Installing Windows 98SE

[Marse.robert]

Hi all,
For some time I have been lurking but an avid reader of the various Posts.

My problem is installing Windows 98SE. First my computer specifications:

AMD Athlon64 FX-51,
Gigabyte K8 Triton Series-GA-K8NNXP-940
2 Gig Registered Ram
Geforce FX5950 Ultra
2 x Western Digital Raptor 10000rpm SATA HD's.

On this system, I have no problem installing Windows XP Pro. As I have SATA drives Win XP allows me to install drivers for these drives by accessing F6 at the commencement of the install. Windows 98 SE does not have this facility.

I have spoken with Western Digital and their advice is standard: Partition the drives and using Fdisk, format in FAT32. Done that!! Just prior to the Product Key, WIN 98 Hangs at the "Starting for the first time" screen.

If the problem is not the SATA drives, the problem must be with the Motherboard or Bios. Can anyone help?


Kindest regards
marserobert

 

[chastity]

Actually I believe it may be related to the amount of ram in the system. I've heard that Windows 98 or generally any of the 9x series have trouble with ram amount above I don't remember is was 256 or 512MB. I hope somebody can clear that up but its worth a try to remove some of the ram to see if it makes a difference

 

[Glaanieboy]

Don't have the answer, but why the heck you want to install an ancient O/S on a machine with those specs?

 

[Marse.robert]

Hi Chastity

Thanks for your reply. Come to think of it, I do believe that you are correct! It has been a long time since I used Win 98 SE, but I can remember this OS did have issues with too much Ram.

Problem is, this Motherboard will only take Registered Ram. Furthermore, I have 2 sticks of 1 Gig each. Would Windows SE complain about 1 Gig of Ram?


Regards
marserobert

 

[Marse.robert]

Hi Glaanieboy,

Fair comment!

I adore Win XP Pro. My Wife cannot get along without Win98SE. Solution for 1 computer..dual boot.


Kindest regards
marserobert

 

[Mainframeguy]

Don't have the answer, but why the heck you want to install an ancient O/S on a machine with those specs?

well - probably if it ain't broke don't fix it? Plus it will run like lightening on that machine and leave all the rest of the resource for whatever application - maybe at the end of the day it is just to save the cash for the XP license?

I think that's enough reasons - why not just try with the 1GB memory and see, after that you surely must be able to grab smaller sticks from somewhere?!

 

[Glaanieboy]

I believe the 'issues' 98SE had with RAM, was that it only saw up to 384MB RAM, the rest was simply not there, according to 98SE. So if you stick 512MB, 1 GB, 2GB or 4GB, it doesn't matter, 98SE only saw 384 MB. I haven't tried that though, so I am not sure.

 

[Electronic Punk]

Was gonna suggest Windows Millenium for a minute, but wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

 

[Lee]

What they said above, you have too much r.a.m.
Win Me was the same. I suggest installing everything on a 256mb piece then trying to find a fix, or when you install Win98SE just set it to recognize only 256 mb r.a.m. add the rest in and then try installing XP.

Saying that even installing with 64 mb r.a.m. for Win98SE.

I will think about this for a bit, as I am sure you may have to hack registry to bluff Win98SE into believing windows has 2 megbyte r.a.m. installed, or then reboot shut down, add r.a.m. upto 2 gig then when Win98SE boots in (hopefully) then adjust amount of r.a.m. to recognise.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

If you are dual booting '98 has to be loaded before XP...........unless you want to a lot of fiddling.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Have a look here too.

 

[fitz]

Why not run the 98 machine in a virtual machine (VMWare or VirtualPC)?

No RAM problems because you can control the amount of RAM given to the virual machine..

You still have XP as a host/base OS..

Don't have to fiddle with Dual booting..

And your hardware specs would probably easily support a VMGuest OS.

Just a thought,
--fitz

 

[Admiral Michael]

Wouldn't it also being 64bit be a problem?

 

[Marse.robert]

Thank you all,

I took this machine to a local Computer shop, and he claims that the specification, as it stands, will not load Win98se. I really did not believe this statement because his solution involved much spending.

