Install 98SE cd without startup disks?

[Raito]

Is there any way of installing 98se without using the startup disks? Forgive me for asking this question. It's been like 5 yrs since I touched 98!!!

[oscardog]

Goto www.bootdisk.com/ if you have lost your bootdisk.

Have you access to other pcs that you can plug your harddrive you want 9x installing into.

Is the hard drive bootable or does it already contain an operating system

5 yrs since I touched 98!!!

Welcome back

I dare say with the intelligent people here we can soon have you up and running again

[RainyShadow]

The Win98 CD should be bootable.

[Petr]

The Win98 CD should be bootable.

AFAIK just OEM versions were bootable, FPP and upgrade versions not.

Petr

[LLXX]

I have retail version of CD, it is indeed bootable.

[RJM]

Must have boot to CD enabled in BIOS.

[Andromeda43]

I have an upgrade version of 98/SE.....it will NOT boot up a PC.

It must be run from within some previous version of Windows.

I also have an OEM version which cannot be run while Win.com is present on a HD.

I have used it to repair a messed up install of 98/SE or to even upgrade an older version of 98, but,

I have to rename win.com first so that the setup program can't see it.

Yes, its a bit sneeky, but it works.

Many things are possible if you just learn how to "fuss" with the windows installer.

Lets say that I have an old PC with windows 98 on it and I want to upgrade it to 98/SE.

I first make a \98SE\ folder on the hard drive.

Then with my 98/SE OEM CD, I copy everything from the Win98 folder on the CD to the new folder on the HD.

Then I boot up with my 98 or ME boot disk, (either one works equally well) go to the new folder on the HD and run Setup /ie /is

Setup runs and the OS is updated. The 25 digit Key is required.

This will become a mute subject when we all are running XP, in maybe a decade or so.

Cheers!

Andromeda43 B)

[Raito]

Oh my, thank you all for the helpful replies!!!

Hmmm... anyways, yeah, I intend to disable some of the hardware in Win 98se as the o/s will only be used for playing older games(very very old stuff released way back in late 80s to early 90s) which somehow, WinXP tends to dislike and reject. I could of course get an older pc but I just don't have the spare cash atm. I intend to dual boot both XP and 98.

I can only hope that my motherboard will not give me any problems for now. It is being annoying by having problems from time to time like... even though the onboard lan and sound were disabled many times over by a few different hardware repair shops, the bios keeps enabling it again... grr. Oh well, I'll just live with it and disable in Windows.

Originally, I intended to go unattended install for both XP and 98. Well, looks like I can't do that for XP. Ah well, we'll see.

For now, my concerns are to ensure the hardware will work efficiently on 98 SE. And if I need to reinstall 98, I'd have to uninstall Win XP too, right?

Edited August 9, 2006 by Raito

[RainyShadow]

For now, my concerns are to ensure the hardware will work efficiently on 98 SE. And if I need to reinstall 98, I'd have to uninstall Win XP too, right?

Nope, you don't need to uninstall XP. Just be sure to install XP and 98 on different partitions.

You'll probably have to repair the XP boot loader after installing 98.

Look here for a guide on dual-booting Win98.

[Eck]

Far be it from be to discourage any 9x devotees! The thing still rocks.

However I did notice you mentioned games from the late 80's, early 90's. I'm guessing those aren't even Windows games, but rather one's designed for early versions of MS-DOS.

Nearly all these should be playable through a program called Dosbox. It is an emulator of an MS-DOS 5.0 PC that runs within many of today's operating systems, 9x, XP, 2000, even Linux I think (not sure about Linux).

dosbox.sourceforge.net is the website to get it. vogons.zetafleet.com is the forum. And a great frontend that eliminates you messing with dos commands ( a GUI with the ability to make profiles for whatever configuration a particular game needs) is D-FEND. There's a newer update for that. The update is for the newer 0.65 version of Dosbox and you just replace dfend.exe with it. You install the older full version first.

Although XP somewhat supports Windows games from the Windows 3.1 era, if you're talking about older Windows games than that then I'm surprised even 98 runs them. How much stuff did they even make for Windows 1 and 2? Those didn't really take off at all (mostly garnered laughs about how ugly and buggy they were).

But for Dos games, Dosbox rules these days.

But again, by all means have fun with 98SE. I just wanted you to know, if you didn't already, that there is another option for you.

[imdusty]

Hello Andromeda43 Post 8

Would this work on a Dual boot system running XP and 98 FE

imdusty

[Raito]

Far be it from be to discourage any 9x devotees! The thing still rocks.

However I did notice you mentioned games from the late 80's, early 90's. I'm guessing those aren't even Windows games, but rather one's designed for early versions of MS-DOS.

Nearly all these should be playable through a program called Dosbox. It is an emulator of an MS-DOS 5.0 PC that runs within many of today's operating systems, 9x, XP, 2000, even Linux I think (not sure about Linux).

dosbox.sourceforge.net is the website to get it. vogons.zetafleet.com is the forum. And a great frontend that eliminates you messing with dos commands ( a GUI with the ability to make profiles for whatever configuration a particular game needs) is D-FEND. There's a newer update for that. The update is for the newer 0.65 version of Dosbox and you just replace dfend.exe with it. You install the older full version first.

Although XP somewhat supports Windows games from the Windows 3.1 era, if you're talking about older Windows games than that then I'm surprised even 98 runs them. How much stuff did they even make for Windows 1 and 2? Those didn't really take off at all (mostly garnered laughs about how ugly and buggy they were).

But for Dos games, Dosbox rules these days.

But again, by all means have fun with 98SE. I just wanted you to know, if you didn't already, that there is another option for you.

Oh I actually have dosbox already with D-Fend but thought that running 98 might really help as the sound is a bit screwed up(I think it's 'cos of XP's or my card's sound blaster emulation) and some of the games don't work on dosbox or ScummVM or even vdmsound.