDD checks).

I think that I'm better off using qemu or a similar emulator... my hardware are just way too modern to run Windows 9x anyway (Almost all the hardware do not have any Windows 9x compatible drivers, not even for similar but older hardware).

The most "critical" pieces of hardware (Crucial for enjoyment, that is) without drivers are the Sound Card, Ethernet, wireless and graphics card (Even Windows 7 had issues getting the official ones working!!).

Thanks anyway.

[dencorso]

I tried those. The installer still froze up. I didn't even see the familiar "Windows 3.x"ish setup screen (I only saw "Setup is copying the necessary files..."). Even after playing around with all the options (Switching off the Smartdrive cache, disabling memory and HDD checks).

I think that I'm better off using qemu or a similar emulator... my hardware are just way too modern to run Windows 9x anyway (Almost all the hardware do not have any Windows 9x compatible drivers, not even for similar but older hardware).

The most "critical" pieces of hardware (Crucial for enjoyment, that is) without drivers are the Sound Card, Ethernet, wireless and graphics card (Even Windows 7 had issues getting the official ones working!!).

Thanks anyway.

You're welcome!

Of course, had you told me you've got a 512 MiB Video Card and the HDD is SATA, I'd've advised you to use a virtual machine.

[sp193]

I tried those. The installer still froze up. I didn't even see the familiar "Windows 3.x"ish setup screen (I only saw "Setup is copying the necessary files..."). Even after playing around with all the options (Switching off the Smartdrive cache, disabling memory and HDD checks).

I think that I'm better off using qemu or a similar emulator... my hardware are just way too modern to run Windows 9x anyway (Almost all the hardware do not have any Windows 9x compatible drivers, not even for similar but older hardware).

The most "critical" pieces of hardware (Crucial for enjoyment, that is) without drivers are the Sound Card, Ethernet, wireless and graphics card (Even Windows 7 had issues getting the official ones working!!).

Thanks anyway.

You're welcome!

Of course, had you told me you've got a 512 MiB Video Card and the HDD is SATA, I'd've advised you to use a virtual machine.

Oops, it slipped my mind. I didn't know that it was a 512MB Video card (Really!! I thought that it had 256MB).

Frankly, I've only recently found out that that laptop is more modern than I thought (I didn't really know it's specs, since I did not buy it):

Laptop: Compaq CQ40-538TX

CPU: Intel P8700 Core2 Duo (64-bit, but currently with 32-bit OSes installed)

GPU: Nvidia GeForce 103M (Proprietary)

HDD: 500GB SATA

1x1GB DDR (2?) + 1x2GB DDR(2?) = 3GB

.. (I don't know the brands and model numbers of the other parts since this doesn't seem to be a "standard" Compaq CQ40)

1 more thing to add: Isn't the SATA interface supposed to be backward compatible with ATA device drivers (At least the BIOS calls are)?

So I suppose that this problem I have is considered "normal" for too new (For Windows 9x) systems, and is a direct result of having too great amounts of memory (VRAM or RAM) for Windows 9x's installers to handle?

Edited July 4, 2010 by sp193

[dencorso]

With 3 GiB RAM *and* 512 MiB video RAM and SATA HDD, your only hope of running Win 98SE directly on your hardware would be by using RLoew's RAM Limitation Patch and his SATA patch, both of which are not for free (and may not be enough for your particular machine, but are worth testing). If this possibility interests you, you should consult him either by PM or by e-mail (findable at his site).

If not, only by using a virtual machine you'll be able to run Win 98SE. There are no other options, as far as I know.

[JorgeA]

Point taken.

dencorso,

Sorry to change the subject, but --- that's a COOL rolling emoticon you got there!

When I went to reply to your post, I saw where you got it from. How does one insert it in a post?

--JorgeA

Edited July 7, 2010 by JorgeA

[dencorso]

Thanks! It's one of Boot-Land's emoticons... but it could be from anywhere else, too.

You insert them by using image tags, like this (never mind the colors, code boxes are mad):

[img=http://www.boot-land.net/forums/style_emoticons/default/roll1.gif]

Enjoy!

[JorgeA]

Thanks! It's one of Boot-Land's emoticons... but it could be from anywhere else, too.

You insert them by using image tags, like this (never mind the colors, code boxes are mad):

[img=http://www.boot-land.net/forums/style_emoticons/default/roll1.gif]

Enjoy!

Thanks, dencorso, I will!

--JorgeA

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

Slipstreaming Guide

2.x supports a special slipstreaming method. Only hotfixes can be integrated into your Windows 98 SE Setup from the start. Other features like TweakUI cannot be integrated.

1- Copy \WIN98 directory with its contents from CD into your hard drive (like D:\WIN98).

2- With Winzip, Winrar or PowerArchiver, extract SP2.CAB from SESP21.EXE into a temporary directory.

3- Extract all files into D:\WIN98 from SP2.CAB. (For example, you should see D:\WIN98\ACPI.SYS file after extracting SP2.CAB).

4- Use D:\WIN98\SETUP.EXE for starting Windows 98 Setup. Windows 98 Setup will use these hotfixed files automatically during installation

This method might work for the hard drive if you use ATADRV98.EXE from MDGx site. Just a suggestion.