Hopefully this reply from 98 general newsgroup will help:
Win98 installations should not be soo complicated. I have done
this and although they are lenghty (I find having a TV nearby helps)
they are not complicated.
As my time is limited, I can't search out all your posts to get up to
speed, so do forgive if I say somethig that you or someone else
mentioned already.
Ok, to install Win98 you need:
One bootable floppy
One Win 98 CD
One PC ready for installation
The whole concept of the installation is to prepare the hard disk and
then
run setup to install Win98.
First the PC is booted using a floppy that contains DOS and CD support.
(you wont get far if your operating system can't see the CD!) The hard
drive is prepared with fdisk which I assume you are fast becoming an
expert
in its use.
To prepare the hard drive, I usually do an fdisk with the /mbr
parameter.
This writes a fresh copy of the MBR (Master Boot Record) to the disk.
If it is a large hard drive (nowadays, they all are), use FAT32 by
answering
Y to the question that asks whether you want large disk support. I
either
use up all the HD's space in one or two partitions, depending on my
needs
and mood. Then I make the first C: partition active. I exit FDISK, the
PC
reboots at this time. Note that I am still using the floppy to boot the
PC.
After that I do a format C: and let that happen. Finally I insert the CD
and
run the install program. I do not transfer the operating system to the
hard
drive, as this is also not necesary, so I do not use any switches with
the
format command.
After the install program starts I just let it do its thing. It will
prompt you a
few times to type in information or to select this or that, but mostly,
it will do
the install without much intervention. It willbe lenghty, expect to take
some
where between 50 and 70 minutes.
Now, regarding that boot floppy. I always go to
http://www.bootdisk.com/
There you can download an image of a bootable floppy for Win 98 or 98
se, if that is your case. Make the bootable floppy, test it by booting
the PC
and once that is functional, proceed to prepare the hard drive. If you
already
have one, then you are all set. If you have another Win 98 PC running,
you
can make a startup disk, this is your boot floppy. In this case, you can
skip
the entire bootdisk.com download stuff.
The advice of copying the Win98 install files to your hard drive is a
good
idea, but it is not absolutely necessary. It is a good idea becasue once
the
install process gets started, it will be faster to access the hard drive
than
it is accessing the CD. Obviously, copying all those files is going to
take
a certain amount of time and I suspect that you'll be even more
frustrated
if you have to reformat the drive and lose the copied files.
4)When I am ready to run Set-up, do I have to do it from dos via
finding the
Executable
then typing Run?
You must locate the install program and execute it by typing its name
after
the DOS prompt.
7)Will this finally solve the problem of whatever the heck a VXD &/OR
VMM
file is? and the problems it generates.
Did you have problems with the PC? If these were due to something within
the
Win 98 files, then, yes, a reinstall will fix it, but if these problems
were caused
by something else (like faulty hardware), then the problem might surface
again.
I have heard of " sys c: " but have never
used it, is it something I need to know more
about at this particular time?
It is good to know, but not necessarily to install Win 98.
Good luck!!
Saga
: I have just purchased a new IBM laptop and the SO is WinXP. I want to
: continue using Win98SE, is it possible to install Win 98. I am getting a
: message to start in MS DOS but not sure how to.
