You already mentioned the main problem: different hardware and drivers. Windows won't even start to re-adjust.

Win98 I think does a hardware check on boot. If it finds stuff it dose not know about it tries to install drivers, and/or ask User for further driver locations.
If there was a "Generic" install with just the bare minimum of MS drivers, just enough to get things up and running on any hardware config, then with a DIR full of driver files, it could do its thing of installing what it needs. Then, if needed, we could smooth out any further issues.
Wasn't this already done my MS back then so a boxed copy of 98 would install on just about any hardware config
Why do we keep having to repeat the long process.?
HD's back then were small. There was no swappable media like CF/SD cards. We now have much faster, and better tools.
I would think the 2 hour install process would have been eliminated be now
I want to avoid the 2 hour ordeal of reinstalling Win98 again and again on real hardware.

Any further thoughts, anyone ??

You can always use something like Macrium Reflect, or Acronis or whatever imaging software you prefer, grab a USB to IDE/CF adapter and create your image as you prefer it.
Then restore it to whatever device of your choice.
If you take the time to install whatever different drivers that you think you might require, before you create the image, then Windows should just pickup the hardware and install the appropriate driver.

I would install the os on a fast computer with the cd directory on the hard drive in question.

Then in the middle of the installation I would ghost the drive.

It needs to be ghosted in the middle of the installation and setup. In this way when you put the drive in it immediately starts detection and can work as a mostly universal image.

This trick should work on every OS up to Windows XP.

Just understand that it just makes things convenient and doesn’t save a lot of time, though it does get rid of the initial file copy and formatting and in some cases you can clone after all the selections and product key so you have more of a silent deployment than the wait an hour to answer a question.
Obviously you could include all the drivers on the drive, I rarely have working CDs and network cards for everything so it saves a lot of frustration that way as well

The Windows 98 Setup is completely unattend if a MSBATCH.INF file is supplied, literally zero prompt requested from user from start to finish. Online there are guides on how create that file.

Yes. But it always starts with you have to install the OS onto that hardware at least once.
Even the big OEMs have to do that at least once.
Then once its installed with all the drivers and software you want in place make an image of the disk and use that from then on.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-12-05, 15:09:

Yes. But it always starts with you have to install the OS onto that hardware at least once.
Even the big OEMs have to do that at least once.
Then once its installed with all the drivers and software you want in place make an image of the disk and use that from then on.

Not if you clone the os mid installation before full detection. On NT+ systems I’ve never had the dos section fail on a driver booting into a started installation .

Doing it this way saves effort but doesn’t save tons of time, you then don’t need a million images to setup a bunch of random systems, also makes it easier to install 98+ to a system that doesn’t meet base requirements

Yeah there are dirty hacks like that that do work, but there is a little more elegance in making an image and it will always work on that system.

You dont need a million images unless you have a million systems. One per system will do. And you can add hardware all you like.
For instance if youre not sure what modem you will be using, then just dont install the modem drivers and Windows will detect it on first boot.

Then once its made all you need to do is copy the files to the new hard disk and it has Windows installed. And not using a dirty hack either 😀

Maybe try this : Windows 98 SE QuickInstall
?

This is why businesses like to standardise hardware, even today where Windows is more forgiving.
You may be about to do a semi standardised install. For example few of my machines all use the same intel chipset, nvidia graphics, Creative sound and and NIC drivers.

Is there an easier way to install win 9x to vintage PC's using CF cards?

How many vintage machines have you got?

It's best if you do an install on later than 98 hardware it doesn't know about automatically, no inbuilt drivers, so it uses the generic drivers for everything, and skip looking for drivers. Yes you've got a lot of yellow ! in device manager like that, but that's the best way to leave it to run on different hardware. You can actually transfer an existing install like that by deleting everything out of device manager before trying to boot it on different hardware.

I just use one Windows 98 hard disk for all my motherboards. Every time I switch to another motherboard, I boot Windows 98 into safe mode and delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ENUM (this deletes everything from device manager), then reboot, run the "Add new hardware wizard" to re-detect all devices (skip if it asks you to reboot and let it continue detecting instead, this will save a lot of time). And of course I have the Win98 folder from the Windows 98 CD copied to the hard disk so I don't need the CD at any point.

So if you're using multiple CF cards, just create one with a base Windows 98 install that has everything you need, clone the CF card, and when you connect it to a new computer, you only have to re-detect the hardware.

asdf53 wrote on 2023-12-06, 07:38:

I just use one Windows 98 hard disk for all my motherboards. Every time I switch to another motherboard, I boot Windows 98 into safe mode and delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ENUM (this deletes everything from device manager), then reboot, run the "Add new hardware wizard" to re-detect all devices (skip if it asks you to reboot and let it continue detecting instead, this will save a lot of time). And of course I have the Win98 folder from the Windows 98 CD copied to the hard disk so I don't need the CD at any point.

If you place the disk/CF in every computer once, you should have all drivers needed for all machines installed on it.
If you create the image after deleting the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ENUM key,
the installation will just detect the new hardware when placed in any machine.

Nevertheless it is allways a good idea to have the install files on the disk, preventing lockups like windows wanting to install a CD-driver from its install CD.

You can create hardware profiles in Windows 98.
I used to move a hdd between an AMD Athlon/Duron based Fujitsu laptop and a P4 based Dell C840, it worked fine.

eisapc wrote on 2023-12-06, 09:14:

If you place the disk/CF in every computer once, you should have all drivers needed for all machines installed on it.
If you create the image after deleting the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ENUM key,
the installation will just detect the new hardware when placed in any machine.

That's also a good idea, but for me this doesn't work with third-party drivers. It will detect the hardware from the .inf file that's already there, but then comes a popup dialog that asks for the location of the driver files. It doesn't seem to remember the location from last time.

If the driver was installed successfully before it should be in the windows directory allready and hence should be detected automatically.
Same for the inf file.

I found that if the driver has a .cat file in its .inf file, it won't find it because this file is never copied to the Windows folders. You can probably skip this file, I don't know. Doesn't seem to be important?

Like I mentioned above as well as others, you can absolutely move installed system drives around. There is no real hardware abstraction layer to contend with. Either remove all hardware from device manager, or just wing it. 9 times out of 10 it won't give you too much trouble. You might have to re-install chipset drivers or something, but that's about it. I tend to leave the other drivers in place as they aren't going to hurt anything.