But the bare fact remains that Win 98se is not installing.


Kindest regards

marserobert

 

[fitz]

And again I ask:

why not consider installing Windows XP Pro and using VMWare (or VirtualPC) to run your Win98SE?

$129 retail for VirtualPC
(http://www.microsoft.com/PRODUCTS/i...ba9e68ed-9571-4d10-82d2-b51828c33297&type=ovr)

$189 for VMWare Workstation 4.5
(https://www.vmware.com/request_proc...on=store&ProductGroupCodes=WKST4-WIN,WKST4-LX)


--fitz

 

[Marse.robert]

fitz

Thanks..on to it now!


Kindest regards

marserobert

 

[Marse.robert]

Fitz,

I downloaded a Virtual PC from Microsoft on a 45 day trial. Set the program up and installed Win 98 SE..no problems...or so I thought.

Windows 98se loaded into a small sub window in which the mouse could not escape. So all the external buttons were unavailable. I then turned the machine off and it rebooted into XP.. and I cannot find the program anywhere on my Computer.

Are these the characteristics of Vitual PC?

Kindest regards
marserobert

 

[American Zombie]

Actually I believe it may be related to the amount of ram in the system. I've heard that Windows 98 or generally any of the 9x series have trouble with ram amount above I don't remember is was 256 or 512MB. I hope somebody can clear that up but its worth a try to remove some of the ram to see if it makes a difference

Win 98 can "see" up to 1 GB of ram but anything over 512 it can not effectively use. You can use up to 1GB of ram in 98 but should not use more as then 98 may reboot continuously.
You could try lowering the AGP aperture size as with large amounts of ram there is very little address space remaining for the other system code and data that must occupy this range of virtual addresses in ME or 98.

 

[rushm001]

Was gonna suggest Windows Millenium for a minute, but wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

 

[fitz]

Fitz,

I downloaded a Virtual PC from Microsoft on a 45 day trial. Set the program up and installed Win 98 SE..no problems...or so I thought.

Windows 98se loaded into a small sub window in which the mouse could not escape. So all the external buttons were unavailable. I then turned the machine off and it rebooted into XP.. and I cannot find the program anywhere on my Computer.

Are these the characteristics of Vitual PC?

Kindest regards
marserobert

The mouse unable to move out of the virtual machine is normal during an initial load. Basically, when you click within the virual machine, you enter the virtual machine. By design, the virtual machine does not know it is running on emulated/virtual hardware.

Once you get a guest OS running, you usually want to install the, in the case of VirtualPC, the "Virtual Machine Add-ons". The add-on gives better mouse integration and can let you move the mouse between the virtual machine and the host machine. The add-on was part of the demo and full/retail version. You can install it after you start Virtual PC (and the guest OS) by going to the actions/Install or Update Virtual Machine Additions menu options.

If you have not installed the add-on's, the guest OS must release the mouse before the host can use it. You can use either the hostkey-Enter key combo or the HostKey-DownArrow to switch back to the host. By default the hostkey is the Right-ALT key.. so you could hit the Right-ALT and the Enter key together to get your mouse back into the hostmachine.

Now, as to not finding the program, it should have installed an icon called "microsoft Virtual PC" off your start/programs menu. It is not a folder!
Or you should be able to find it at it's default location (unless you changed the default install location) at c:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual PC\Virtual PC.exe

Worst comes to worst, do a file search for "Virtual PC.exe"

Understand, I prefer VMWare over Virtual PC. I've used them both.. although I didn't use VirtualPC much. VMWare offers better support for non-MS guest operating systems.. as well as the fact that you can run VMWare under linux as a host while VirtualPC runs only over MS OS's.

That being said, VirtualPC does run Mirosoft OS's well. You can get some more help from either the help files in Virtual PC or from their website.. some good links/docs to read if you want to evaulate VirtualPC:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/evaluation/evalguide.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/techinfo/deploy.mspx

Let me know if you need anything else... or if you still can't find where it was installed.