How do you install Windows 98?

Gepetto

Gepetto

Gepetto

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I have some old games, and a copy of Win98, that I want to install on a second HD and boot from that drive whenever I feel the retro urge. When I try and install 98 I'm having hassles with DVD drivers and incompatibility with my 64 bit Win7.

Can anyone tell me ( in words of one syllable) how to install it?
 
Or alternatively use free version of WMware (WMware Player I think).

EDIT: You might have better luck installing Win XP using WMware/virtual box and then trying your old games, for some reason I only managed to play my very very old games using Windows XP under WMware.

Good luck.
 
Gaming in a VM isn't going to be great, the support for overlay graphics is usually somewhere between non existent and poor.

As for installing 98 itself the easiest way is going to be on a separate HDD with the Win7 one disconnected until the install is complete. SATA controller drivers are going to be difficult to come by if the controller isn't set to IDE mode in the BIOS (don't change the setting or your W7 install won't boot).

It's entirely doable but it's going to be tricky at best.
 
^^ seperate HDD is way to go, seperate PC would be better, I dual booted 98SE and XP pro for a long time and had problems every few months. Win98 is pre NT and needs to be installed first or in isolation to later windows versions. You will need to modify the 'vista' boot menu to pick up 98 if it is installed later.

I now have a laptop dual booting win98se and MSDos 5 for older and even older games but my main PC is win7 only.
 
Id do it onto a seperate disc and disconnect it when you dont want it. Remember w98 can still browse tinternet etc so its not totally useless. Install it as usual, then switch off and swap discs when you want a bit less reliability and issues :D
 
Buying or building a computer with Windows 98 era hardware is best, imo, and is cheap :)



It depends what games you're running. A virtual machine's video adapter might not be enough for some games. You might be able to get it up and running on your current PC by isolating it from your Windows 7 partition, but it's most likely your hardware, especially graphics will be incompatible.
 
Thanks guys. Most appreciated. :cool:

I have an old laptop that I can format and do a complete install on. I didn't realise it would be such a hassle to have the two running on one PC. :(
 
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