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Generic Win98SE Installation & Setup Guide

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Reply 40 of 64, by Oldskoolmaniac

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The driver reader i have I can run 3 drives on it at the same time it has a front ide port that can be swapped out for other ide cable. Ill get pic's of it.

Most of builds have win98se on the first drive and the second drive has xp pro on it and I usually boot into xp and defrag both drives as well.

98 and xp would have to be my two favorite operating systems so that why I end up dual booting it on every machine

Motherboard Reviews The Motherboard Thread
Plastic parts looking nasty and yellow try this Deyellowing Plastic

Reply 44 of 64, by KT7AGuy

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DosFreak,

I intentionally did not link to certain items like Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative so as to avoid angering the copyright gods.
If you and the other mods are OK with it, I'll try to find working links for them as well.

I cannot find any working links to EndItAll whatsoever. It was extremely difficult to find even when it was new. Mine may be the only surviving copy of it. If you like, I can upload that to VOGONS as well for preservation.

It's a very fine line between abandonware and warez, and I don't want to step on any toes.

Reply 45 of 64, by zapbuzz

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KT7AGuy wrote on 2017-01-23, 22:40:

I choose Acrobat 5 for two reasons: 1- It's more lightweight than 6, as you mentioned. 2- I do it out of habit. You're right that Sumatra and/or Foxit are probably better choices. I'll look into this later to find what the final Win98SE versions for those are.

IE6 SP1 in Win98SE is pointless. As you already mentioned, it has the nasty bug that may or may not be fixed by the link you provided. Also, at this point in time, it is just as outdated and useless as IE 5.5. I only install IE 5.5 to provide some compatibility for games that insist on launching or accessing a web browser. At the time most of those games were made, IE 5.5 was the dominant and current browser available. If we're going to try to provide some semi-current browser capability, Firefox v2.0.0.20 is the better choice over IE6 SP1.

Thanks for the recommendation for TClockEx! I'll check that out later. I was unaware of that one.

the html engine of ie6 was a significant improvement to ie 5.5 especially memory management. Ie6 with its security patches is considered a neccassary update.
IE 5.5 Had frontpage express; compliments ie 6.0 SP1 when ie6 is insalled after it.
Since they do not do TLS 1.2 a script package from the people whom made 98lite (litepc) can be obtained to remove ie6 leaving behind the html engine for shell and 3rd party compatibility (doesn't break the system but takes out the browser) ideal for those whom prefer firefox and etc for loading local pages more efficiently (safer too)
I don't recommend windows 98se on the internet it only supports IP V4 and that in itself is just dangerous.
There are programs that translate modern web to run but they generally need you to install it on another system and use ICS.
If running on the net a modern HOST anti malware blocklist is good idea i don't know of its support dynamics but an application called spybot search and destroy works well especially that it installs anti malware spyware blocklist as a host file and in web browsers.

Reply 46 of 64, by KT7AGuy

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Do what works best for you. I still don't recommend IE6 in Win98SE because of its serious bugs.

I cannot think of a single scenario where IE6 is necessary over IE 5.5 or an improvement over Firefox 2.x. Then again, as you mentioned, nobody should be using Win98SE for browsing the net in 2021 anyway. I definitely agree with you there.

Reply 47 of 64, by Warlord

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pretty good guide for beginners, I do things quite a bit different. You can put 98 behind a good firewall and nat and thats is everything you can do to secure 98. Therese not a valid discussion to be had outside of that regarding security of the operating system. That being said its usless for serious web browsing so besides you having it on the home network for easy file transfers theres really no point.

Back to setting up 98se. Its pretty basic.

98LITE chubby install.
DX7
Chipset drivers
Hardware drivers
MSI installer.

Thats about all that is necessary to play a game .

If you care about TCP connectivity install TCP 1.4

I can't think of anything else you need to run a game.
OP is right about IE5.5 and some software or games need it.
Might need a PDF viewer to read a manual
everything else is optional or unnecessary.

Might need some unofficial patches if you want to run it on newer hardware or something but thats not for what this is about.
its about as stable as it can ever be in its vanilla state, the more crap you install on it the worst it gets.

Reply 50 of 64, by digger

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You know, it would be cool if there were some kind of open source project to develop a cross-platform web browser for legacy and vintage operating systems with support for modern web standards and protocols, but which could be compiled to run on older 32-bit operating systems, including old Windows NT versions and perhaps even Windows 3.x with Win32S. Or heck, even in DOS, using a 32-bit DOS extender, a mouse driver, VBE graphics modes and optionally sound support. Obviously some stuff such as WebGL wouldn't be possible, but a lot of other stuff (including up-to-date TLS versions and even JavaScript support) could be made to work. 🙂

A highly portable 32-bit web browser with minimal requirements (a graphics mode, a mouse pointer and a TCP/IP stack). With a cross-platform and endian-neutral code base that allows it to be compiled even with older compilers.

