Windows 98 on a modern system?

[DesoShade]

My current system is set up as xp and vista. I'm getting ready to repartition my system to stick windows 98 in there (I have some old games I wanna dust off )... would like to anyway. Last time I tried to install windows 98 onto this system, I had a crap of a time with the hardware . Initial installation was extremely time consuming, for the installation would constantly hang, resume, hang, resume. Very slow. Had to let it run over night. Once I did get it installed, hardware set up was a nightmare. The videocard, evga nvidia geforce 7600 gt ko pcie was... how should I say... seemingly impossible. Seemed as tho windows 98se wasn't even recognizing my pcie slot. Was registering as a standard pci, which created probs. my memory and processor seemed to be... well... too fast for 98 (probably what caused the all night installation.

So my question is, has anybody ran 98se on a current system? Is it possible? or are my old legacy games gone forever?

[intenso700]

If the installation of W98 itself gives you a hard time,you could try running it on a virtual machine.
That way, the VM handles all the hardware resources, and W98 should run smoothly.
I haven't run a VM on a windows box myself, only on linux, but a quick google gives the following link:

http://www.vmware.com/products/free_virtualization.html

best of luck

[Dave3d]

Hello Desoshade.

First off, you should install legacy OS' first, not last.
Setup should be:
98se install.
XP install.
Vista install.

As far as I know, win98 is compatible with processors UP to 2.4ghz, 512mb memory (video will only have 16 colors if you have more than 512mb memory), and pci.

I know of NO compatibility with pci-e, and 98 is no longer supported, so dont hold your breath.

intenso700 had a very good suggestion.
VMWare is a very good way to use old software, if you have enough memory to run it.
I would suggest 2gb memory minumum for running vmware. I know you can do it with less, but in the past I have found 1gb memory to be a little strenuous on a pc running vm.

Good luck.

[DesoShade]

Yeah, I install the older systems first. 98, then xp, then vista. I know how to install them, but the pcie gives me one helluva time. As far as the virtual machine goes, I've never tried that before. Might be something I should look into.

[Dave3d]

Yeah, vmware is really nifty.

You can take a 'snapshot' wherever you want to in the system (like, say, right after installing the OS and setting it up how you want), then revert to the snapshot whenever you want. It is also very handy for testing out new software, viewing suspicious files, or just tweaking the OS to see how far stripped down you can get it without having to do it on your real system (F-ing it up).

The snapshots do take a lot of space though.

[DesoShade]

what's even better, is it's freeeeeeee!

[DesoShade]

I'm downloading that program now. gonna try it out. looks like it would be pretty interesting. i'll try to install windows 98 onto it and see what happens.

[Dave3d]

what's even better, is it's freeeeeeee!

Free ?????

Give us a link if its free !!!!!

I had only used it at work (a lot). But I will definitely use it at home if it is free.

Ahhhh, found it. VMWare player.

I was talking about VMWare workstation.

:P

[Dave3d]

Hmmmmm.

Looks like you cant use the Player without having an existing Workstation image already.

Lucky the Workstation has a 30 day eval.

[blitzen]

Not a good idea tbh

[traveler]

I have no problem running win98se on my Pentium 4 with 1 gig of RAM on my P4P800D. It was a fresh install. I swap the hard drives.

[eatont9999]

Virtualization is the next big thing in data center computing.
For example:
At work we have a SAN and two quad Xeon servers connected to it via U160. We use WMware Virtual Center 2.0.1 and ESX server 3.0.1 on both servers. ESX server is its own OS. It is like a stripped down Unix; very low overhead. ESX is installed on both server's local HDDs and we use Virtual Center to manage the servers and virtual machines. Since they both use the SAN, they have access to the same data (like a shared HDD). Using the SAN, they can take a virtual machine running on one server and move it to process on the other server, on-the-fly. So, if one server is maxed out, a virtual machine or two can be moved to the other server with 0 down time. The SAN is what makes any of this possible.

One major downside to virtualization is that there is no real physical hardware support. That is why you can't run games in a virtual machine; it simply cannot fully communicate with your physical hardware. Instead of a virtual machine having physical hardware to run on, it uses "VMware" hardware. basically, VMware uses the physical hardware to create virtual hardware. This is somewhat generic, due to the variety of possible hardware, but it works for the most part. VMware is working on better hardware support, though. OSes like Vista and OSX rely heavily on physical graphics card cycles to draw the GUI. Once the OS can see GFx capabilities, then you may begin gaming; provided there is not too much overhead.

Sorry about all the text, but I was on a roll.

[nihal]

uhh, vmware workstation and microsoft virtual pc would emulate your hardware on top of your windows 2k/xp or vista computer, leaving driver installation flawless. its pretty cool that you can do that, its like that you are on 2 or more computers at the same time, you can test software under different operating systems (including the current and new os the the host), i use virtual pc and vmware all the time, BUT, there is still a flaw with doing so. For once, the virtual machine won't beat the performance with the host and at the same time, your operating system won't take full control of your computer, like all the hardware is emulated and like if you want your sound card to work directly with the game on your host pc, you won't be able to do it with vmware or virtual pc since the sound card is emulated, MIDI sounds like crap, like a very basic 8086 computer, which is good for techno sound effects, but makes the games or applications sound like crap. If you just want to emulate legacy 16 bit windows applications and don't need all the speed, performance and the direct hardware connections to work with windows 98, then virtual pc or vmware won't be an issue for you, but for a "real" performance with your operating system, i would install windows 98 on the host using a different partition or hard drive.

Windows 98 will be very unstable when running with your RAM having 1024 MB of memory. Windows 98 supports up to 512 MB unfortunately, so I think there is a switch for that. The Microsoft web site may have information retaining to this. PCI express card, try to find drivers on the internet and probably you may find a close enough driver.

Hope my explanation helps.

[MizzouXC]

Windows 98 would most likely be hacked so fast you wouldn't know what hit you.

[ThugsRook]

youre best bet would be to install win98 onto its own HD or a stand alone flash drive.

win98 doesnt work with more then 512mb memory, you need to limit virtual memory via system.ini. info on how to do that here

cant give up on those old W98/DOS games.

HTH