Windows 98se reinstall

[Evanhoe]

I'm about to re install our Win 98se OS on the wife's computer.I understand that "Unofficial Win 98se service pack 2a" includes all the Windows critical updates up to July 2006 ! If this is correct,that would certainly save a lot of downloading them,with our slow Dialup connection!Can anyone confirm pls?

BTW,we already have the above Service Pack on CD.Thanks

VAN

[awergh]

yes that is correct

it does not include internet explorer 6, windows media player 9, directx 9c, dotnet or there associated updates

[Evanhoe]

yes that is correct

it does not include internet explorer 6, windows media player 9, directx 9c, dotnet or there associated updates

Thanks awergh,

That is good news.I will be tackling this project in the next few days.Wish me luck ! I've reinstalled my Win XP Pro OS recently with no problems,I hope it will be the same with the Win 98se OS !

Your above comment is well noted.Thanks.

VAN

[Eck]

For an easier way to setup 98SE these days you might want to consider the Unofficial Auto-Patcher for Windows 98SE. That has those mentioned components as well as much more current updates and fixes. It is also fully maintained so with each new version you can run it and get the latest updates. When the Auto-Patcher runs it checks what is on your system already so it will not install things already there.

In my view that's a lot easier than finding, downloading, and installing the many, many basic software packages and updates that are not included in the Unofficial 98SE Service Pack. It includes the latest, for example that importent Daylight Savings Timezone update for 98SE.

[Evanhoe]

Hi ECK

I agree that would be nice to have,but at 246 mb,that's out of the question with my present Dialup connection!However i might tackle the Lite v 1.95 version which is 70 mb,providing that Softpedia supports "RESUME" downloads that would be attempted by me on different days? What do you think?

VAN

[Eck]

I haven't really examined what's missing in the Lite version. Would it be possible for a friend at his/her home or office to download and burn the full version for you? Gosh, that thing is such a time saver it might be worth it for you to bug someone until they'll do it for you.

Unless you have everything already downloaded already you would still need to download most of the stuff in there anyway. The mdgx.com website has extensive info and links to everything available for 9x and more. So yes, you could do individual small downloads that way. I've done it in the past, but with the advent of the Auto-Patcher it's been nice not needing to copy all that stuff from my cdrs, break out my print out of the mdgx.com web pages, and install it one thing at a time. Man, I used to hate that!

If you can get the Auto-Patcher, it's all scripted so you just toggle on or off the optional stuff individually and basically just press go and it takes over your computer. It installs some stuff and restarts the computer, installs some more stuff and restarts, etc, etc. It's really cool to watch it working. All the time I'm thinking, "better this thing than me!"

When done it's almost like having a just released operating system. You just start adding on the additional software you use and you're ready to go. Please don't forget your virus scanner, firewall, Firefox and Thunderbird or SeaMonkey, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Ad-Aware. I'd hate to have you bitten by some malware and need to start over!

[eidenk]

How often do you reinstall, Eck ? More I read you more I get the feeling you need to reinstall very often.

[Evanhoe]

Thanks for the suggestions ECK,

I'm a retired older geezer living on a farm and with no one else having High Speed connections around here,there's not much hope of doing this! Today is the day i'm reinstalling the Win 98se OS on the wife's computer.Hope I'm successful.if not i'll be back for help as they say!!!Thanks for your help.

VAN

[Eck]

No, it's not really that often, eidenk. My reasons vary but the majority of my wiping and reinstalling is by choice, usually when I want to do something totally new with my computer such as my recent experimenting with OpenSuSE Linux and my recently purchased Windows Vista. Besides the operating systems, my other reasons are that at times I like to swap around with my hardware. I'll want to change between my motherboards or go from ATI to NVidia or Creative to M-Audio to SoundMAX.

When doing those kinds of things I'd just rather give my whole system a fresh start rather than deal with the potential work arounds or fixing that changing a lot of stuff would require.

With too much time on my hands this is the one hobby that gives me things to do on my own. The rest of my time is spent as a live in care giver for my elderly Mom. So I can't work as I can't leave the house for long periods, my few bills are paid by using a portion of her SS check for them, and I watch us get further into debt as I use her credit to buy our food weekly. So things are a bit weird in my life and reinventing my computer every so often is about all I've got right now to fill a fun factor.

When new update packages for 9x come out I sometimes like to wipe things out and redo the thing with 98SE in the mix again.

The only thing with 98 that has peeved me recently is my continual problem with that IOS error I've complained about in several other posts. Once I learned that somehow one of the things that causes that is having smartdrv.exe in the place it freak'n belongs I've on a temporary basis fixed that by renaming that file. On one occasion I got the error again even with that file renamed or not even there. That was one of the times I had no choice but to reinstall.

