in search of working Win98se boot disk .fdd image

M

mikelley

Junior Member
I need a working boot disk image as to format the virtual drive for a win98se install using Parallels 3.0. I have tried the directions in the manual to use disk utility to create a .dmg and rename it but the virtual disk does not recognize the image and skips into booting the cd.

My failed attempt consisted of finding the files for the boot disk online, burning them to a cd, making an image of the cd with disk utility, and then renaming the .dmg to a .fdd. Parallels recognizes the image and lets me point to it using the floppy component of the Configuration Editor. I set the boot order to be floppy, hard disk, cd-rom. Once in the setup the floppy fails to read and (of course) fails to read the unformatted virtual drive then boots the cd. I need to format the drive with fdisk. I tried the freedos.fdd I found somewhere in the forum via google but it failed to work as well.

I hope I wasn't too incoherent with all that. What I need is a technique for formating the virtual drive prior to install.

Thanks
 
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hi,
maybe you like follow variant:
1. Get some preinstalled Linux box from PVA directory
http://ptn.parallels.com/en/ptn/dir/
2. Connect necessary virtual drive as the second hard disk to downloaded Linux VM. Load to Linux and with fdisk create necessary partition on target virtual drive and format it with mkfs.vfat utility
 
Thanks for the reply. Since I'm new to Parallels (and will be to Linux as of now) I wanted to verify that I can run the program in one virtual drive to format a second virtual drive. My end goal is to get Win98 up and running, since I have the full version, and hopefully use a retail upgrade to XP since OEM copies are unsupported.

Also, is there a Linux version you recommend?

Thanks again!
 
Looks like I'm going with ASPLinux 11.2 if anyone has an opinion as to whether that is smart or not. I will let you know how my attempts go.

Also, if someone could tell me whether it is possible to upgrade an 98 virtual machine to XP using an .exe once I get the 98 up and running or are such files subject to an equivalent restriction as OEM disks? My school has a site license but only makes the upgrade available as a download (not in CD format).
 
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yes i understand your use case that you need to install Win98 that require preformated target disk partition. So i advise you to get ready VM with preinstalled OS Linux and do this action (preparing partition) with it. But i understand that this method far from to be the best. Because it'll take many time of you (while downloading ready virtual appliance and etc.). But as possible solution it can be.
About concrete appliance i can advise follow:
http://ptn.parallels.com/en/ptn/desc/?VA_id=152
it's completely Linux desktop but it size maybe frustrate you and then you can get smaller virtual appliance.
 
sandro said:
yes i understand your use case that you need to install Win98 that require preformated target disk partition. So i advise you to get ready VM with preinstalled OS Linux and do this action (preparing partition) with it. But i understand that this method far from to be the best. Because it'll take many time of you (while downloading ready virtual appliance and etc.). But as possible solution it can be.
About concrete appliance i can advise follow:
http://ptn.parallels.com/en/ptn/desc/?VA_id=152
it's completely Linux desktop but it size maybe frustrate you and then you can get smaller virtual appliance.
Click to expand...

That is the one the caught my eye too, I like how it included open office, firefox, etc.

That's a bunch for the direction, I really appreciate you taking the time to work out a translation and all. I'll let you know if it works out.
 
I tried that last site and while the images unzipped properly on my mac they still fail to read. I'm gonna try playing around with the linx idea later today so I will let you know if it is possible to format across virtual machines.

In the end I'm just being reminded why I turned away from windows after years of PC addiction. Hopefully I'll become as fluent with the technical side of macs soon enough.

Thanks all for the help.
 
Explain "they still fail to read"

mikelley said:
I tried that last site and while the images unzipped properly on my mac they still fail to read. I'm gonna try playing around with the linx idea later today so I will let you know if it is possible to format across virtual machines.

In the end I'm just being reminded why I turned away from windows after years of PC addiction. Hopefully I'll become as fluent with the technical side of macs soon enough.

Thanks all for the help.
Click to expand...

I submitted my last post whilst I did not have connection to my Mac, OSX or Parallels so perhaps the explanation was too vague for you and this is why it didn't work.
I am now on my Mac and have been able to boot up with the Windows 98SE floppy image on the link with CD support so installing Windows 98SE should not be a problem.

I am assuming you are trying to install Windows 98SE whilst running Parallels under Mac OSX and that once you have booted up with both floppy and CDROM support you know how to Windows 98 yourself
1. Go to http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
2. Click on the Win98 link under the section Non-Windows Based Image Files W/ImageApp This should download a folder called win98sc to your desktop
3. Go into the win98sc folder, rename the WIN98SEC.IMG to WIN98SEC.FDD.
4. Open Parallels, select your virtual machine. Click on configuration - Add (or edit) Floppy and under Floppy Option choose the image file as username/Desktop/win98sc/WIN98SEC.FDD
4. Go to Options, on the right choose Booting, and change this to Floppy, Hard Disk, CD-ROM. (You will need to change these settings back once the OS is installed)
5. You should have access to the floppy, your Windows 98 install CD drive and your next step should be setting your Hard drives to install Windows 98 using fdisk...

This does "work". I have had Windows 98SE working here for quite a while, and have retracked my steps to try to make sure I haven't missed anything important in my explanation, however if you're new to virtualisation and OS emulation I can see why you may still have problems.
Let me know what you have particular problems with and I will see if I can help.

I use linux live CDs time to time - okay for partitioning etc... but you will still need to boot into msdos either from floppy or CD eventually to install Windows 98 SE.
 
mikelley said:
The disk image always fails
Click to expand...
My instructions leave out the renaming bit since I have been able to successfully point Parallels' floppy drive directly at the *.img file without renaming it to *.fdd.

Perhaps the renaming thing is why the image from bootdisk.com (and other sources) fails.
 
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Bootdisk image file worked for Win 95

I had a similar problem. I needed to install Win 95 and then upgrade it to Win ME. I downloaded the MS-DOS 6.22 image from http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
in the section Non-Windows Based Image Files W/ImageApp and changed the extension to .fdd using 'get info'. Then following the Parallels manual the MS-DOS disk image did everything required of it and I could install Win 95. The upgrade to ME took a couple of goes and I had to activate Parallels tools manually but it all worked eventually.
 
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