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WIN98SE Installation successful on Dell Latitude D630


libnw

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Since I have been struggling with this project for over 1 year, and so many of you have supported that effort, I want to announce that as of last night I was finally able to achieve a WIN98SE install on my Del Latitude D630 laptop.  Not perfect yet, but I actually have the installed Windows Screen which I was not able to achieve until now.  This involved starting the setup on CDROM with the switches as follows:  Setup /p i.  That was the start.  After the first reboot sequence, I had to go into the system.ini file and add the page length and buffer limitation settings.  That is crucial to getting past the first reboot and finally then carefully sequencing the device settings which was a real bear! Once I got past all of that and finally arrived at a real Windows screen, I plugged in the U98SESP3.* driver and system upgrades, these immediate upgrades are essential to going further, since the expanded drivers opened up USB support functions.   Now for the real bummer.  This afternoon, the next day, my power supply shorted out, so I'm dead in the water having to wait and week or so to get a new one from Amazon.

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Yes I did.  The switch "setup /p i" was the only way to get Windows 98SE to fully install and open up.  I resolved the USB issue early on as soon as I got a workable window and could use windows 98SE.  I immediately then installed U98SESP3 via the hard drive since the USB ports were all unresponsive.  U98SESP3 included ALL drivers and upgrade patches from Microsoft and a lot more.  That install does more than install drivers, it upgrades the system with the OS and makes it by far more stable.  I also installed an updated drivers  pack for USB, and everything now plugged in to all 4 usb ports work fine, that includes SD Card readers, external CD ROM, thumb drives and more (and even an external USB hard drive, reformatted with FAT 32 1 TB also).  They whole key with the USB ports is to get past the install hangup that keeps the full install from flowing into a live workable window.  Using the switch "setup /p i" does not activate USB ports, but immediately installation of U98SESP3 opens everything up perfectly.  At least it worked for me on the Dell Latitude D630.  A side issue, to get U98SESP3 on the hard drive, logon to Windows using DOS, or Command Promp function and manually transfer the file directly to your active C or D drive.  Then install the upgrades from there.  You probably will want to do that before plugging anything into the USB ports if that is hanging up your machine.

Edited by libnw
Left out some key stuff... hope this works!
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Probably not.  Transferring the U98SESP3 Upgrade file to the hard drive is very simple.  Place the Install WIN98SE Install disk into your CD ROM.  Then press the F12 key and choose boot from your CD ROM drive.  That will recognize what your machine recognizes when you install Windows 98SE, and that too should recognize active USB ports on your machine.  You can use either USB or a Floppy Disk "A" drive (if you have one), holding the file you want to transfer to the hard drive.  Then simply in DOS mode, use the copy function "copy (disk/filename) c: (destination drive)".

Edited by libnw
Changed a key word needed to make this work.
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There are some issues that probably need to be explained here.  This worked for me, and the machine that I have been dealing with.  That is it.  Two separate entities, and many separate machines for over a year or more, just to make one machine work.  This one worked reasonably well.  When you are working with Windows 98SE, you're dealing with a system that was created essentially at a time and date when most people were still debating whether or not to even leave DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1.  In those days, in the early to mid-1990s, you had to know DOS language and you usually in most instances needed to work very hard to make everything work the way software was advertised and engineered to work.  In those days, that was normal.  It is not normal today!  Most people expect today that the latest version of Windows will do all the work for them, including all the upgrades to keep "their" system up and running all the time.  I've got several books in my library even today, that are over 500 pages in length, all just explaining how DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 work.  So, why do I do this, and even more importantly, why am I here even discussing this at all?  I loved WIN98SE!   I still do.  I am still fascinated with it.  But it won't do everything.  It was probably at the time, Microsoft's greatest achievement over time.  Why am I writing this?  It's a project, and I am 67 years old!  Most people buying computers today don't have to deal with making ancient systems come alive and work again.  I don't know who my audience is exactly here.  Why do you even care about WIN98SE?  Maybe it's just my fetish for making old things come alive and work again.  Kind of like my restored 1962 Ford Thunderbird.  Yes, it works too, and without  any computer support at all!  That's kind of refreshing in itself too!

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I have installed Windows ME on this laptop. Couldn't get a single driver to work though. Just add : MaxPhysPage=40000 to the [386enh] section of system.ini after the DOS based setup. You will get a BSOD involving ACPI though. When it halts the system, just reboot and it will boot into ME. When Setup is done and you get into ME, install KernelEx, You can do this by downloading unicows.exe (Microsoft Layer for Unicode for 95,98,ME), copy those files to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. Then KernelEx will install. The BSOD for ACPI should go away. It's up to you for the drivers though........

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