Excellent Guide, thank you. I will be using this on my XP/98SE dual boot PC.

oeuvre wrote:

Not to be a debbie downer but really why would anyone waste time installing 9x on anything newer than Core 2 Duo (and even for that I find questionable). You have to use 10+ year old GPUs and sound cards to make it work, even if you have a board with enough PCI slots for that. Then you run across SATA and chipset issues, potential HT issues as mentioned before. Not to mention a modern machine would much better off running something it was designed for or newer than being limited in usability by a nearly 20 year old operating system. Don't get me wrong, I do love me some Windows 98 but stick with Pentium 4 or older for that. Or use a VM or 86box, etc.

I'm installing on an AM2 board because...
1) I would like the capability of easy and straightforward downclocking via multiplier manipulation
2) I want a little more top end performance over an Athlon XP for things like nglide
3) I want to test compatibility with late DOS titles and PCI sound cards
4) I don't have a S939 or S754 board and CPU on hand, and I would prefer not to buy one unless I must

Yep, for me my interest is creating that Windows 98 dream machine. Remember how fast computers were becoming obsolete in the 90s? Well now using cheap parts you can build the ultimate Windows 98 compatible computer. It was the beacon of the golden age of multimedia CD-ROMs, the early days of the www, awesome 90s PC games.

I've been trying to install Windows 98 SE using this method. I have a secondary machine that I wish to use for Windows 9x and older Operating systems. The machine is an FX-8320 with an M5a99FX Pro 2.0, socket AM3+ as the O.P. tested this with. 8GB RAM, and a 60GB SSD for install. Unfortunately, I run into a lot of issues when I go to install Windows 98.

-> When I install using the setup /p i switch, the OS seems to be installing normally with very little to no problems. But then, out of nowhere, SCANREG starts and claims that the registry is corrupt, and it can't fix it. The entire install is trashed for no apparent reason.

-> When I install using the setup /p j switch, which forces ACPI, the OS starts detecting devices and hangs. I then reboot into Safe Mode, remove the ACPI stuff, reboot again, and this time setup can successfully install the OS (there is still a registry error, but it gets fixed this time). Windows 98 also re-enables ACPI, and it works, partially. Unfortunately, Windows 98 in this config proves to be quite unstable, where even a small change in the USB devices could hang the system. However, by far this is the setup I've had the most success with.

-> When installing using setup /p a;b for safe and selective detection, I tried to mix the scenarios posed by the other trials. Unfortunately, I got the worst of the two, not only did it take much more to seemingly get running, but the SCANREG error creeped up and trashed the install.

In all cases, I've disabled the 32 bit file access drivers. I also tried with and without the RAM software (although I still don't see what it does, does it occupy the unused RAM to make 98 install easier?)

This is at 100% stock, factory CPU settings, no overclock, and SATA is on IDE mode.

What can I do to get Windows 98 to install correctly? In any non-ACPI mode case, it simply trashes the registry all by itself. In any ACPI case, it either works or simply hard locks.

an65001 wrote:

I also tried with and without the RAM software (although I still don't see what it does, does it occupy the unused RAM to make 98 install easier?)

Win9x have troubles with too much RAM so it's necessary to limit XMS size to pretend Windows that the computer has less memory than it really has.

So this is a super duper old thread but I'm trying to install Windows 98 on a more modern computer like this. I'm having trouble though. I swear I followed all the steps at the beginning and what I've gotten when I boot normally is a german message that pops up before the splash screen. Apparently it says "You already have a memory manager installed, would you like to install this anyways?" If I say yes it seems to install it quickly but then just stops on a blank screen afterwards. If I say no it goes to the windows 98 boot screen and freezes. Any tips to help me from this point?

This process doesn't work....

If the board is Intel based ICH5 or earlier it can work, some ICH6 might work but above that it will not. Same with AMD, anything above AMD 760 most likely will not work. Note the OP says a AM3+ but does not specify the chipset...just from a little research....

I use this guide and this appears.
But Win works
P4
Asrock 775v88+
2 GB DDR

I have a AMD Phenom I x4 955 with Gf 750GTX.. GOing to try this and hopefully have me a beatuiful WIN 98 retro machine with hardware that is silly!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gf750GTX - no drivers for Win9x, you will have VESA 2D with no acceleration at best. You could use secondary older VGA if MB supports setting boot priority with different VGAs.

WazMeister wrote on 2021-03-30, 08:16:

I have a AMD Phenom I x4 955 with Gf 750GTX.. GOing to try this and hopefully have me a beatuiful WIN 98 retro machine with hardware that is silly!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why even bother? With such a great GPU and AM3 platform, at most you would only need to upgrade to AMD FX CPU and use modern OS such as Windows 10 and Linux. Virtualization on modern OSes run Win98 VM at the performance that even real Win98 retro PC could hardly match.

