Installing ISO's to boot

BeastzX

Hi, I've recently been downloading multiple windows 9.x and 2000 ISO's from the site in order to provide an OS for an old netbook (which has no OS currently installed as modern ones use up too much RAM)
Most of the time programs like Rufus don't even allow me to burn the ISO as I get the error saying:
"This version of Rufus only supports bootable ISO's based on 'bootmgr/WinPE' or 'isolinux'.
This ISO doesn't appear to use either...

And programs that actually burn to the USB- the computer doesn't recognise any OS on the USB when it boots from it.
The only one I've managed to actually boot is Windows 2000 however I get the error "0x00007b inaccessible_boot_device", and I would much prefer to use Windows 98.

Is there actually any way to make Windows 98 for example ISO (using the full OEM) bootable from a USB, if so how?
Sorry if I'm doing anything stupid.

Help appreciated.

SomeGuy

No, you can't boot Windows 98/2000 CDs from USB devices. They must be booted from an IDE CD-ROM, or SATA in IDE compatiblity mode.

Only OEM Windows 9x CDs are bootable. Windows 9x emulates a floppy disk at boot, and the OEM had to provide a DOS driver that was compatible with their disk controller and CD drive. This is exactly why only OEM CDs were bootable. There might be a MS-DOS USB CD driver somewhere you can put on a boot floppy, but I am not familiar with any.

With NT/2000/XP and later the situation is worse, as a compatible protected mode storage and CD driver must already be present in the operating system. Or you get the whole no boot device thing.

I should point out that if your computer does not have IDE or IDE compatiblity (or select SCSI cards), then you probably can not run these OSes natively on the computer anyway.

jamie1130

You need to use a DVD or CD, not a USB drive. If the device doesn't have an optical drive, you can either use an external one or use a newer OS.

BeastzX

Thanks! I'm going to try and dualboot Win98 with a newer laptop which has a DVD drive, though I would probably say its specs are pretty high end for it as one of the main reasons I was trying to put Win98 on my old netbook was because newer OS's (Win7, 8 & 10) use up too much of its 1GB DDR2 RAM and CPU.

BeastzX

Upon further inspection it appears the computer I was going to install Win98SE on does not have IDE compatibility (only AHCI, ATA & Intel Smart Response Technology.) Rather disappointed though I'll try and find an external CD drive on my older netbook.

Armando Technologies

You can make a bootable USB with MS-DOS, you can make it with Rufus, and don't use FREE-DOS, because it has problems of HIMEM. However, just make a USB MS-DOS bootable drive and copy there the installation files (All files in the CD) into a single folder. Then you can type:

cd "the folder with the installation files (Example: WINME)"
cd "win98 in windows 98, win9x in windows me (Example: WIN9X)"
setup

And follow the screens that appear, just remember the MS-DOS filesystem limitations with the names (no more than 8 characters in file name). For Windows XP, 2000 and Server 2003, you can use WinSetupFromUSB, just use the simple interface.

BlueSun

BeastzX wrote:

Upon further inspection it appears the computer I was going to install Win98SE on does not have IDE compatibility (only AHCI, ATA & Intel Smart Response Technology.) Rather disappointed though I'll try and find an external CD drive on my older netbook.

ATA is IDE compatibility mode.

BeastzX

BlueSun wrote:

BeastzX wrote:

Upon further inspection it appears the computer I was going to install Win98SE on does not have IDE compatibility (only AHCI, ATA & Intel Smart Response Technology.) Rather disappointed though I'll try and find an external CD drive on my older netbook.

ATA is IDE compatibility mode.

Ah right, I'll make some registry edits so that it doesn't disable Windows 7 which is currently installed that way I can dual boot it.