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First post, by dicky96

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Hi guys
I want to create a folder on the C: drive (eg C:/cab) so that the PC never asks me to insert the Windows 98 CD again when I install some new hardware or plug in a different type of mouse or monitor, etc

Which folders do I need to copy from the Win98 CDDROM to the C drive folder?

Rich

Reply 2 of 7, by zerodiagonal

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Or even simplier, just copy the contents of the cd-rom to the disc? That's how we used to install W98 back in the day (small shop), after a simple bootdisk boot.

Reply 3 of 7, by dicky96

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zerodiagonal wrote:

Or even simplier, just copy the contents of the cd-rom to the disc? That's how we used to install W98 back in the day (small shop), after a simple bootdisk boot.

Hi Zerodiagonal - can you give some more info on how you were doing that? Copy all the files from the CDROM to the HDD using another PC first? Then boot from a floppy and run Win98 install from the C drive?

Reply 4 of 7, by wirerogue

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you can just copy the entire disk to your hard drive after installation.

then do this.

Start the Registry Editor
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \CurrentVersion \ Setup
In the right-hand pane find the SourcePath key
Double-click this key and change the location for your Windows 98 files
Close the registry editor

Reply 5 of 7, by FFXIhealer

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What I do with all of my Windows 9x installations like this is to make TWO partitions on my hard drive. But I need to know how big the HDD is first. I'll give you an example from my 1999 Gaming machine.

Step 1: Install HDD.
Step 2: Boot to Windows 98 installation media (CD-ROM)
Step 3: Use installation program to format first ?GB of your hard drive, leaving around 1GB of the drive unformatted.
- In my case, for my 40GB hard drive, I made a 32GB FAT32 partition and left the remaining 8 GB empty/blank.
Step 4: Install Windows 98 to that partition like normal. Windows will set itself up so that the CD-ROM will be letter D: and the HDD partition is C:.
Step 5: Change the drive letter of your CD-ROM to something else, like R:.
Step 6: Use Disk Management tools to create a new HDD partition with the remaining hard drive space (in my case, 8GB, but a minimum of 1GB for this).
Step 7: Make sure that partition gets the letter D:.
Step 8: Copy the \Win98 folder from the CD-ROM to the D:
Step 9: Never have to swap discs ever again, as Windows will automatically look for D:\Win98 and it'll just be there every time and is always available.

So why did I make my D: 8GB? For one thing, I had the space. But two, I wanted to copy all the FMV files from Final Fantasy 7 to that drive area and set up the registry entry to point to it so that when I play the game, I don't have to deal with the game pausing every time it wants to load a full motion video because it has to wait for the CD-ROM drive to spin back up - because it keeps spinning down in order to "save power", even though I'm playing a damned game and the graphics cards are using more power than it's saving by doing that...

Also, why do I use a separate partition? Because this system is running a 600MHz Pentium III and only 256MB of memory and I really don't want the overhead of the CPU having to essentially "decode" a mounted ISO file and all the software overhead that would entail. Sure, it might only be a few MB of RAM, but that's space I could be using for something else. Why is it ok to penny-pinch your memory management when it comes to DOS but people want to be sloppy when it comes to Windows?

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Reply 6 of 7, by Jo22

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dicky96 wrote:

Which folders do I need to copy from the Win98 CD-ROM to the C drive folder?

- DRIVERS
- WIN98

That's all. Now you can either point Windows Setup manually to these directories each time
or alter some registry setting. Sometimes WIndows will also remember the new path on its own.

And in essence, if you do a new installation..:
- boot from a DOS medium (Win98 CD, Start-Up disk etc)
- run FDISK and create a partition
- run FORMAT C: /B (reserves space for system files, but doesn't copy DOS)
- copy the folders to C: (use whatever OS you like)
- boot from whatever DOS medium and change to C:\WiN98
- run C:\WIN98\SETUP (switches listed here -> http://www.windowsreinstall.com/articles/setu … s/windows98.htm)

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Last edited by Jo22 on 2019-06-13, 13:40. Edited 1 time in total.

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