You can try the /ID switch to skip this check, and see if the space is really needed or not

You could try 98lite

Schule04 wrote on 2021-05-13, 17:59:

You could try 98lite

This is the correct answer, 4mb+ disk space required

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-05-13, 18:06:

This is the correct answer, 4mb+ disk space required

The correct answer to "I was wondering if there is any hack or file edit to bypass this" is "there is, switch /ID".
The correct thing to do is something else.

Maybe just install Win95.

konc wrote on 2021-05-13, 17:10:

You can try the /ID switch to skip this check, and see if the space is really needed or not

Ooh thanks is that just "setup /ID" or is it a text edit ?

Bhuthogg wrote on 2021-05-13, 18:44:

konc wrote on 2021-05-13, 17:10:

You can try the /ID switch to skip this check, and see if the space is really needed or not

Ooh thanks is that just "setup /ID" or is it a text edit ?

Just setup /ID

Update. I tried the /ID switch, unfortunately that didn't work.

I'm now at the stage on 98lite which I have 4.7 I have the relevant cabs and notepad from 95 and wordpad.. and it's just freezing at patching wordpad.exe

Perhaps there is a better version of 98lite?

Edit..
Just trying the free version 4.5 and it "seems" to be working although a few options are missing like the micro option unfortunately

Bhuthogg wrote on 2021-05-15, 04:07:

Update. I tried the /ID switch, unfortunately that didn't work. […]
Show full quote

Update. I tried the /ID switch, unfortunately that didn't work.

I'm now at the stage on 98lite which I have 4.7 I have the relevant cabs and notepad from 95 and wordpad.. and it's just freezing at patching wordpad.exe

Perhaps there is a better version of 98lite?

Edit..
Just trying the free version 4.5 and it "seems" to be working although a few options are missing like the micro option unfortunately

A Micro option used to be free but ZERO customization (I may have the freeware beta somewhere that only did micro with no other features)

As another option there are walkthroughs to bleh manually shrink the install (will have to find those, 98lite was just a commercialization /macro of someone else’s manual work)
I seem to remember a macro disk from China dos union that made your windows install into a micro one as well.

Maybe we have to look for the very old freeware version(s)

That said, micro isn’t ideal for everyone because you have to use some utilities from dos/3.11 to get networking functional and obviously other needed features might need to be added.

The best version of 95 to use for the donor files is of coarse the oldest (at least for size)

Good Luck

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-05-15, 16:47:

A Micro option used to be free but ZERO customization (I may have the freeware beta somewhere that only did micro with no other […]
Show full quote

Bhuthogg wrote on 2021-05-15, 04:07:

Update. I tried the /ID switch, unfortunately that didn't work. […]
Show full quote

Update. I tried the /ID switch, unfortunately that didn't work.

I'm now at the stage on 98lite which I have 4.7 I have the relevant cabs and notepad from 95 and wordpad.. and it's just freezing at patching wordpad.exe

Perhaps there is a better version of 98lite?

Edit..
Just trying the free version 4.5 and it "seems" to be working although a few options are missing like the micro option unfortunately

A Micro option used to be free but ZERO customization (I may have the freeware beta somewhere that only did micro with no other features)

As another option there are walkthroughs to bleh manually shrink the install (will have to find those, 98lite was just a commercialization /macro of someone else’s manual work)
I seem to remember a macro disk from China dos union that made your windows install into a micro one as well.

Maybe we have to look for the very old freeware version(s)

That said, micro isn’t ideal for everyone because you have to use some utilities from dos/3.11 to get networking functional and obviously other needed features might need to be added.

The best version of 95 to use for the donor files is of coarse the oldest (at least for size)

Good Luck

Wow thanks for the info, I'll probably go down the chinados macro route if this keeps failing,

Just now I'm using a donor hard drive 10gb (perhaps on its last legs) to use this 98lite and the plan for this is ...
To get the 80mb install done wipe off the setup folder
Resize the partition with Ubuntu 11.04 to 115mb the use clonezilla to clone it
This is all very hopeful and I won't be overly surprised if it fails at the cloning stage by missing the boot partition?

Thanks for the input

I thought the CDU only made a mini version of wi3.1 and maybe Win95.

Win95 rtm, the original one , would better. No FAT32 support though. I think the floppy disc version was around 50megs.

The original Win95 took about 40 to 45MB of HDD space, too.

