Installing Windows 9x in 2018

britain4

britain4

britain4

Associate
Joined
6 Jan 2018
Posts
359
What’s the best way to do it? Have a couple of old laptops that could do with a fresh install. Some of them came with Windows 95 but I think 98SE would do nicely. Just have no idea how to go about installing it these days...

Could I use an external USB enclosure and install it from my main PC? Burn a bootable CD?

I expect the easiest way would probably be to install it on one laptop from a CD then clone the drive to the rest of them and install drivers from there but IDK... they don’t all have CD drives
 
I had to reload an old Win98 PC recently, just formatted it and reinstalled the software. If you burn the Windows 98SE disc it should be able to boot from that, otherwise use FreeDOS potentially with a USB driver loaded for an external CD Drive.
 
Cool that’s good to know - do you have a better idea for the systems without CD drives than to just put the drive on a machine that does and install using that?
 
What possible reason could one have to install 98SE on a couple of old laptops? Haven't they suffered enough? Have they not earned the right to RIP?

ps- I believe that I may have a CD with MS-DOS on it if it would help?
 
Easiest way I found to do this was as follows:
Install DOS on the laptop.
Pull drive & connect to another machine, using adaptor as appropriate.
Copy Win95 / Win98 CD contents into a subfolder on the HDD.
Install from the folder on the laptop.

CD support in the installer was never mega brilliant, and slow as heck.
Don't install on another machine- 95 and 98 are far less happy when the hardware changes than later versions.
 
leezer3 said:
Easiest way I found to do this was as follows:
Install DOS on the laptop.
Pull drive & connect to another machine, using adaptor as appropriate.
Copy Win95 / Win98 CD contents into a subfolder on the HDD.
Install from the folder on the laptop.

CD support in the installer was never mega brilliant, and slow as heck.
Don't install on another machine- 95 and 98 are far less happy when the hardware changes than later versions.
Click to expand...

Have to agree - storage device driver support was never great, CD/DVD dodgy and USB petty much a non-started unless you manually inject USB drivers earlier into the initialisation chain.
 
stockhausen said:
What possible reason could one have to install 98SE on a couple of old laptops? Haven't they suffered enough? Have they not earned the right to RIP?

ps- I believe that I may have a CD with MS-DOS on it if it would help?
Click to expand...

Haha, one of those strange “hobbies” you hear about :D for some reason I’ve always enjoyed messing about with them.

Thank you kindly for the offer - I think however I may need to use floppies as they do not all have CD drives.

leezer3 said:
Easiest way I found to do this was as follows:
Install DOS on the laptop.
Pull drive & connect to another machine, using adaptor as appropriate.
Copy Win95 / Win98 CD contents into a subfolder on the HDD.
Install from the folder on the laptop.

CD support in the installer was never mega brilliant, and slow as heck.
Don't install on another machine- 95 and 98 are far less happy when the hardware changes than later versions.
Click to expand...

Right that does make sense thanks. This is the way I will go about it I think. I think mostly I will be using 98SE unless I come across something that’s really not powerful enough.

Rroff said:
Have to agree - storage device driver support was never great, CD/DVD dodgy and USB petty much a non-started unless you manually inject USB drivers earlier into the initialisation chain.
Click to expand...

Haha I never expected to be using USB! I know CD support is a push too unless you use a specific version of W98.
 
I'm busy migrating to Windows 8.1 on my new "everyday" system from Windows 7. :D

Windows 8.1 is bearable but I don't like Win 10.
 
1: Put the Windows 98SE CD-ROM into the optical drive (if don't have one you will need to source one and burn it).
2: Turn the laptop on and boot from the optical drive, follow onscreen instructions.
2b: If the laptop is pre-ATX era and cannot boot from optical then download the files to make the Windows 95/98 boot floppy and use that.

Simple.

