I'll answer to question #2. You can make pc to boot to dos always by editing the system file msdos.sys in a text editor and change bootgui=1 to bootgui=0. You probably need to change the attributes not to be system, hidden and read only before you can edit it. If you do that the pc will boot to normal dos and you can start the win98se gui just by running win like with older windows versions. I do this with pretty much all my PCs that have win9x in them.

#1 sounds like the error message that UniVBE throws when it can't find a chipset it supports, which is anything beyond a TNT2 era card in my experience. The games you're having trouble with might have UniVBE compiled into them - you can try loading the game with a -U flag so that it doesn't use UniVBE and will use the card's inbuilt VESA support instead. And if not then there are some custom versions of the UniVBE driver around here somewhere for specific games.

For #2, in msdos.sys add a line with bootmenu=1, it will behave as if you press ctrl when Windows start, showing a menu with normal, safe mode, step by step, commandline and commandline in safe mode options.

For #3, you can add Windows 98 to the Windows 2000 boot menu/options, or use a 3rd party product like xosl if your Win98 hdd is the first drive.

thanks for all suggestions ^^

badmojo wrote on 2022-09-25, 23:55:

And if not then there are some custom versions of the UniVBE driver around here somewhere for specific games.

if you know where i could get them of remember the name, would be so apprecciated 😀

for now as i remember the games were GTA 1 (the game works but before it starts it check the SVGA and says no supported SVGA detected), and Trucks (the game don't run at all)

VenomSpark wrote on 2022-09-26, 09:50:

if you know where i could get them of remember the name, would be so apprecciated 😀

Search for "Modified univbe.drv drivers by Rob Muller" here: https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

I've never needed to try them but this sounds similar to your problem...? In saying that the games you mentioned aren't listed in the readme - might be worth a shot anyway.

lolo799 wrote on 2022-09-26, 09:24:

For #2, in msdos.sys add a line with bootmenu=1, it will behave as if you press ctrl when Windows start, showing a menu with normal, safe mode, step by step, commandline and commandline in safe mode options.

For #3, you can add Windows 98 to the Windows 2000 boot menu/options, or use a 3rd party product like xosl if your Win98 hdd is the first drive.

im still having a little trouble with the dual boot 🙁 For now i want to try with conventional modes without any 3rd party program, if not real needed. I tried to copy the msconfig of XP to 2000, which works, but i am having trouble with the boot.ini configuration. I don't know which command line is right. I tried the WINDOWS.000=Win98SE /fastdetect, but when i go to select it, it give me a windows 2000 error that can't find the files, so is a pretty fail. The OSes are in two different HDD, one with each proper partition. How can i fix this?

Have you considered to use multiple partitions on a single disk?
How large are your disks?

Disruptor wrote on 2022-09-26, 23:36:

Have you considered to use multiple partitions on a single disk?
How large are your disks?

both are 80GB. Yes, but this means wipe all data (or add a new one and split up) and i don't really want to do it or lose my W98 with hard work time of settings 🙁 also in the HDD with W98, i only have 5GB left as is full of goodies and games.. i'd like just to dual boot easily at startup without press ESC everytime, as in this mobo i don't know why not always works... 🙁

I always split the os on my HDD and create a multiboot. If you consider wiping the machine and start from scratch I can help you making a multiboot for: OS/2, Dos/Win3x/Win9x/Linux and Amithlon on a single disk with bootmenu.

The simplest way is still a 3rd party bootmenu, other than xosl I can recommend the BeOS menu, it's a no frill thing only showing entries with no options.

XFDISK is my absolute favorite.

thanks for all answers guys 😀 i will try then BeOS or XFDISK, hoping they will work.. thanks again 😀

VenomSpark wrote on 2022-09-27, 22:27:

thanks for all answers guys 😀 i will try then BeOS or XFDISK, hoping they will work.. thanks again 😀

For BeOS you can either install the Personal Edition under Win98 that will take 500MB of your free space on the Win98 partition, start the Terminal and run bootman then follow the prompts.
Or if you boot from a BeOS disc, at the install menu press ctrl+alt+t to get the Terminal.
Some screenshots:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000614021755/ww … ng_bootman.html

XFDISK is by far the best partition and bootmanager because it can be installed accessed via dos/win9x/linux/freedos bootdisk, that's very handy and the bootmanager does not requira a partition, only the bootsector of the harddisk.

The "correct" way to install OS's if you don't want to use 3rd party software is install oldest to newest. So in this case install Win98 then 2000 and the Win2k installer would have created a boot menu for you.
but as you don't want to start again which is fair enough 3rd party is indeed your best bet.

For pure dos mode I create a shortcut on Win98's desktop to command.com and specify the autoexec.bat/config.sys settings within the shortcut, means you don't load up a load of useless drivers that may conflict or just useless with windows (networking been a good example)

XFDISK and you can do what you want, install whatever you like and whenever you like it, no problem.