Win98se Boot Disk

[Malcolm Lozada]

Ihave tried several boot disk images, copying files on to various floppies, and my system WILL NOT boot from any of it! I keep having errors of all kinds. Even copying files to the floppies is encountering many problems such as errors copying various files. I am about to give up.

I'm using an IDE/SATA adapter. I was able to compete the install using the adapter with a spare 40gb HDD from my old PS3. The motherboard is an Asus A7V which should support the 120gb SSD. Anyway I gave up messing with the SSD for now. The install went perfectly once I swapped to the SATA HDD.

These disks are original boot floppy disk media for use with Microsoft Windows CD-ROMs. Not all Windows 9x/ME CDs are bootable, not all CDs included boot disks, and DOS will not see a CD-ROM drive unless a driver is loaded. OEMs were expected to provide compatible CD-ROM with the boot media provided with their systems. However towards the very late 90s, most vendors standardized on IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM hardware and the use of the OEM Adaption Kit (OAK) driver. If your CD drive is not IDE compatible (such as an MKE or Panasonic interface) you must manually add your own driver. Note: you can use the Windows 98 boot disk with Windows 95 to make things easier. If you have any UNTOUCHED OEM boot disks with different drivers, please submit them.

they dont quite have wot i m looking for ? i m talking about the boot up floppy disk that comes equiped with the windows 98se cd package itself. when you boot it, it gives you the option of intsalling win98, or boot up with or without cd rom drive support.

I thought the OEM disks on the site were the correct ones? Dont know havent used a proper MS disk in years. I just a generic boot disk and run setup manually that way you get the bonus of using switches to skip the scandisk before setup starts

If you have a working copy of Win98 you can always do the following

The "Self-Extracting" ZIPs contain a DOS EXE that will automatically recreate a floppy, without having to use the "Disk Imager" utility (insert a non-write protected floppy, and then execute the DOS program EXE).

"Disk Imager" has options to either create a standard "IMG" binary image file, or a DOS self-extracting/recreating EXE to recreate the floppy with... which is the format of the files contained in those ZIPs.

P.S. Back in the day, I used the floppy created with the Windows_98_Second_Edition_Self-Extracting_Bootup_Floppy_Image.zip quite extensively... mostly for wiping out a customer's hard drive in preparation for reinstalling Windows 98 SE:

What if you were to use Linux to make a FAT32 partition bootable, copy the bootdisk to that partition, then reboot, thereby installing it from the hard disk? I think it is possible, just I probably need to mind the disk configuration (data tree or file tree; create the right folders; set the attributes right; other housekeeping)

Using fdisk to delete all your partitions and then create primary partition should work also. Make sure that when you re-bot to format the drive that you use the WIN98 boot disk (or if your cd ROM is bootable you shpould be able to go right into install if you boot from there. Check the BIOS settings for the boot sequence and make sure the cd ROM is listed.)

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I'm restoring an old Thinkpad E310ed from c. 1997 and running into an issue I can't seem to find a workable solution to: installing Windows 98SE to a new "hard drive." The original HDD seems dead (BIOS detects but drivehead/platters sound awful to the point it's ear-grating) and I've purchased both a 2.5" IDE-CF and IDE-SD adapter. The CD drive in the laptop seems dead as well; it spins up and makes a liquidy sound for about a minute before going idle. Booting from the CD drive has been unsuccessful with every ISO I've tried. There is no floppy drive to make use of. So what I'm left with is the need to install Win 98SE to either a CF or an SD card--through the adapters--and to use that as the disk drive as well. Here's a mostly-complete list of everything I've tried that hasn't worked:

Put the hard drive (or flash card) in another computer. With all storage devices being broken it is the only way. Obtain a Windows 98SE start up disk or earlier DOS boot disk, or boot from your CD. Run fdisk and then format the drive. run sys c: to make the drive bootable assuming it is drive c.

What size is the SD card in the SD drive? The original SD card readers before SDHC cannot work with an SD card over 2GB. It is a hardware limit. Does the BIOS recognize the presence of the drive? It should detect it and show you the size, otherwise it is not working.

