When you say DOS, did you reboot into MS-DOS mode or just went from Windows to a DOS command prompt?
The above installation is meant for a true DOS/Windows 3.1x setup.

Install your drivers using the Creative installation CD (you can use the AWE64 one on Vogonsdrivers) and afterwards use the updated drivers that are also available on Creative's website.

Almoststew1990 wrote on 2020-02-17, 10:26:

When I press the Any key, the install will skip to the next step, continuing just fine, overwriting windows drivers... And buggering up my windows install so that it crashes upon boot into windows.

I can't imagine what it might be overwriting in your Windows directory that would cause such a severe problem.

But if that's the case, why not make a backup copy of your Windows directory and then restore it following the installation? You might even be able to get away with just renaming the directory before running the install program.

I ran into a similar problem trying to install DOS drivers and apps from floppy for my CT3900. Still not sure what is causing it, but I suspect it is because I booted from a DOS 7.1 (Windows 98SE) disk.

I'd try booting from a DOS 6.2x disk and then using the install disks.

IIRC, the AWE software installer creates a directory of DOS drivers. There's absolutely no need to use SB16 driver disks. But another alternative would be to use the DOS/Win3.1 install disks for the AWE, and just tell it you don't have Windows. All of the above should be in Vogons Driver Library, but if not, I have the original DOS/Win3.1 disks. I use mine in Win95 though, so not sure if I have anything for Win98. Or it might be the same, I've just never tried it.

I found this post when doing a Google search for the same error number - I got this when installing Windows for Workgroups 3.11:

1On script line 175 we had a problem:
2                                    
3Error Code 2088                     
4                                    
5      Press a key to continue.      

It's a different line number, and I got it a bit later in the install, after it prompted to ask me whether I'd like C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\MIDIMAP.CFG to be replaced. I also got this when trying to install the SBBASIC driver package. I found that I didn't get that error with the non-Workgroups version 3.11.

For me, freeing up about 1K of conventional memory made the issue go away. I couldn't reproduce the issue with the non-Workgroups version even when I made less memory available to the installer - I'd just get a memory error on startup rather than error 2088.

I wouldn't be surprised if the installer has some hard-coded memory requirement it checks on startup, but then when it has to update WIN.INI or SYSTEM.INI (or perhaps some other file) and has to read it into memory, it might use more memory than it planned because their expectations of the file sizes were based on Windows 3.1, and error 2088 might be its code for when it runs out of memory unexpectedly.

Here are the sizes of some files after I installed the drivers:

1            Win 3.11  WFW 3.11
2SYSTEM.INI  2010      2519
3WIN.INI     3296      3454

Given the half a kilobyte size difference for SYSTEM.INI, freeing up 1KB helping does seem to fit.

Perhaps the SYSTEM.INI file from Windows 98 SE is large too and triggers the same sort of problem? I'm not sure that I'd like to have the installer update a Windows 9x SYSTEM.INI file anyway!