There's something special about getting a retro OS running on bare metal. Someone also might have a specific purpose (such as running a certain game or piece of software) requiring hardware tuned to the software that a VM just can't provide.

kjliew wrote on 2021-03-30, 16:28:

WazMeister wrote on 2021-03-30, 08:16:

I have a AMD Phenom I x4 955 with Gf 750GTX.. GOing to try this and hopefully have me a beatuiful WIN 98 retro machine with hardware that is silly!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why even bother? With such a great GPU and AM3 platform, at most you would only need to upgrade to AMD FX CPU and use modern OS such as Windows 10 and Linux. Virtualization on modern OSes run Win98 VM at the performance that even real Win98 retro PC could hardly match.

kjliew, Scroll up to see what forum you're in.

DosFreak wrote on 2021-03-30, 17:31:

kjliew, Scroll up to see what forum you're in.

Yeah, I knew that, but the title was also about modern PC. 😉

HIMEMX link is dead just FYI

Japhet's programs are placed on GitHub, there's quite recent version of HimemX that can utilize memory beyond 4GB boundary (by switching to long mode and back)
https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel

I'm with WazMeister here.
I will be building a 98se box on an am2 nforce4 platform here in the next week.
I'll post my progress if anyone is interested

Currently trying on an ASRock 980DE3/U3S3 Rev G/A 1.03 with Beta BIOS P1.60G. This board does have an integrated graphics controller inside its 760G chipset, but there are no video out ports and my best understanding is that BIOS 1.60G disables the IGP so as to allow Windows Aero to function properly with a discrete graphics card. Correct me if I am wrong about this.

CPU is FX-6300 at stock. RAM is 2 4GB sticks plugged into slots A1 and B1. I'm using one of those cheap re-manufactured 3.3V only ATI Rage XLs for a video card, along with a R9 270 for Windows 10, should I toggle to PCIe graphics in BIOS. HDD is Seagate ST2000DM001. PSU is a Super Flower Leadex III Gold 550W. I have an Aureal Vortex AU8820B2 plugged in. Hard drive and optical drive are plugged in to the ASMedia SATA controller in IDE mode.

Created 2 bootable USBs, one with rloew's TBPLUS boot floppy image (link) + PATCHMEM. The other uses FreeDOS and Win98 folder copied from ISO image. Initial installation went smoothly after booting from the TBPLUS boot floppy and partitioning with RFDISK and RFORMAT (a little difficult to use, you really want to read the manual.txt for RFDISK), but of course after booting the 2nd time (to decompress VMM32.VXD) I had to run PATCHMEM /M. The rest of the installation went smoothly, however:

On a normal boot into 98SE, it hangs at the second windows splash screen. On pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del, it gives the error 'While initializing device CONFIGMG: Windows Protection Error. You need to restart your computer'.

I have tried removing all expansion cards except the Rage XL, disabling all APM and ACPI features in BIOS setup and disabling the onboard Ethernet controller and HD Audio controller. I have tried rloew's SPLIT8MB , PATCHSATA, PATCHAHCI, PATCHOPT, I have tried the AMD Ryzen TLB invalidation patches (as someone mentioned that not flushing L2 cache can lead to this) and CPU speed patches, and more. The only thing that worked was removing the ACPI BIOS support and ACPI power button under System Devices in Device Manager under Safe Mode. But doing this loses all the other device drivers and leads to a system that can't detect the video card, sound card or anything else properly.

Has anyone tried installing on a 760G chipset as well and can share anything that helped them get past this issue? Again, safe mode works perfectly (with 16-bit disk access), but regular Win98SE does not unless you cripple your drivers by removing ACPI drivers.

I additionally note that this BIOS (P1.60G) is the only one I have gotten to reliably POST/boot properly (The board shipped with BIOS P2.00). Newegg reviews for this board are filled with people talking about similar boot problems.

Update:

I forgot about manually installing the 'PCI bus' driver under Add New hardware > Find manually > System devices, after removing the ACPI BIOS support. The system was also getting different errors such as a fatal exception 0E at 0028:65007004. Someone else has reported this issue on an AM2 785G motherboard.

Boot freezes and other glitches continue, however.

Second update:

I missed the obvious step of setting my main SATA controller, which nothing is plugged into, to IDE mode. Perhaps 98SE/ME's device enumeration was freaking out finding a SATA controller in AHCI mode. I was already using the ASMedia controller's ports which are a lighter shade of grey for the HDD and ODD in IDE mode, but I missed this idea. WinME boots now with all the patches. Going to try Win98SE again now.

Edit 3:
Win98SE seems to work with APM disabled in bios, the /p i setup switch, Advanced Power Management/ACPI support removed from System > Device Manager > System devices and with 32-bit disk access and interrupts disabled in Control Panel > System > Performance > File System > Troubleshooting, after booting in to Safe Mode to change these settings.