Once it's up and running you will want to get the Windows 98 Power Pack (http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windows_9x_power_pack.html) or similar to add updates (Windows Update hasn't worked in years) plus extra features hacked in from ME and 2000. If you plan on using it on the internet (not advisable) then Seamonkey is the most up to dat browser you can use in Win 98.

Good luck and welcome to the club.
 
I didn't realise it was ever possible to boot from a windows 98 cd rom. I always had a bootable floppy disk that came with my copy. Even my first copy of xp required 6 bootable floppy's!
 
ubersonic said:
1: Put the Windows 98SE CD-ROM into the optical drive (if don't have one you will need to source one and burn it).
2: Turn the laptop on and boot from the optical drive, follow onscreen instructions.
2b: If the laptop is pre-ATX era and cannot boot from optical then download the files to make the Windows 95/98 boot floppy and use that.

Simple.

Once it's up and running you will want to get the Windows 98 Power Pack (http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windows_9x_power_pack.html) or similar to add updates (Windows Update hasn't worked in years) plus extra features hacked in from ME and 2000. If you plan on using it on the internet (not advisable) then Seamonkey is the most up to dat browser you can use in Win 98.

Good luck and welcome to the club.
Click to expand...

I'll go down that route for the ones that do have CD drives but for the ones that don't I will have to use the method above. Thanks for the tip about the Power Pack, I didn't know about that either, will have to look at the requirements for it to make sure there's enough RAM to spare if it does use more resources.

Thank you, I've had some of them for years and always liked messing around with them playing old games etc but it's now getting to the stage where some hard drives are failing and others could just do with starting fresh :)

Jamesyboyjim said:
I didn't realise it was ever possible to boot from a windows 98 cd rom. I always had a bootable floppy disk that came with my copy. Even my first copy of xp required 6 bootable floppy's!
Click to expand...

It is but as I say I think it's only certain versions of 98SE - I've certainly installed it that way in the past but not on machines with no CD drive and no means of adding one. I didn't realise there was ever a copy of XP that required bootable floppies to install!
 
Jamesyboyjim said:
I didn't realise it was ever possible to boot from a windows 98 cd rom. I always had a bootable floppy disk that came with my copy. Even my first copy of xp required 6 bootable floppy's!
Click to expand...

Hah reminded me back in the day I made a bootable floppy for friends/family for Windows 95 that they could just put in alongside the CD and it would do all the work - unfortunately once or twice people didn't read the label which had in big letters only use in emergency and to use with the CD :s
 
what applications can you usefully run on win98 ?
(for browsers I am struggling to find a browser that will work with the appropriate graphics driver (dx?) on windows XP for html5 websites.)
 
jpaul said:
what applications can you usefully run on win98 ?
(for browsers I am struggling to find a browser that will work with the appropriate graphics driver (dx?) on windows XP for html5 websites.)
Click to expand...

Probably none, other than old games, I wouldn’t want to go on the modern internet with one. Just find it interesting messing around with this old stuff too.
 
This is a trip down memory lane!

Most burning software at the time couldn't deal with bootable ISOs of which 98SE was the first of the breed. That and it relies on ye olde OAK CD drivers which could be a bit hit and miss. Most people got it bundled with a PC and those discs were usually CAB files only.

jpaul said:
what applications can you usefully run on win98 ?
(for browsers I am struggling to find a browser that will work with the appropriate graphics driver (dx?) on windows XP for html5 websites.)
Click to expand...

Period stuff mainly. Forget the internet though.

For XP the latest supported version of Firefox should be serviceable, somewhere in the v52 range IIRC. I was playing with it the other week, still plays YouTube vids and the like fine. Although I was using an X58 PC, with a quad core Xeon...
 
MagicBoy said:
For XP the latest supported version of Firefox should be serviceable, somewhere in the v52 range IIRC.
Click to expand...
thanks - yes seems relatives XP pentium needs ff 52.3.0, hopefully google maps, utube, iplayer will work. Also will check w/o h/w acceleration, and that ipv6 enabled.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom