BoredFish Posted January 2, 2021 Posted January 2, 2021 (edited) I'm trying to install Windows 98 SE on a Dell Inspiron 1521 (Not optimal but the oldest thing I have). It has MS-DOS 7.1, and the computer has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 with 1gb of ram. When I get to the "Hardware Detection" part it instantly BSODs with the error "A fatal exeption 0D has occurred at F000:0000DC89". Does this have anything to do with Windows 98 not liking anything over 512MiB? What should I do? Also I think the HDD is either a 140gb or 160gb, in that range. Could this cause problems? EDIT: I'm attaching some of the log files if they're helpful. BOOTLOG.TXT SETUPLOG.TXT DETLOG.TXT Edited January 2, 2021 by BoredFish Log Files
schwups Posted January 2, 2021 Posted January 2, 2021 Yes, 98SE doesn't boot with more than 512MB. There are different possibilities. e.g. Install with 512MB only or edit the system.ini and add under [vcache] MaxFileCache=524288 or MaxFileCache=393216. All the answers you need are here: Important / "Stickified" / Pinned Windows 95/98/98 SP1/98 SE/ME Topics
tyukok Posted January 2, 2021 Posted January 2, 2021 There is also another way to do it. It's pretty roundabout, but it works even with machines with more than 1GB of RAM. You can install Win98 in a VM, then apply rloew's RAM patch to it and copy the patched VMM32.VXD from SYSTEM folder and VMM.VXD and VCACHE.VXD from the SYSTEM\VMM32 folder to a separate storage device, like a USB stick. Then, after you proceed with the installation on the system you wish to install Win98 to and finish its first phase (the one with Windows 3.1 UI), when it asks you to reboot you do it and instead of booting into HDD(and continuing with the installation) you should boot from a boot disk. Then you'll have to replace the files in the SYSTEM and SYSTEM\VMM32 folders on the install machine with the patched ones. Proceed with the installation after that. 1
BoredFish Posted March 6, 2021 Author Posted March 6, 2021 Sorry for the late reply. Got a bit busy. So, the thing is, I confirmed, the computer has only 512mb of ram. The BSOD only happens when it gets to the "detecting plug and play hardware". That's it. I'm not sure what's going on. The image was the "OEM Full" image from here https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-98/98-second-edition. It boots and everything, but it can't get past that point. I'm not sure what is causing it. It's got a dual core AMD Athlon X2, and a dedicated GPU. I don't think the ram is the issue, it's DDR2, so it's old. Could there be any devices that could be interfering? Only things installed is a modem, WiFi card, SD card reader, Ethernet Port, some USB ports, and a DVD burner.
BoredFish Posted March 6, 2021 Author Posted March 6, 2021 Oh, just a note, could it be SATA? It is a SATA drive, and maybe 98 doesn't like SATA? If so, what do I do to get that working? The computer i'm using doesn't support IDE mode.
BoredFish Posted March 7, 2021 Author Posted March 7, 2021 Hi! Just to clarify, this is NOT the point in the setup where it needs the install disk. This is the point in setup where the files are on the HDD, and it's going through the "Finishing Up" process.
pangoomis Posted March 7, 2021 Posted March 7, 2021 Try to install with the "/p i" switch as mentioned by SweetLow. It seems that you are using the unofficial repack of DOS 7.1. It has some bloatware. Why do you need DOS 7.1 in the first place? The OEM Full CD image is bootable and will install 98SE on a PC without any operating system. Delete all existing partitions, create and format a new clean one, just make sure the partition is less than 137GB.
BoredFish Posted March 7, 2021 Author Posted March 7, 2021 4 hours ago, MrMateczko said: Try to install with the "/p i" switch as mentioned by SweetLow. It seems that you are using the unofficial repack of DOS 7.1. It has some bloatware. Why do you need DOS 7.1 in the first place? The OEM Full CD image is bootable and will install 98SE on a PC without any operating system. Delete all existing partitions, create and format a new clean one, just make sure the partition is less than 137GB. Yea, I'm doing that now, the hdd is 140gb so i'll make a 120gb partition. See if that'll work.
BoredFish Posted March 7, 2021 Author Posted March 7, 2021 Alright update, now it's just hanging at 100% on the "Setup is preparing the windows 98 setup wizard" part. I'm going to try another CD and see if that's the culprit.
BoredFish Posted March 7, 2021 Author Posted March 7, 2021 Got another CD, and it's still doing that... not sure what's going on.
pangoomis Posted March 8, 2021 Posted March 8, 2021 (edited) Format the hard drive from the Win98 CD with the /S command so the hard drive becomes bootable with the DOS version from the Win98 CD. Make sure to check in FDISK if the partition is set to active. Then, copy the win98 folder from CD to the hard drive, and run the setup from the hard drive and not the CD. If there is still the same error, plug the hard drive to main PC (or in any other way) put HIMEMX.EXE on the root of it: https://sourceforge.net/projects/himemx/ and put DEVICE=C:\HIMEMX.EXE to CONFIG.SYS (create CONFIG.SYS if it doesn't exist). If HIMEMX.EXE doesn't solve the problem, try with the XMGR.SYS from here: http://optimizr.dyndns.org/dos/drivers.html Edited March 8, 2021 by MrMateczko
RainyShadow Posted March 8, 2021 Posted March 8, 2021 Check in BIOS setup and disable all the hardware you can, leave only the HDD you're installing to. Did you try booting Win98 after the BSOD? Maybe it would skip some problematic steps on the second try... 1
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