Gosh, I'd sure love to figure out what really causes that to occur!

After a bout with my first attempts to multiboot several Windows versions along with Linux and having a SuSE Kernel security update mess up my partition table that had been working fine, I only installed Vista on one drive and SuSE on the other and that is how things have been for the last several weeks. I just didn't want to bother setting up several Windows operating systems after just having done so. So I just picked the one I just spent a bundle of cash on (Vista) and went with that for now.

In that time I've been enjoying learning more about Linux as well as playing with getting a bunch of older stuff working in Vista that I hadn't actually expected possible.

So in summary, my system nearly never gets borked with the exception of that 9x IOS error and the one time only experience with a SuSE Kernel update that happened to play havoc with a lot of folks boot loader settings until we learned how to deal with it.

It's almost never necessary for me to reinstall. But because of the above factors I do get a lot of experience doing it.

[Evanhoe]

Thanks for the suggestions ECK,

I'm a retired older geezer living on a farm and with no one else having High Speed connections around here,there's not much hope of doing this! Today is the day i'm reinstalling the Win 98se OS on the wife's computer.Hope I'm successful.if not i'll be back for help as they say!!!Thanks for your help.

VAN

Hi again ECK,

I spent most of yesterday reinstalling Win 98 OS.I finally got it done alright,but what a bit-- that was.This was my first experience doing this.It solved 2of 3 problems that we tried to solve without success in other Postings.It fixed "VMM32\enable.VXD " and "User.exe" files that were missing.It didn't fix the missing "SetupX.dll" one though! Any thoughts on this?

BTW I misread the "Unofficial Autopatcher's" v 1.95 Lite version size! I thought it was 70 MB but in fact it's 171 MB. In any case I downloaded 70 MB of it yesterday,while I was working on the Win 98 reinstall.Each day I'll download a bit more of it until I have the whole thing.Thanks.

VAN

[Eck]

I don't know what you mean by those 2 errors. You're getting some sort of error at startup? This, with a fresh install onto a completely formatted hard drive? Or are you talking about System File Checker reporting damaged files?

The old HP Pavilion PC's used to have a problem on the "Starting Windows For the First Time" screen during setup after the first reboot. An MS-DOS error message would report that Windows was missing vmm32 and it wouldn't complete the startup to finish installing Windows.

The solution was to make an AUTOEXEC.BAT file with just one line in it and stick it on a floppy. The line is

SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM

Then instead of letting the Windows 98 OEM cd format the new installation, you would use a Windows 98 Startup floppy instead, and use format c: /s to format your drive so the MS-DOS system files would be put on it. Then you would put your floppy in and copy the AUTOEXEC.BAT file to your drive. If you already let the OEM cd format for you and start setup, you could hold down the Ctrl key during that first bootup (or after getting that error message and restarting the computer) and enter Safe Mode instead of regular mode. Then you could copy over your AUTOEXEC.BAT from your floppy, restart, and Setup would continue installing Windows. Unfortunately you'd lose those stupid links to Microsoft's early Active X media partners that don't lead anywhere anymore anyway. But that's the only problem with going to Safe Mode while that first boot happens. But if you format yourself instead, you get the stupid links as Setup won't be running in Safe Mode where it can't access the cd drive.

That solution was not necessary with retail 98 cd's, only the OEM cd had that problem and only on certain HP Pavilion models.

If you're talking about the System File Checker thinking you're files are corrupted, that's an erroneous report. If you went ahead and updated Windows Installer to 2.0, Internet Explorer to 6 SP1 and Direct X to 9.0c, those errors would likely disappear, or you could ignore them, or you could let System File Checker replace the files by letting it extract them from your Windows 98 cd which would just replace them with the exact same files but would satisfy System File Checker for some reason.

With 98 First Edition you had to be careful with System File Checker as it would sometimes replace working files with mini Windows 98 Setup versions from the cd if you had it extract files from it. That was fixed in 98 Second Edition.

I'm not sure if any of this applies to you as I didn't understand from what you wrote exactly what kind of errors you're getting. You shouldn't get any errors on a fresh install. If you're installing Windows over itself, that's different. I consider that rather pointless unless you no longer have your drivers and software programs to reinstall on a formatted system. Errors wouldn't surprise me if you're doing that.

Some folks have all their software setups but just want to refresh Windows without needing to copy over all their music and data files onto a formatted fresh system. That's fine. You would set your own Virtual Memory Min and Max in the advanced section of the last tab of System Properties and restart the computer. That serves to get the swap file out of the Windows directory. Uninstall Internet Explorer. Then you would boot to a command prompt only or a 98 Startup floppy and delete the C:\Program Files and C:\Windows folders. Then a fresh Windows install would be fully new with the exception of your data already being on the hard drive. I've never done this so search around for perhaps more accurate directions if you ever want to do that.