If you get past that part successfully most of the work is done since that is the hard part. The CHS values of both computers must match or else the CHS in the partition table and the CHS stored at the beginning of the bootable partition won't match the BIOS and it won't boot. You can probably turn translation on (8.4GB limit) or off (504 or 528MB limit) on the Thinkpad. The same on the other computer. They need to match. If the Thinkpad doesn't support extended INT 13h then you'll have to have translation enabled or you'll have the 528MB limit, and Windows 98 won't fit. Same applies if you use an old version of DOS that doesn't support extended INT 13h. You have to obtain the boot floppy or boot off the CD. I assume the Windows 98 CD boots in to DOS. I haven't used one before.

Once you have bootable DOS working, it's a simple matter of copying the win98 directory on to the drive before moving it over to the Thinkpad and running win98\setup.exe from inside DOS. Make sure the drivers to get networking going are copied as well, because a network share, direct serial cable connection, or infrared (if equipped) are going to be the only ways to copy files over.

If you happen to read this whole file you'll notice it doesn't say anything about providingCD-ROM support. Trust me, it does. This boot disk will not be the sameas a START UP DISK that you can create either duringthe install of Win98 of after Win98 is installed. You should create a START UP DISK, it's very handy!

Edit: The big problem with either 95 or ME probably is that the boot cd(stick) IS the primary partition and there's no way to spoof it as a floppy or CD. such a pain that the dos files are in the way of the installing os.

I got Windows ME Boot Disk to run on a USB-Stick just like Win98 Boot Disk can by using a hex editor and changing 2 hex values from 75 to EB because WinME BOOTCD DOS'ability to install on hard-drive's or USB is crippled (What version of MS-DOS does Rufus use to make bootable USBs?)

Well, even the Windows XP format command won't help you. As it makes a strange kind of Windows XP disk but not a bootable thing. The GUI of XP has an option to make a bootable DOS disk. Still though that's not USB.

One other point is the setup will be slow unless you load something, I think it's called SMARTDRV and the disk should really include an AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS and the CONFIG.SYS should include a line that loads HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE

Conclusion:Windows ME OEMSetup gives the same message as FDisk, so I suppose It's the same.I guess LBA48 would work anyway, so in my case I'll format it using Windows 10 on my second Hard-drive, If you haven't Seor CMasMas suggested to use HIREN'S BOOTCD.I'll use FDisk to check if the letter got assigned properly and in Setup.exe, I change C: the USB stick to D: the hard drive.

I hope you are now able to install Windows 9X with an USB Stick.On modern PC's you may expect visual glitches during the installation and they may be even heavier when you try to boot it. I recommend to not turn the power off during the installation.

I have this really strange problem with my win98 pc. When I boot from cdrom and try to either "start win98 setup" or "start computer with cdrom support" the disc spins up, a message appears saying it's trying to load some "oak technologies" driver for oemcd001 device and then it just stays there, the system does not freeze, I can ctrl-alt-del to restart and the cursor at the end of the message keeps blinking, but it doesn't load the driver. I used to be able to install windows 98 on this pc just fine, this is not the first time that I'm doing this with this very machine and my win98se cd, an original disc that came with an oem pc back in 2000. The pc configuration is as follows: asus p5pe-vm mobo, c2d 6420, ide cdrom, sata 80gb hdd. I've also tried it with 2 different ide cdroms now, configured as both master and cable select. The storage ports are set to run in "compatibility mode", if I set them to run in "enhanced mode", the system attempts to load the driver and fails (expected behaviour), so I know the drives are functional. The only change to this machine that I can think of, since my last windows 98 reinstall about 2 months ago, was the removal of a slave sata-to-ide adaptered 80gb sata hdd on the same ribbon cable as the cdrom, BUT I cannot see how it can make any difference since I've always disconnected everything but the cd-rom and my system hdd for windows reinstalls. Any ideas on what's going on are very welcome.

Hi 173a.

Didn't see a comment on the condition of the Windows 98 CD. Under good lighting, any dust, dirt or damage? Can you hear the CD-ROM keep spinning up, like it's trying to read data but can't get a fix?

Hi 173a.

Didn't see a comment on the condition of the Windows 98 CD. Under good lighting, any dust, dirt or damage? Can you hear the CD-ROM keep spinning up, like it's trying to read data but can't get a fix?

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