Seriously! Wow! 🤣

Well, it's finally come time to boot the machine up. It is by no means finished (upgrade bios, k6-iii+/400, voodoo 2 sli, dreamblaster x2, aureal vortex 2), but it is ready for an initial test.
It booted to BIOS fine, and i found my dad's old win98 startup disk and ran it. Worked like a charm and ran fdisk, format, and sys just like it said. So now what? When i boot it, it flashes the windows 98 splash screedn for about a half a second then dumps me to a dos prompt labelled "microsoft windows 98". When i dir C:, it only has command.com. And what is the cd-rom iso of windows 98 SE i have used for???
I need some really basic help here:
<b>How do i install Windows 98 SE?</b>
I know there is going to be driver setup as well, but that i think i can handle. Also, how to update p5a bios? Do i just use aflash.exe?
Sorry if these are totally n00b questions. I am MUCH better with the hardware than software. I have never done this before so i need all the help i can get! And i burned a copy of ultimate boot cd. Is there anything i can use there? What other tools should i have on an ss7 win 98 pc?
Thanks!

P.S. I'll get pics and full specs up soon!

A Socket 7 motherboard can boot directly from a Windows 98SE setup disk. Just get one (you know the drill), put it in your CD-ROM, then enter BIOS settings (usually by pushing Del key as soon as the computer turns on) and find settings to change boot order — you need your computer to boot from CD drive and not HDD or floppy disk. Reboot and you will enter Windows setup.

Also, how to update p5a bios?

Usually it works like this:

1) find an image file of the BIOS update for your motherboard;
2) determine what kind of BIOS does it use. It's probably AWARD BIOS;
3) google for instructions on flashing that particular kind of BIOS;
4) download a tool to flash BIOS images — like awdflash for AWARD;
5) get an empty floppy disk, create a DOS startup disk using Windows formatting utility or format a:/s;
6) put your BIOS flashing utility and update image on that same floppy disk;
7) boot from it;
😎 carefully follow the instructions to flash new BIOS.

Updating BIOS is a bit risky — there is always a chance you can corrupt your EEPROM if you do something wrong. So please follow the instructions closely.

I tried booting the Win98SE retail pack ISO i got from winworldpc, but it couldn't boot from CD, even when i changed the boot order.
I also grabbed the Win98SE official startup disk 1.44m floppy iso, should I use that? But then where does the rest of it come in? I could use a step-by-step instruction for what to do and what i should see. I am flying blind...

Jupiter-18 wrote:

I tried booting the Win98SE retail pack ISO i got from winworldpc, but it couldn't boot from CD, even when i changed the boot order.
I also grabbed the Win98SE official startup disk 1.44m floppy iso, should I use that? But then where does the rest of it come in? I could use a step-by-step instruction for what to do and what i should see. I am flying blind...

Boot something with cdrom drivers. Then either run the setup straight from CD or copy the folder structure to C and install from there.

Could someone show me how to do that?

Jupiter-18 wrote:

Could someone show me how to do that?

You already have a bootable drive. Get the CD working like this (you'll need to transfer some files by floppy).
http://manmrk.net/tutorials/DOS/cdrom.htm

Then copy the CD's contents to disk and leave them there. You can now install or later reinstall without a CD.

I was tempted to say: just grab a bootable Linux live CD (or command line if you are familiar with it) but nowadays it's not trivial to find one that boots on old systems with low memory.

Alright, i'll take a look.
What about doing it the old fashioned way, with the startup floppy and the install CD?
What are the specific steps for that? I'm looking for the simplest method possible.

Jupiter-18 wrote:

Alright, i'll take a look.
What about doing it the old fashioned way, with the startup floppy and the install CD?
What are the specific steps for that? I'm looking for the simplest method possible.

It's the same thing. You should be able to extract the floppy image from the ISO or just download a straight image file. I would not bother though if I already have a bootable system.

Here is the main issue i am having, and it seems to be a common one:
"CDR101: Not ready reading drive E:"
"Abort, Retry, Fail?"

I have a system disk burned with the Retail Full 98SE ISO from winworldpc, and I assume now that i have the boot floppy and the basic files copied to my hard drive, all i need is that right? But it won't read from my drive. Why? Is this issue fixable? Or should I just try it with the OEM bootable CDROM?