Others like to try to keep their programs. In that case you would do the above paragraph but without deleting the Program Files and Windows folders. Instead you would just delete the win.com file. As long as you're reinstalling not from the GUI but rather from starting with the boot floppy and running setup from the Windows cd, the setup would replace your Windows files with the original versions but all the links and stuff your installed programs need would remain where they are and within the registry. So when setup finished you would need to install Internet Explorer and the Windows Updates such as what the Auto-Patcher does. I haven't done this type of install either so my instructions might not be complete.

[eidenk]

Van, when you reinstall Windows on top itself, some files are overwritten with the original ones even if newer files are present but some other are not and that might be the case with setupx.dll or eventually another dll it works with. Try to extract it from your cabs and copy it into the system folder. It *might* solve your problem. And don't forget to get NDN. Put the NDN folder in the root dir so if you have a similar problem again, you just need to boot into DOS, either from the HDD or from your Startup floppy (create one if haven't done so) and type C:\ndn\ndn and press enter to have a very handy file manager to do anything you need without needing to type anything complicated.

Eck, I hate installing even fancy new oses, it is no fun for me. I prefer installing lots of software. Fortunately, even though you live in great poverty, you can still afford to swap hardware and purchase Vista to entertain yourself. Give us your verdict about it if have got some time some day.

[Evanhoe]

Hi Eck,

Before I reinstalled the Win 98 OS,when I booted up I was getting "VMM32\enable.VXD" missing file and,when I clicked it booting continued normally.That problem is solved now.

Also before,when I ran SFC it showed that the 2 following files had been deleted:"Setupx.dll and User.exe"Now,after reinstalling,I'm still missing "Setupx.dll".What exactly do I do now to get it back?

(Quote)The solution was to make an AUTOEXEC.BAT file with just one line in it and stick it on a floppy. The line is:

SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM

Would the above work with my present Win 98 OS?If so,and although that problem is fixed now,we'll keep it on file for future reference?

(Quote)If you're talking about the System File Checker thinking you're files are corrupted, that's an erroneous report. If you went ahead and updated Windows Installer to 2.0, Internet Explorer to 6 SP1 and Direct X to 9.0c, those errors would likely disappear, or you could ignore them, or you could let System File Checker replace the files by letting it extract them from your Windows 98 cd which would just replace them with the exact same files but would satisfy System File Checker for some reason.

As far as I know all the above were all up to date.When I tried to extract a "Deleted' as per SFC,from my Win 98 CD I always go an error message to the effect that:"File not found,check restore from location"So,that's why I did a reinstall of the OS.As I said before,it fixed 2of 3 problems but,when I again ran SFC,it showed that "Setupx.dll" was still missing and same problem,"can't extract it from Win 98 cd".

This other stuff your suggesting is a bit complicated,but if all else fails I'll probably give it a try later! Thanks again.

VAN

[Evanhoe]

Hi eidenk,

Regarding your suggestion below:

(Quote)Try to extract it from your cabs and copy it into the system folder.

I don't seem to have Cab files in C:\Windows! If I do,I'd sure like to know where there hiding?

(QUOTE)And don't forget to get NDN. Put the NDN folder in the root dir so if you have a similar problem again, you just need to boot into DOS, either from the HDD or from your Startup floppy (create one if haven't done so) and type C:\ndn\ndn and press enter to have a very handy file manager to do anything you need without needing to type anything complicated.

From a previous suggestion,I downloaded both NDN Dos and NDN Windows.When I opened NDN Dos.it just flashed by.So I tried the NDN Windows one and it opened with all kinds of information and for the life of me,I could'nt figure how to use it! I needed far more detailed directions than I could find there!So I finally reinstalled Win 98 and I'm still not out of the woods yet.Can you help further? Thanks.

VAN

[eidenk]

Windows 98SE does not copy the install cabs on the HDD as far as I know (WinME does). They are on the Install CD (in the win98 folder on my 98SE CDs) but you can copy that folder onto your HDD if you want to.

The benefits of doing so are that you don't need the CD if you (or the system) want to extract a file from them and that a reinstall is much faster from the HDD than from the CD. Of course it uses some disk space.

As you've got NDN, you could use it now under windows for searching in which cab is this setupx.dll and extract it to the system dir with it.

Navigate with NDN to the directory where your install cabs are. Once you are there, use the search function : File/Find or alt+F7, fill the filemask field with the filename, tick the "search in archives" option, press enter and the file will soon be displayed if it is in one of the cabs. Then copy it wherever you want (File/Copy or F5).

Let me know if you have problems with that.

Edited April 16, 2007 by eidenk