49 replies to this topic 1 votes

[Detection]

darkrats, on 07 December 2012 - 01:43, said:

The bootdisk loads drivers for the mouse and keyboard.
I'll try clearing CMOS and starting setup again tomorrow.

Is the 98se disk the original or a copy ?

Wondering if it is a slimmed down version with some drivers removed

[majortom1981]

Have you tried downloading the windows me bootdisk ? That might have newer drivers that work

[xorangekiller]

I agree with everyone who said that your problems most likely have something to do with having hardware that Windows 98 SE doesn't know how to drive.

I don't know anyone who has attempted this, or even really thought of attempting this, but if you are a masochist with too much time on his hands who is really intent on running Windows 98 SE, you could try replacing the underlying DOS (7.0, I think) with FreeDOS. Since the old Windows 9x versions, including Windows 98 SE, are essentially Windows on top of DOS, even though they shipped with DOS integrated already, it may be possible. The main advantage, if you can get this to work, is that FreeDOS is open-source and supports much more modern hardware than Windows 98 SE. I see no reason why it wouldn't - if you can manage to integrate it properly - since FreeDOS is 100% binary compatible with MS-DOS. I admit that I am not overly familiar with DOS architecture and may be overlooking some aspect of Windows 98 SE or FreeDOS design that would prevent this, but it might be worth a try!

If you're not married to Windows 98 SE, however, it might be interesting to try ReactOS instead. While its still in alpha and not likely to be complete for quite some time, it generally supports older hardware quite nicely. It might run decently on your machine, and it would certainly be a lot easier to install and run modern software on if it works.

[ahhell]

Thanks for bringing back all those repressed memories.

[Raa]

darkrats, on 07 December 2012 - 01:43, said:

The bootdisk loads drivers for the mouse and keyboard.

DOS-era bootdisks don't have (or use) drivers for the keyboard, and once Windows setup starts, it will control both mouse and keyboard through BIOS calls.

It's very possible that ACPI is enabled on the bios - Windows 98 doesn't support ACPI, so it might be worth checking that and disabling it (if possible - which is unlikely. If that's the case, you can't load anything less than Win2k on this machine.)

[xorangekiller]

Raa, on 07 December 2012 - 01:53, said:

DOS-era bootdisks don't have (or use) drivers for the keyboard, and once Windows setup starts, it will control both mouse and keyboard through BIOS calls.

It's very possible that ACPI is enabled on the bios - Windows 98 doesn't support ACPI, so it might be worth checking that and disabling it (if possible - which is unlikely. If that's the case, you can't load anything less than Win2k on this machine.)

To be fair, you could artificially disable ACPI by using GRUB 2 as your bootloader and telling it to disable ACPI before you boot the OS. Since the MS-DOS kernel never enters protected mode, this deviation should carry through to the OS. I believe that syslinux (or is it memdisk?) supports something similar too. Depending on your familiarity with GRUB, or lack thereof, this might be more trouble than its worth. (If you want to try this method without installing GRUB first, you can boot from Super Grub2 Disk and use the GRUB command line to boot the OS manually.)

[osuwildlifer]

Does your keyboard work OK? Why not just press Tab to get to the button you want, then hit Space to select it. You can wait until the OS finishes installing to worry about getting the mouse working properly.

[Mohitster]

Dot Matrix, on 07 December 2012 - 00:49, said:

Can Windows 98 even recognize the 500 GB HDD?

Precisely!! I don't think it can!

[mduren2445]

your problem is win 98se does not support 500 gb hard drives without help . basically your drive is not formatted properly and win98se is going "what the *&^* is this crap?" you are running into the 137gb barrier. whoever makes your drive, go to their website and see if they still have the dos version of their software such as maxblast or dataguard for western digital... to enable 48bit addressing. otherwise you are going to format in 137 gb partitions to make this work

[Mohitster]

ahhell, on 07 December 2012 - 01:52, said:

Thanks for bringing back all those repressed memories.

ROFL

[darkrats]

Thanks for all the suggestions.
The bootdisk is a modern varient with additional drivers for mouse/keyboard.
Not sure what a WindowsME bootdisk is, but interested.

This evening I'll bring down the C partition to just 40GB and see if that make a difference.

It all may come to nothing, but nice to play around with an old system like 98.
I'll work on it for a couple of weeks or so. If I'm successful, I'll post back on how it was done.

[guitmz]

windows 98 uses usb 1 drivers... you need to install usb 2.0 drivers just like we do with win 7... as far as i remember

[trek]

You shouldn't need any drivers for a PS/2 keyboard. It should work, unless it's dead.

[Klownicle]

Thoe I know nothing about the system itself, some systems will not turn on USB till a certain point. So you could look in bios if that sort of thing is available . Settings such as "USB Keyboard: Yes" or "Turn on USB Devices at Boot" etc... Could be more of a modern problem thoe. I don't know. I don't work here

[majortom1981]

goto bootdisk.com and try using the windows me bootdisk.