I have a deliberately portable Windows 98 setup on an 8GB SATA SSD via an IDE-> SATA adapter that is split into two partitions: the first partition being 2GB and the second taking the rest. I keep a copy of the Win98 install CD on the second partition along with necessary drivers like PCI IDE controllers and mobo chipset drivers. The major caveat to this setup is that you need to use the onboard IDE for the OS drive and you can't use PCI IDE controllers - I don't have SCSI devices to know whether this works for SCSI. Transferring between different motherboards is usually trivial and only requires needing to reinitialise all of the system drivers - the important thing is having a PS/2 keyboard and/or a serial mouse available, as trying to use USB input devices will eventually break and will require a forced reboot.

You still need a CD drive initialised if you plan to reinstall Windows 98 with using a copy stored on a hard drive, otherwise ISO mounting software like Daemon Tools will never have a drive letter assigned and plugging in a CD drive later will also never have a drive letter.

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.

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.

This is what I think I was looking for when I started this post.
There has been lots of great conversation on this.
Many thanks to everyone. I have learned a lot on this topic and hope to learn more.
I do not have a set number of systems I use 98 on. They change often. Having to do the 2 hour install over the years was getting old.
The above process seems much quicker. I will give it a couple tries and report back.
Again many thanks to all here!!

eisapc wrote on 2023-12-06, 12:40:

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.

asdf53 wrote on 2023-12-06, 14:20:

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?

I tried this today, I skipped the .cat file that it asks for, and then it saw the rest of the files that were already in the Windows directories and the driver got installed. That's really nice, saves even more time when reinstalling the devices. Before this I used to point it to the folder with the driver installation files each time.

KLund1 wrote on 2023-12-05, 05:07:

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

On an old CDR I had a zip[1] file of a fresh install of 98-lite I made in the late 90s or 2000. So at least all of \Windows and \Program Files, and the files from C:\.

Recently I decompressed the archive into a PCEm or Qemu HDD image (can't remember what I used) that could boot 98SE DOS. Rebooted and 98 started up. PnP found all the hardware, perhaps with a run of the wizard too, and it all seemed to work corectly afterwards.

I might have had a trip into safemode and deleted all hardware, too, now I think about it.

Anyway, my point is that a compressed install might be enough to do what you want.

This might work
- get 9x installed and configured
- reboot into safemode and delete all hardware in device mangler
- shutdown
- boot into another OS (eg linux Live), or move HDD to another machine
- zip all essential files that make up Windows and programs.

Then a new machine, and all this could be done from a bootable CDR,
- partition
- format /s c:
- unzip 9x install into c:\
- reboot and let PnP do its thing (95a I would not want to bet on being a success 😀 )

[1] I must have used Winzip to make a zip. Which I then made into a self-extractor..... but doing that with Winzip makes a Windows exe, not a DOS one. So to use as I must have planned, would need the catch-22 of having Windows installed to install Windows.

A few more things that might help: If you're having problems with resource conflicts after deleting and re-detecting the hardware, try the following:

- Delete all conflicting devices from device manager
- Reboot into BIOS and set "Reset configuration data: Yes" from the PnP/PCI configuration menu.
- It should re-detect and properly assign resources now. If not, re-run the "Add new hardware" wizard.

Sometimes the same device will appear twice in device manager, one of them with a yellow exclamation mark. This always happens with the keyboard and DMA controller for me. Delete the item that doesn't have the exclamation mark (a bit counter-intuitive) and reboot.

Sometimes there's a conflict where it installs a standard VGA adapter and then the actual graphics card driver on top of it, if this happens, delete the standard VGA adapter and reboot.

If the graphics card is properly installed, but 3D games don't work and the desktop is limited to 640x480 16 colors, try setting the resolution to 800x600 once and reboot, this is sometimes needed to "activate" the graphics driver, I always had this problem.

Hello,

this is a solved problem and has been for a while. Check this out: https://github.com/oerg866/win98-quickinstall

DM me for links to reference images.

Just use Sysprep for Win98. It does the deleting of "\ENUM" and starts the PnP detection automatically for you, without resorting to manual regedit and hacks. It also supports MSBATCH and INFINST if you need some more advanced configuration. Once you have configured your image and with Sysprep ready, "seal it" and image/zip/wim whatever with the tool of your choice.

Is the same procedure OEMs did back in the day... OFC adding their own manufacturing and branding tools on top of it. Ofc if your don't add extra steps, it should get your install ready like in 5 mins or less (not taking in count the time you will take to image back/unzip your install onto the CF or whatever media you will be using) .

https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38709