I'm having an issue trying to install Win98 onto both of my machines. I'm attempting to do this to a new HDD formatted as FAT32.

Here are the system specs and the issue maybe related to how I have both machines configured.

Gaming Machine:
AMD Athlon 64-X2, 4800+
3GB of DDR400 RAM
2 x 74GB Raptor HDD's configured as RAID Zero
2 x 300GB Seagate Barracuda's configured in single drive mode
2 x nVidia 7800GTX configured in SLI mode.

File/Email Server:
Intel Xeon, 3.4GHz, Smithfield Core
3GB of DDR400 RAM
2 x 80GB Segate Barracuda's configured in RAID Zero
2 x 36GB Raptor HDD's configured in single drive mode.


It issue at hand is that the setup goes fine onto either machine and the initial copying of files goes ok too. Then the reboot occurs and during the setup process where the driver DB is created and hardware is being detected, it will freeze.

Now I did find some possible issues is with the amount of physical memory installed, Microsoft recommends using the following line in the system.ini file:

MaxPhysPage=30000

This will limit the amount of RAM to 768MB and should correct any issues with the dreaded not enough memory to continue message.

However this didn't seem to resolve the issue with freezing on the gaming machine during the setup process, also the file/email server is still displaying the not enough memory message even after editing the system.ini file.

I'm thinking I may just bag this and find some leftover parts and just build a dedicated WIN98 box just for my games that have issues under Win2K/XP.

Any advice to help resolve this would be appreciated

Have you considered using a Microsoft Virtual Machine? It should be a free download and you can install a legacy OS onto it for applications that have issues with later OS's.

Many of the compatibility issues aligned with Vista are resolved this way, which I am fairly certain that this is the same thing. One thing to note, however, is that VMs can run a tad bit slow. It's worth testing out, though.

Yeah, I already have VirtualPC 2004 and have tested it out but because I kind of wanted to be able to use either my SLI cards or my ATi X1600 but I may just scrounge up some of my old parts and just build a Windows 98 box using my old VooDoo 5-5000

UPDATE:

So digging around my dusty parts bins I came across enough parts to build my Windows 98-SE box for older gaming. Below is listed the system specs for this box.

Aopen AX4B-533 Pro Motherboard, Intel D845E Chipset, Socket 478.

Intel Celeron 1.7GHz, Willamette core.

Apacer PC2100, DDR Ram, 512MB.

3dFX Voodoo 5-5500, PCI Graphics Card, Firmware Flashed from the MAC version to be PC Compatible.

2x WD 100GB, IDE HDD's, why, because I thought they were a pair of 40GB drives until I removed them from the old internal 3.5" drive bay mounting brackets

HEC 300-watt PS Unit.

TDK Velo 40x CD-RW drive.

Mitsumi 3.5" & 5.25" Combo Floppy Disk Drive, yes I had one of these bad boys lying around and it still works.

Generic Mid-Tower case, I can't remember who made this unit as the company I used to work for had these badged with the company logo but they were some cheap Taiwanese cases.

One thing to note, I've never seen Windows 98-SE run so fast before. It's note like the Voodoo card is the fastest GPU nor is the CPU really cranking but for Win 9x it is

I would think that Windows NT4 would also run pretty darn fast on this rig as well

This did indeed take care of many of the issues I was having trying to get some of my old Win16/32 games to run properly.

Comments and Opinions welcome....

A working 5.25" floppy?!?!?! I haven't seen one of those guys in a while. Although, I still find old school games that are 5.25" and wish I could play. That's wicked awesome!!!

Man I have a box full of 5.25 floppy games at home! found them the other day when cleaning up. flashback!

One of the best places to find older machines and computer parts now is your local Goodwill store or even local school auctions and such.

Sometimes flea markets or the Brits say, Boot Fairs can still have some of these parts too.

Another tool I use is WinImage, this will allow you to read either formatted diskette type and conver to the other, as long as there is enough free space on the destination when converting the format

Then you can image say 360k or 1.2M diskettes and convert them to 720k or 1.44M diskette formats.

i tryed putting it on my pc on my old 40gb next to dvd drive IDE all the other drives are SATA and it installs but im going to take it off cause of the videocards and just use VPC2007 on the 40gb

For your setup this maybe the best option, I just happen to have had a ton of extra parts lying about so I just built a Win 98 Frankenputer