VOGONS

Misadventures in Windows 98 Slipstreaming / Remastering

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First post, by wallythander

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I have decided that I want to do with Windows 98 what I have done with XP, and that is to create an unattended install, with drivers I either always need, or often need included.

MSBatch.inf worked out pretty smoothly using the included utility, but I wanted to push further.

I started using rloew's Slipstream 1.4, and decided to start, I would try to slipstream enhanced DOSkey.com, and because I tend to use Windows 98 on anything Pentium 2 or newer, and starting off with just DOSKey, I decided to try to integrate Maximus Decimus's unofficial USB driver.

It has sort of worked, but I didn't really effectively manage to integrate the USB driver, and I suspect part of it is choosing something pretty ambitious. DOSKey is successfully slipstreamed, and the USB driver identifies USB 2 chipsets on real hardware, but has warnings on the drivers for NEC USB Open Host Controller (E13+), Standard Universal PCI to USB Host Controller, and USB 2.0 Root Hub. All with "The NTKERN.VXD device loader(s) for this device could not load the device driver. (Code 2)."

I think I got the layout*.inf, copy*.inf and subase.inf modifications done correctly, but I just used bone-stock INFs that I extracted from the unofficial USB driver installer.

Another interesting side-effect, but I seem to have kind of broken the Windows 98 SE install, I suspect with some of the ME files from the unofficial USB driver.

I get the usual screens for adding hardware during install, but it says "Windows Millennium Edition is now initializing its driver database," and when Windows 98 reboots for the first time, all hardware is discovered fresh and added one by one.

Has anyone successfully integrated the unofficial USB driver into Windows 98 SE, without using one of the solutions that replaces the Windows 98 installer?

I honestly want the experience of going through the official installer, even if I don't want to have to remember to install the USB stack every time. I was hoping to integrate a couple of drivers for other things, and I am kind of hoping those will be a bit easier, a couple of NIC drivers, Intel chipset drivers, and Via chipset drivers. Since they aren't as modern as the unofficial USB drivers.

Reply 1 of 3, by wallythander

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Not trying to do the USB driver would have probably been a good idea. Trying with a simpler driver, the Realtek RTL8139C+, which I can emulate in 86box, I still run into an obstacle. When I look in the cab file, and the layout, I should have the requisite INF file for the driver copied over to the C:\Windows\INF folder. But it seems to be missing. The CAT file is in the CATALOG3.CAB file, and everything is right, so far as I can tell, in LAYOUT*.inf, COPY*.inf and SUBASE.inf. I am putting the two INF files in PRECOPY2.CAB, maybe that is an error in judgement, entirely likely the problem is PEBKAC, I will try again later.

I at least didn't kill the Windows 98 setup this time by replacing files!

I also tried adding drivers for an ADAPTEC ASC-39160, which I have handy and in a real hardware setup that I can test. I am not sure that worked either, but I think I should probably try to get the Realtek drivers working first, then try real hardware drivers.

Reply 2 of 3, by doshea

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I've spent some time automating Windows 9x installs, with some Python code assembling the files, but I avoided doing what you're doing because modifying .CAB files just seems too painful! I only copied some drivers in bsetup.inf in a way that I have to set [System] Display="..." to force it to use the driver. Good enough for my "build an install directory for this specific machine", but not good enough if you want a generic kind of install that will work on multiple machines.

Instead of what you're doing, have you considered running driver installers automatically after Setup is done? Obviously that's not a great solution if the driver is for the disk you want to install onto, for example, but I imagine USB drivers are the kind of thing you could install later.

Reply 3 of 3, by Harry Potter

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If you want DOS-based USB drivers, go to https://dosprograms.info.tt/indexall.htm then go to the Utils section, and you will find some USB drivers for DOS. I recommend copying the Windows CD to your hard drive then running it from there, as the driver is Shareware and will stop working after a short period of time.

Joseph Rose, a.k.a. Harry Potter
Working magic in the computer community

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