Installing Windows 98 SE on XP-era hardware
Hello, I'm having some difficulties installing Windows 98 SE on a computer I happen to own. It's specs are:
AMD Sempron 3100+ 1,8 GHz
MSI K8T Neo-V (I checked, it has drivers for 98SE)
512MB of RAM
A DVD writer (IDE)
A 60GB Samsung hard drive (IDE)
nVidia GeForce FX5500 256MB
I think that is the most important part of the specs. Anyways, I also slipstreamed the 98SE CD, I removed the "cdsample" directory and replaced it with a "custom" directory. That directory contains some useful things, like IE6, Firefox 2, Opera 10.10, drivers for the motherboard and GPU, and finally Flash and Foobar (a music player). When I install that ISO in a VM, it works fine, but if I try to install it on that computer, 98 Setup hangs when "Setup is preparing the Windows 98 Setup Wizard, which will guide you trough the rest of the setup process. Please wait" reaches 100%. The DVD doesn't indicate any activity, and the HDD LED on the case is just on all the time. What should I do? Should I try with a 'vanilla' 98SE CD? Is this just impossible and will I have to use something like a P4 1.6 GHz? (Please not, btw, because this Sempron should work)
AMD Sempron 3100+ 1,8 GHz
MSI K8T Neo-V (I checked, it has drivers for 98SE)
512MB of RAM
A DVD writer (IDE)
A 60GB Samsung hard drive (IDE)
nVidia GeForce FX5500 256MB
I think that is the most important part of the specs. Anyways, I also slipstreamed the 98SE CD, I removed the "cdsample" directory and replaced it with a "custom" directory. That directory contains some useful things, like IE6, Firefox 2, Opera 10.10, drivers for the motherboard and GPU, and finally Flash and Foobar (a music player). When I install that ISO in a VM, it works fine, but if I try to install it on that computer, 98 Setup hangs when "Setup is preparing the Windows 98 Setup Wizard, which will guide you trough the rest of the setup process. Please wait" reaches 100%. The DVD doesn't indicate any activity, and the HDD LED on the case is just on all the time. What should I do? Should I try with a 'vanilla' 98SE CD? Is this just impossible and will I have to use something like a P4 1.6 GHz? (Please not, btw, because this Sempron should work)
Comments
You could also start the cd in command line mode and prep the hard drive, then copy the contents of the disc to the drive, running the setup from a folder on the hard drive. That way you can also rule out any driver issues with the dvd drive.
I have also seen the Win9x setup, which is based on Windows 3.1, get tripped up due to "to much" RAM.
Another thing to try is going in to your BIOS and disabling anything you don't absolutely need to get it set up, like USB or integrated sound/networking. It could be getting confused by an IRQ conflict or similar. Also make sure to disable any BIOS boot sector protection.