Windows 98/98SE Bootability

ShadowProphet

So I'm very confused here. I've heard that Windows 98 OEM is cd-bootable and doesn't require a bootdisk, but that the retail version requires a bootdisk. Is this true? If so, is it also true for second edition? I've seen the supposed, "CD-ROM Boot Menu," but I can never seem to be able to boot to the cd. I start the VM with no bootdisk and just the SE OEM iso loaded as the first boot device, and nothing happens until I click any button in the window, when it promptly aborts with no error message.

TCPMeta

Back when I had a Win98 FE OEM disk set I was able to boot off the CD. Doesn't hurt to use a boot disk, just adds a extra step to the install.

ShadowProphet

Would the OEM file from WinWorld work? I would like to know before downloading, because my PC is an old XP machine, and ISO's usually take about two hours to download.

TCPMeta

I'm not sure. When Win2k came out I never looked back on Win98.

TCPMeta

I'm not sure. When Win2k came out I never looked back on Win98.

ShadowProphet

Well, I'm still not sure about 98/98SE El Torito abilities, but I am now very sure that you're not sure and that you apparently really like win2k.

Granted, that is a very nice OS. Excluding ME, which doesn't really count as anything more than the stepping stone that led us away from the 9x kernel and into XP, it is the last classic OS. I actually have an original cd that comes with SP1, and I also have the original Quick Start quide and more in-depth Getting Started manual. Ha, I remember at a Discount Electronics a few years ago there was a shelf of huge manuals all on using Windows 2000 Server Family OSes.

I still would like this confirmed by anybody that knows. It would be very helpful, because I have this old laptop that doesn't have a floppy drive that I want to install 98/98SE on. It'll crawl with anything moderately newer. It came with 98, but when I was a stupid amateur who wanted everything to run something new I formatted it for XP. Derp.

TCPMeta

I'll try it and let you know.

TCPMeta

Win 98 SE OEM is bootable from the ISO. Just make sure you have the CDROM set in the BIOS to boot or if you're using a VM such as VirutalBox you need to disable the floopy drive in the boot order.

ShadowProphet

Hm... I did exactly what you said. I downloaded the SE OEM iso from the archives, set it to be the first boot device in VirtualBox, disabled the floppy drive in the boot order settings, leaving CD-ROM at the top. Started it up.. nothing. Black screen, then aborted with no info. Is there any other specific settings I should know about with VBox? I had it set at 128mb RAM and that was pretty much all I changed. Everything else was at defaults.

TCPMeta

The one I downloaded and used was the

Windows 98 Second Edition (OEM Full) 4.10.2222 (OEM Full) 544.44 MB

When I tried it I left everything default under the Windows 98 profile except I disabled the floppy drive from the boot order. I wonder if it's the version of VirtualBox. I'm using 4.3.20 r96997

Heres what I have setup on mine.

tatte

Have you tried redownloading the image?

BOD

I have/had an OEM 98SE disc. It was bootable, I'll have a look to see if I can find it and try it out on VMWare/VirtualBox.

BOD

Hmm, not sure this is going to work so well. I might be able at least extract the bootsector from it:

http://benodell.co.uk/lol/98se.png

ShadowProphet

TCPMeta wrote:

The one I downloaded and used was the

Windows 98 Second Edition (OEM Full) 4.10.2222 (OEM Full) 544.44 MB

When I tried it I left everything default under the Windows 98 profile except I disabled the floppy drive from the boot order. I wonder if it's the version of VirtualBox. I'm using 4.3.20 r96997

Heres what I have setup on mine.

I don't have any kind of acceleration on my machine, can you try it without that and se if it still boots?

TCPMeta

The acceleration shouldn't have anything to do with it.

emmanual

You don't need windows 98 bootdisk because windows 98 cd will boot by itself. try vmware player.

MEM-TEK

I suggest using ImgBurn to burn the Win98 SE OEM ISO to an actual CD. Note that ImgBurn now includes potentially unwanted programs (PUPs), so be careful during installation so that you can opt out of installing these PUPs. I seem to recall that SE does expect to see a floppy drive and a COM1 port during installation, so keep the FD enabled in VMWare, but change the boot sequence to CD first. You might want to enable the virtual network card as well. If your CPU supports hardware virtualization (check in your comptuter's BIOS) then make sure that hardware virtualization is enabled in VMWare. Also, don't initially set the size of the virtual hard drive to larger than 16MB and make sure that the RAM is set to 128MB or less. Later you can adjust the virtual hard disk size to up to 512MB. Hopefully these VMWare settings will work. I do know that they do work if you install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1, and it works quite well in fact. If the forum will permit it, I can upload a zipped fully installed and clean Win98 SE VHD with its config file for use in Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1. The only additional software which I installed for convenience is VoptXP V7 for disk defragmentation and a very old version of WinZip which works great in Win98. All software (Win98 SE, VoptXP V7 and WinZip are registered with generic keys which were never blocked by the software owners The latter two programs are long since dead abandonware.) The zipped VM and config file size is 800MB. It is a lot of fun to play around with and brings back fond memories of using Win98 SE.

Mousy54

My install crashed at a black screen also, until I unchecked Enable VT-x/AMD-V, then it installed flawlessly. Also I did not uncheck or change the boot order, FLoppy, CD/DVD, Hard Disk.