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Installing Win98 SE from USB Hard Drive


Kizoky

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Hi everyone

Since October, I have been struggling to install Windows 98 SE on my old laptop, but whenever I tried It I always got BSOD, setup errors, or simply "Setup cannot find file", or the setup never continues.

Target laptop is a ECS Elitegroup A530 (A530_TM5600)

It has available Win95/98/ME drivers for It
It can boot from Pendrive or USB Hard Drive, but it doesn't have Floppy, CD/DVD is out of the question because I can't burn the Win98 iso to CD

I have tried to make the Pendrive DOS bootable, but for some reason It couldn't detect my Hard Drive (Maybe I did it the wrong way?)
Copying all W98 files, and trying to install Win98 from there, and it just refuses to install.

Now that method didn't work, so I thought I will just install DOS 6.22 and try to install Win98 from there, same error, same problems (couldn't find files blablabla)

 

Any help would be much appreciated!

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I'm no expert but once something similar happened to me. apology maybe you already did. win98 copy files to the hard drive and install it from there.  :huh:

 

The question is how :) Bootable DOS does not recognize my Hard Disk, even after when I reformatted it into FAT32

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I've never booted from a USB drive, but it probably needs to be FAT16 or even FAT12, partitioned accordingly (<2GB, <128MB). Depending on the level of BIOS support on your laptop, you may need to use a formatting utility that can make the USB drive look like a USB ZIP or USB floppy drive.

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What is your harddrive model and size?

Does FDISK detects the harddrive?

FDISK detects the Laptop's hard drive perfectly

It's just that my laptop refuses booting on my Pendrive, but works without any problems on my Flash Hard Drive

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There is a trick to make a removable flash drive appear as a fixed drive but that is irreversible AFAIK. Your BIOS probably doesn't accept booting from removable drives.

What exactly are the boot options in regard to selectable devices (USB Floppy/USB HDD/USB CD-ROM/USB ZIP/etc)?

 

There is a DOS driver that can detect USB storage devices, you may have to load it in autoexec/config.

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There is a trick to make a removable flash drive appear as a fixed drive but that is irreversible AFAIK. Your BIOS probably doesn't accept booting from removable drives.

What exactly are the boot options in regard to selectable devices (USB Floppy/USB HDD/USB CD-ROM/USB ZIP/etc)?

 

There is a DOS driver that can detect USB storage devices, you may have to load it in autoexec/config.

I have to press F8 (during POST) in order to boot from Pendrive or any USB devices

Never tried that before, I'll try that and report back any news

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Do you run FDISK from flash drive?

Is the laptop's hard drive detected as the second hard drive (the first being USB flashdrive), or there is only one drive listed?

I'm curious about this since I use FDISK to install 98SE from a USB flashdrive.

Is the partition you try to install set to active?

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There is a trick to make a removable flash drive appear as a fixed drive but that is irreversible AFAIK. Your BIOS probably doesn't accept booting from removable drives.

What exactly are the boot options in regard to selectable devices (USB Floppy/USB HDD/USB CD-ROM/USB ZIP/etc)?

 

There is a DOS driver that can detect USB storage devices, you may have to load it in autoexec/config.

Not really-really.

ONLY Windows NT based systems are seemingly "affected" by the device "Removable bit" (if this is what you are refeerring to, but if it is then it can be flipped on and off at will, once you get the "right" tool AND you manage to use it ).

 

It is much more likely that the "Pendrive" has been "normally" formatted under a NT based system (and since it is "Removable" under this OS it has been NOT partitioned).

 

BIOS's want partitioned devices and don't like "superfloppies" (and don't care about the "Removable bit").

 

Quick blast to the past ;) :

http://jaclaz.altervista.org/Projects/USB/USBstick.html

(only to show how fast ten years pass by :w00t::ph34r: )

 

@Kizoky

How (exactly) was the pendrive partitioned?

Which OS does your "other" computer run?

If any of the NT family use a suitable tool to partition and format the (removable) pendrive, such as the original HP tool, or this (fuwi's tool):

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21702

or RMPREPUSB:

http://www.rmprepusb.com/

 

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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Yeah, the right tool may be the key; what I used to have could only flip the removable bit off but not back to on.

There are many tools that can prepare a bootable pendrive: Unetbootin, YUMI, Easy2Boot are the ones I have at hand in downloads.

 

There are still problems in certain BIOSes though. I have a couple relatively new machines here: one would boot with a certain Linux USB stick, the other wouldn't - regardless of which option I set in BIOS. Laptops may be even more selective. More USB preparing tools have to be tested before finding the one that produces a usable drive for the particular machine being worked on.

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@drugwash

JFYI (and as an example) what I personally call the "worst BIOS of all", i.e. the "InsydeH2O" BIOS which is actually becoming very common on laptops, in some versions had (some say on purpose "blacklisted", some say "failed to mind their own business" or "whitelisted a few common sequences only") some given sequence in the MBR code (a small change had to be done - twice if I remember correctly - to grub4dos grldr.mbr to have it working).

 

jaclaz

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Never met that beast and hopefully never will because I may have to pay the owner after smashing the thing into pieces. :lol:

Oh and remember AMI for regular desktop machines (but not only) - guess they come second, very close.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry for the late reply

I figured out my own problem with a different method
There was a CD lying around with Windows 98 SE on it, though the CD is very old so I can't really install from it.
I copied Win95 setup files from an other CD to the Hard Disk (with Lubuntu), and then restarted my PC with the really old CD on it
Start Computer without CD-ROM support, and navigate to C: drive and type setup

Not how I wanted to install Win98, but I guess this will do, thank you everyone for your help! :)

Edited by Kizoky
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  • 1 year later...

I have tried Zalman HDD-CD emulator, in setup in some real CD driver detection.. and its not working with this device.. I boot into command line, where i should start setup.exe but there is only A: device.. maybe exist modified msdex for usb cdrom support, i dont know, but it means other research..

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