Basically the same idea as TenFourFox, but cross-platform. It would require quite a bit of backporting work, though. Pretty much the only two remaining open source browser code bases are Firefox and Chromium, both of which use modern language features (and in the case of Firefox even require a Rust compiler), which aren't available in older environments.

Perhaps TenFourFox could provide a good basis for it. The single developer who has maintained it over the years (and recently announced he will stop developing it) has done an amazing job keeping that Firefox fork working on old versions of Mac OS X on the PowerPC architecture. Maintaining and optimizing the JavaScript browser alone has been quite an impressive effort. Much of it PowerPC-specific, but still, a much better starting point, I think.

Reply 51 of 64, by KT7AGuy

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Our little hobby is pretty niche and this community, while widespread, is quite small. I know this isn't what you were talking about, but have you checked out antiX Linux? It will run on some pretty old hardware.

https://antixlinux.com/

I recently installed it on an old 1.2Ghz Sony Vaio VGN-T350P laptop with 512Mb RAM and was surprised at just how well it worked. I donated it to a guy who teaches tech to underprivileged kids to keep it out of a landfill. I was quite pleased about that.

Reply 53 of 64, by KT7AGuy

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sirotkaslo,

Warlord put it succinctly and I tend to agree:

Warlord wrote on 2021-05-23, 00:07:

its about as stable as it can ever be in its vanilla state, the more crap you install on it the worst it gets.

Microsoft no longer has the Windows Update website working for Win9x so that's my main reason for using the unofficial service pack; to install the updates and fixes that were available. It's not necessary by any means, but I like to use v2.1a. I think the later versions of the unofficial service pack included a bunch more superfluous stuff that I felt was completely unnecessary, which is why I stayed with v2.1a. Even that version includes more stuff than I need.

Around 2006 Microsoft gave away free update CDROMs that included all of the fixes and updates for Win98SE. This sounds great, but the installer gave you very little control over what actually got installed. In particular, it automatically installs IE6 which I definitely do not want. That's my reason for continuing to use the unofficial SP v2.1a rather than the official MS updater disc.

My goal with Win98SE is to build a solid retro-gaming platform, not a usable OS for Internet connectivity or web browsing. However, everybody is different and has their own goals and own preferred ways of tweaking Win9x. This guide is just my way of doing it. Decide what you want to do with your old hardware and then configure the OS appropriately. If you have questions, you're in the right place to ask.

Reply 55 of 64, by DeiwosN

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Hey sorry to barge into this thread with this but I figured it'd be better to ask here than make a whole new thread.

Anyway, my old PC came with Windows 98 SE installed on it, but I decided I wanted to pave over it and set it all up from scratch the way I wanted and all. But when I tried to do so it basically just did a 'repair' kind of deal, and despite me saying 'yes I am ok with autoexec.bat and config.sys being overwritten' it didn't actually do a fresh install, and everything was kept from before. Is there any way to force a fresh install without formatting the partition? I don't remember that ever happening back in the day.

Reply 58 of 64, by KT7AGuy

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No need to lose data while doing your project. Based on your previous message, I'm assuming you have Win98SE on your PC currently. So, my advice is to install the USB Mass Storage Drivers (nusb33e.exe). The link to them is in the first post. Then just use a FAT32-formatted USB flash drive to save all your stuff before repartitioning.

How to prep your USB flash drive under Win10:
Note that this will erase it.
Open a command prompt with admin privileges, then run these commands:

diskpart
list disk
select disk X
clean
create partition primary
assign
format fs=fat32 label=FAT32USB quick
exit
exit

Or, just get one of these. You'll want one eventually anyway.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/114385701246

You could also just install SMB 1.0 in Win10, set up a shared directory, and then transfer stuff to and from it.

Reply 59 of 64, by DeiwosN

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IDE to USB!? I've never heard of that before. I'd need something like that because unfortunately my motherboard lacks USB headers as far as I can see. And ah, hm. I didn't know you could share a directory just by doing that, as far as I found my choices were to set up an FTP server or a webserver. That sounds like it'd be vastly easier.

Edit: oh wait, looks like it's the opposite way around from what I thought. Well, being able to just plug the HDD into a USB slot could be useful too.