Win 98 SE Thin Client Install hangs and asks for diskette? \ VOGONS

Win 98 SE Thin Client Install hangs and asks for diskette?

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First post, by Tumerboy

Posted on 2023-01-16, 02:00

Tumerboy Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 8
Joined: 2023-01-06, 18:36

Edit: I got this working in kind of a weird way - I ended up plugging in an external 3.5" floppy drive, booting up using a DOS 6.22 install diskette, exiting to DOS, and then running setup the same way I had before. It didn't prompt me for floppies like before, and the install went smoothly. Not sure if/how FreeDOS was affecting things? Or maybe because it booted from a thumb drive? (both the thumb drive and floppy drive were plugged in via USB, in the same slot)

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Hey, I'm trying to get Windows 98 SE installed on an SD Card I have in an HP T5710 Thin Client.

I've seen a number of articles/videos about installing on this exact machine, so I'm confident it's possible, but I'm having issues getting it to work.

I have successfully installed DOS 6.22/Win 3.1 on another SD card already.

For Windows 98, I have tried writing the ISO (pulled from Archive.org) to a USB stick directly, but can't it get it boot that way.

So I've used a FreeDOS bootable USB stick to get it to boot into FreeDOS, and then copied the 98SE install files (extracted from the ISO), to that drive.

I have to run set up with the /nm and /is flags to skip the machine check and scandisk.

With all of that said, the point it's getting stuck at is in the "Setup is preparing the Windows 98 Setup Wizard" stage. It will load through this bar, to 100%, and everything looks fine to that point, then it will get stuck there, and in the upper left of the screen are a couple of lines of what look like DOS, asking me to remove the disk from A: and insert the disk in B:

However. . . there is no floppy drive, not one, let alone two. In fact, there are no drives involved at all, except the USB stick to boot, and the SD card "Hard Drive" that the set up files are being run from.

Pressing keys at this point does nothing (even CTRL+ALT+DEL), so I have to just shut the machine off entirely.

The FreeDOS USB stick is 8gb, and the SD Card is 16gb. I've tried partitioning it down and reformating, but I think Win98 is going to blow that away regardless.

Any ideas?

Last edited by Tumerboy on 2023-01-16, 05:24. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 2, by davidinark

Posted on 2023-01-16, 03:04

davidinark Offline

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Joined: 2021-02-10, 01:00

Did some poking around and this thread seems to have a solution using DEBUG: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/ques … on-hangs-at-100

Reply 2 of 2, by Tumerboy

Posted on 2023-01-16, 05:25

Tumerboy Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 8
Joined: 2023-01-06, 18:36

Thanks @davidinark, I actually got this working in kind of a weird way - I ended up plugging in an external 3.5" floppy drive, booting up using a DOS 6.22 install diskette, exiting to DOS, and then running setup the same way I had before. It didn't prompt me for floppies like before, and the install went smoothly. Not sure if/how FreeDOS was affecting things? Or maybe because it booted from a thumb drive? (both the thumb drive and floppy drive were plugged in via USB, in the same slot)

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