Installing Windows 98 SE

I have notice that you have set some param in the config.sys file, but where can I find a .fdd file ?

Didier

 

Sorry for my last post. You can forget about it. I didn't notice that somebody already posted a .fdd file. Thanks

 

Did you have Parallels Tools installed inside guest OS?

 

NO Windows 9x (including Windows Me) CDROM is bootable (thanks, MS). You need to boot from a floppy and then prepare the HDD before running SETUP.EXE off the CDROM root folder. To make matters more idiotic, you need a recent (post DOS 6.22) boot floppy that can support FAT32 and large HD partitions.

So, you need to:
1. Locate a bootable DOS floppy disk image that supports large FAT32 paritions. The best candidate is the "Recovery Disk" floppy created during Windows 9x Setup (but of course you cannot run that yet!! -- I know, it's ridiculous).

2. Boot the VM using that floppy and also insert the WIndows CD. Make sure you choose to boot with CDROM support.

3. You should now have several drive letters: A: will be the floppy, another will be a small Ramdisk with some tools on it, and another will be the CDROM. They will be C:, D: or E:. Try a DIR command to find each.

4. Execute the FDISK command to partition the hard disk. You can pretty much walk through the defaults to create a single large partition (note: I advise keeping the HDD size to 2GB or less). At the end you will be told to reboot. Do so.

5. Boot from floppy again and again choose CDROM support. After booting enter "FORMAT C:" to format the HD. The format process will run and at the end you get to name the volume (choose anything).

6. If all has gone well, you should now be able to do a DIR C: and see an empty hard disk.

7. Now, locate the CDROM image drive. It will be D: or E: Look for "SETUP.EXE' in the root.

8. Switch to the CDROM drive ("CD D:" or "CD E:"), then enter "SETUP".

9. Follow the Windows setup directions.

Finally, on my copy of PW I had to tinker with the boot order settings to get it to boot from floppy: choose floppy boot first.

Good luck!

--Tim

 

Recognizing the difficulty of doing this kind of installation, Steve Jain, a former devloper for Connectix, the company that created Virtual PC, hosts a ready-to-go for Windows 98 virtual machine on his web site here.

Perhaps Parallels could arrange something similar for the shpping version of Workstation?

 

VM Tools on Win 98

I can't seem to get the VM Tools option to successfully install under Win 98. The first time around, choosing the install option, set it all in motion, but at the end of the installation, it just sat there. I left it for over 30 minutes & decided it's not happening. I sent the 'reset' command to the VM. After that Win 98 booted up, took FOREVER to repair the disk, and then posted the following when it got to the desktop:

The PARALLELSTOOLCENTER.exe file is linked to missing export SHELL32DLLSHGetFolderPathA

Now the 'install tools' option is permanently grayed out. Win XP Pro worked fine, so I don't know if the tools are supposed to work for Win 98.
Any suggestions please?

MacMini 1.66 CoreDuo

 

When using this image, I can't go beyond the screen where the installer tells me I don't have enough space to install Win 98. I assume that's because the system in the floppy image sees itself as "drive c"...

Has anyone been able to resolve this, and how?

 

I used freeos.fdd and started w98 installation, but I always get this error message:

Please wait while Setup initializes.
Scanning system registry...
Copying files needed for Windows Setup...
Setup is unable to read this Setup (.CAB) file and cannot continue.

Has anyone seen this issue? Should I disable the acceleration?

 

Although logged in to the forum, I cannot seem to access the file (freedos.fdd). Any chance of hosting it externally, or emailing it to me? I'm really stuck trying to get Win98 installed!

 

John, check your email.

 

What I eventually did was to go to the www.bootdisk.com and download a Win98SE bootdisk for non-Windows computers.

After that, the installation went well.

 

Getting there...

OK, Thanks to Jerry I now have freedos booted in the VM. However, and I've searched the forum, I can't seem to make sense of the instructions to get TDSK to mount the RAMDrive on something other than C:. I need some way of creating and formatting the main partition prior to Win98 installation. Any recipes I can follow, peeps?
cheers
---john---

 

As I mentioned in my post above, I resolved this issue by going to the Bootdisk.com. Here's the more exact link:

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Scroll down, and under "Non-Windows Based Image Files W/ImageApp", choose "Win98SE" and download it. It works with Parallels as a floppy image.

From there, my installation was trouble-free. Hope it works for you, too.

 

Gaijin, thanks for posting the bookdisk link. I was able to use it to book up and install W2K on my Macbook. I had to change to CD2 for it to recognize the CD, but other than that, everything went smoothly.

 

Win9X CD is NOT bootable

Just a quick FYI for the posters here.

*NO* WIndows 9x (or Windows Me) CD was ever issued by MS that was bootable. Mostly, they predated the bootable CD feature of modern PCs, and for Windows Me it was probably just lack of interest at MS.

The assumption was that you would already have access to some form of DOS. Hmmm.

In any case anyone is unclear, you will have to find a bootable DOS floppy, then use it to FDISK and FORMAT the HDD. You will also need a DOS floppy that can mount the CD. Once this is done, just run SETUP from the CD.

And yes, this is crazy.

--Tim

 

Really installing WIN98SE

Mine is a new MacBook 2GHz, 1gig mem and an 80 gig HD with the latest version of OS X for dual intel processors. There are differences between the dual intel and Power PC versions of OS X even though the revision numbers are the same.

Talk about a challenge to get WIN98SE on and up and running! The DOS image refered to earlier in this thread does not do the whole job. It did allow for fdisk to create and activate an active partition but you could not format it with the included format prog. There is a long refrain about this in this thread. I encountered it all.

I went to bootdisk.com and downloaded the Non-Windows based image of Win98SE and it did allow me to format the C:\ drive but not install. It was obvious that I needed an image file of my 98SE start up disk.

On the bootdisk.com site, on the page with the DOS-Win startup downloads is a prog listed a WinImage. I put it on my old Penium 2 WIN98SE laptop and ran It for it is a windows prog and it will take your boot floppy and convert it to an .img file. Just rename the .img to .fdd and your parallels will recognize it, just ignore the warnings as you rename.

If you can download an image file of your startup floppy, you might want to try changing the name of the file to ".fdd" and try it. If your image file ends in .exe, DON'T RENAME IT! Everyone that I did that with was recognized by parallels. I was doing it with DOS images at first. I created a new folder on the Mac HD entitled "Windows Stuff!" and put this there so that you can link it to the FD in the VM. It might also come in handy to minister to my 98 installation some day.

My WIN98SEBoot.img file renamed WIN98SEBoot.fdd works like it is intended. The fdisk works and after the reboot the format C: /s works and the system files installed on the HD are windows system files not DOS. The install actually took about an hour and forty minutes and what I installed in the VM is running as advertised.

Attached is the file I used in my install. It is the boot disk created during the install process that you use to boot up with to minister to your hard drive that needs help. I hope this helps.

 

Well, I'm trying to download this 98SEBoot.fdd, but when I click on it it says I have insufficient priviledges.

Please help me.

 

Try this zipped emergency boot floppy from Steve Jain

 

All my windows cd dating from Windows 95 OSR2 are bootable cd-roms. Are you sure you have authentic Window CDs?

 

Thanks to all for the information on how to install Win9x. I'm in the process of installing Windows 95, and could not have made it without the boot disk images provided above. I was scratching my head trying to figure out how to make a .fdd image from my floppies.

Fdisk really takes you back!