Using Windows 98 with large Hard Disks?

Sean Fox · 22 Apr 2020 at 12:29

So whilst clearing out the loft today I discovered an old Windows XP laptop, nothing fancy, just a 1.6ghz core duo with 2GB of RAM.

It works perfectly, so I figured I'd slap Win98SE onto it and use it as a portable retro gaming machine.

However... I've just formatted the drive and it's only seeing 2GB of the 100GB HDD.

Is there a workaround for this? I assume Win98 has limitations on large drive sizes, so is it possible to maybe partition the disk into several smaller drives and 'fool' the system that way?

It's been a verrrrry looong time since I did anything like this so some idiot-proof guidance would be much appreciated!

Armageus · 22 Apr 2020 at 12:46

Sounds like the hard drive has been partitioned as FAT16 which only supports 2GB.

You can either use a Win98SE boot disk, and use FDISK to delete all partitions and create a new FAT32 partition, or a linux live cd or similar

IIRC Windows 98 is good for 137GB or thereabouts

Sean Fox · 22 Apr 2020 at 12:56

Armageus said:
Sounds like the hard drive has been partitioned as FAT16 which only supports 2GB.

You can either use a Win98SE boot disk, and use FDISK to delete all partitions and create a new FAT32 partition, or a linux live cd or similar

IIRC Windows 98 is good for 137GB or thereabouts

Thank you

Unfortunately I can't use a boot disk (no floppy drive), but I've just taken a look at FDISK - It was reporting that the primary (only) partition was already FAT32.

I deleted it and created a new primary partition - FDISK is still saying it's FAT32, but now it's giving me 29GB (which i guess must be 32GB after formatting?). I've no idea why it can't see the other 70GB though

synrgy87 · 22 Apr 2020 at 12:57

Windows 98SE may also have issues with the ram size, I'd cut it down to 512MB if you can until you get it installed and patched up, may be ok with 1GB . Just a little note ontop of what Armageus said.

Sean Fox said:
I deleted it and created a new primary partition - FDISK is still saying it's FAT32, but now it's giving me 29GB (which i guess must be 32GB after formatting?). I've no idea why it can't see the other 70GB though

Try a Gparted live CD / usb to format full size

Sean Fox · 22 Apr 2020 at 13:00

synrgy87 said:
Windows 98SE may also have issues with the ram size, I'd cut it down to 512MB if you can until you get it installed and patched up, may be ok with 1GB . Just a little note ontop of what Armageus said.

Thanks, that's good to know! I'll crack it open and see if I can take out some of the ram

Armageus · 22 Apr 2020 at 13:01

wikipedia said:
Limitations[edit]
Windows 98 is not designed to handle more than 1 GB of RAM[84] without changes. Both Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition have problems running on hard drives of capacities larger than 32 GB in systems with certain Phoenix BIOS configurations. A software update fixed this shortcoming.[85] In addition, until Windows XP with Service Pack 1, Windows was unable to handle hard drives that are over 137 GB in size with the default drivers, because of missing 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support.[86]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98#Limitations

Sean Fox · 22 Apr 2020 at 13:04

Armageus said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98#Limitations

Aaaah thank you, that explains it!

I'll go with a 32GB drive and 1GB ram for the moment then - that will be far more than enough for my purposes anyway in all honesty! (I say that now.. lol)

DJai · 23 May 2020 at 08:21

Wow, that really is retro! I got my first PC when I wasn't even a teenager and it had Windows ME installed. Never used Windows 98.

Any progress?