Update

I managed to do this eventually, the major setback was not having a cd ROM drive and having to edit the 98se iso to add 98lite. Then the other pain was the partitioning to clone to the 128mb.
I achieved the partitioning with partition magic 4.0 in DOS, (sidenote gparted didn't like the 98 partition at all) that let clonezilla make a partition (115mb) to clone back to the 128mb.

Straight away I found for some reason the system wouldn't boot. To do this I had to fdisk /mbr
And then sys c: .... This part was another pain as none of my cd images had the sys so boot floppy extracted into the iso and finally ..... Hope someone finds something out of this useful.

You can also try the tiny win98 thing linked here: https://web.archive.org/web/20050407051318/ht … dos71/index.htm
I've tried it recently on top of a plain old 7.1 CDU install and it works well, the only problem is that a ton of DLLs are missing, so if your programs need any you have to provide those from another win98 install. Takes a bit of work though. Best is to check in a debugger which DLLs an exe loads and then picking those. That way i got flashplayer 9 to work but didn't look into it a lot since i've replaced that install with a proper win98 one. But if you're looking for a tiny system this might be a good starting point.

fgenesis wrote on 2021-05-16, 21:38:

You can also try the tiny win98 thing linked here: https://web.archive.org/web/20050407051318/ht … dos71/index.htm
I've tried it recently on top of a plain old 7.1 CDU install and it works well, the only problem is that a ton of DLLs are missing, so if your programs need any you have to provide those from another win98 install. Takes a bit of work though. Best is to check in a debugger which DLLs an exe loads and then picking those. That way i got flashplayer 9 to work but didn't look into it a lot since i've replaced that install with a proper win98 one. But if you're looking for a tiny system this might be a good starting point.

So it doesn't work.....

I am curious as to whether this is a purely academic/experimental "can it be done" type exercise or whether there is an actual practical/useful intended purpose to this .

If this is a practical pursuit, even if Windows 98 can be installed in 128MB, the following questions will need to be addressed :
- Where will actual Windows 9x software you intend to run be stored (on another drive ?)
- Even if a sufficiently trimmed down fresh install of Windows 98 can fit in 128MB, where will stuff like DirectX runtimes and various additional DLLs installed by Windows 9x software fit (meaning stuff that normally installs into c:\windows and its subdirectories) ?

If this is purely academic/experimental :
- Wouldn't it be sufficient to just have Windows 98 installed and booting to consider it a success ?

In other words, please share the goals and constraints (whether self-imposed or not) of this exercise to help us help you .

P.S. If you are feeling adventurous/masochistic enough, you could try using Drivespace to compress that 128MB drive and see if that helps .

Clues?
https://web.archive.org/web/20030803064537/ht … rinkingwindows/

Leads here, but they're just sending me to dozens of copies of their product announce, don't know if it ever got into "the wild"
https://web.archive.org/web/20031226000743if_ … cts/twn98ds.htm

OS/2 v3 will fit nicely.

To answer your question. A full installation of Windows 98 or later on a 128 MB hard disk can be very difficult, if not nearly impossible without having to go through hacks and workarounds.

Per the system requirements, upgrading from Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 will reuqire at least 120 to 295 MB of disk space (195 MB typically). For a new installation on a FAT16 partition, you will need 165 to 355 MB of disk space (225 MB) and for a new installation on a FAT32 partition, you will need 140-255 MB of disk space (typically 175 MB).

You will need at least 16 MB of RAM for the original version and 24 MB of RAM to install Windows 98 Second Edition.

Windows Millennium Edition requirements are much higher than that of Windows 98.

Also, 98lite, 2000lite and XPlite are all not free: https://www.litepc.com/download.html

When I first installed Windows NT 4.0 on a 7.84 GB SCSI partition on VMware, I couldn't use the whole partition from the get go. The original release of Windows NT 4.0 doesn't support hard disks larger than 4 GB on install and larger than 504 MB on a SCSI hard disk image.

Prior to installing Service Pack 6a, I had to reduce the size of the swap file to fit below the 500 MB limit before applying the service pack. I used Partition Magic to resize the hard disk to its maximum capacity after applying Service Pack 6a.

If you want to install an operating system on a 128 MB partition, you would be better off using Windows 95 (either the original release or OSR1) or OS/2 Warp 3 (Red Spine or Blue Spine version).

For best results, I would prefer MS-DOS and either Windows 3.0 or Windows 3.1 or OS/2 2.x as these OSes use a lot less disk space.

😀