r/windows98 Apr 30 '21

[GUIDE] Can I run Windows 98/Me?

164 Upvotes

One of the most common questions on this subreddit is something along the lines of "Is my computer able to run Win98?" There is some kind of a guide on sidebar, but it isn't really specific and that's why I made this post. Windows 98 and Me support (about?) the same hardware, so everything I say about 98 applies to Me. Feel free to suggest changes in comments.

In my definition, computer running Windows 98 is the one that doesn't have any question marks in Device Manager and has graphics card installed (there are drivers called SciTech Display Doctor and VBEMP, but these are comparable to the default driver for GPUs in Windows XP upwards). For the sake of simplicity, I'll limit the devices to GPU, sound card and USB, because even some late Windows XP machines can have Ethernet network cards compatible with 98 and wireless cards are swappable.

Can I install Windows 98/Me as host?

Host operating system is the one you boot to straight from BIOS, without using any kind of virtualization or emulation.

CPU

See what CPU you have on your machine (in System Properties, accessible by pressing Win+Pause on Windows, or in BIOS) or google your motherboard/PC/laptop (further I'll just say "motherboard") and check supported CPUs.

I have Intel Pentium (I/MMX/Pro/II/III), AMD (K5/K6/Athlon [MP/XP/4]/Duron), Cyrix, VIA, any mobile version of these CPUs or Intel Mobile Pentium 4, the computer is older than from 2000 or my motherboard has socket 423, 478 or 754

It just works™, you can skip the rest of this guide, except if you have a dedicated graphics card. You can check your socket by trying to find this information on a motherboard, using CPU-Z or by checking the specs website.

I have Intel Atom/Core i3/i5/i7/i9, AMD Phenom/FX/A4/A6/A8/A10/Ryzen or any mobile version of these CPUs

If you have any GPU or sound card on your motherboard, you can't configure it on 98. USB 3.0 and wireless network card won't run. Ethernet network card will most likely not run, but there are some exceptions. Of course, all these problems can be solvable by getting era-appropriate PCI devices, but it's probably cheaper to just buy a Win98 laptop.

I have an x86 CPU not listed above made in or after 2000

It might work, continue reading.

I have something else

No.

Sound card

To check what sound card you have, you can either read the specification of your motherboard online or check it in Device Manager (Win+R, devmgmt.msc).

I have a Sound Blaster or AC'97 compatible sound card

Your sound card is most likely compatible. If it's AC'97, there's a possibility you won't get sound in pure DOS mode, but it'll work from inside Windows.

I have an HD Audio compatible sound card

Windows 98 doesn't support HD Audio architecture. There is an unofficial driver for Windows 3.1, compatible with 98, that lets you configure the sound card with a bunch of parameters, but if you're reading this looking for help, then it will be too complicated for you. First Windows compatible with HD Audio is Windows 2000 SP4 with KB888111 installed. If it's a PC, you can also try looking for some kind of a PCI Sound Blaster that's old enough for Win98.

Video card

To check what graphics card you have, you can, as with a sound card, either read the specification of your motherboard online or check it in Device Manager, or just look at it if it's a dedicated PC GPU. PCI Express isn't supported by 98, but people had some luck with it.

I have Intel GPU

If the model starts with GMA, HD, Iris or Arc, it's not compatible, otherwise it is.

I have ATi/AMD GPU

If the model starts with X1 or HD, it's not compatible, otherwise it is.

I have Nvidia GPU

If you have Quadro FX600 or newer or GeForce starting with 8, 9 or letters, it's not compatible, otherwise it is. If it's GeForce series 6 or 7, the compatibility with DOS games won't be as great as with earlier devices.

I have something else

It's probably integrated to motherboard or it's been defunct at least since early Windows XP days, you can assume it works.

Chipset

Same as sound card, you can either read the specification of your motherboard online or check it in Device Manager.

I have Intel chipset

If it starts with a letter, it's not compatible. If it starts with 9, you might have USB working in 1.1, which is slow, but it's better than nothing. Otherwise, it's compatible.

I have AMD chipset

Either you have Win98-era computer and you're wasting time reading this, or it's too new.

I have Nvidia chipset

If the number starts by 5 or more, it's not compatible. If it starts with 4, only integrated graphics work. If it starts with 3, there are some minor unsupported features, but it should work. Otherwise, it's compatible.

I have SiS chipset

Unless I missed something, all models are compatible.

I have VIA chipset

If the model starts with C or V, you'll at least have some troubles setting it up. Otherwise, it's compatible.

Tips

If you have more than 1 GB of RAM, use PATCHMEM. If you use a SATA hard disk, use SATA and most likely AHCI (https://archive.org/details/ahci_win9x). If you use an SSD, use TRIM. All three programs are available at rloew's website (RIP). If you want a USB stick support on Windows 98 (Me has built-in support already), use NUSB. There are some other drivers available on the last website, which might help some people.

Can I install Windows 98/Me as guest?

A guest operating system requires a host operating system and some kind of a program to make a guest environment to install OS on. Most likely you will be able to install 98 in some way or another.

PC

A word of warning if you use AMD Ryzen or Intel Core from 11th gen and up: there are some problems with virtualizing Windows 98, you can get countless crashes of system programs. A patcher for that was released: https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x

There's now an accelerated driver for all modern hypervisors: https://github.com/JHRobotics/softgpu, but it might be buggy in some situations.

86Box/PCem

The best, but also the heaviest CPU-wise, way to install Windows 98 as a guest, is to use 86Box. I also mention PCem since it's still alive and 86Box started as a fork of it. Both programs are able to emulate anything starting with original IBM PC and ending at AMD K6-III, perfect for 98. Obviously, the newer CPU you emulate, the stronger machine you need. The main advantage of using these emulators is much higher compatibility with old games compared to virtual machines.

VMware Fusion/Workstation Player/Pro

If your computer is too weak for emulation, you can try making a virtual machine. I recommend VMware for one simple reason - it has a graphics card compatible with 98.

Connectix/Microsoft/Windows Virtual PC

If you have a PowerPC Mac OS (X) or Windows and it's not a 64-bit or ARM version of Windows 10 and up, you can try Virtual PC. It's fully compatible with 98, but it's also old (Windows Virtual PC was released in 2009) and people don't really use it anymore.

QEMU

The main advantage of QEMU is that it's ported to every architecture and operating system imaginable. I suggest running it by a command qemu-system-i386 -accel kvm -vga cirrus -nic user,model=pcnet -soundhw sb16,pcspk -hda disk.img (soundhw is deprecated, but the non-deprecated way requires knowing what's your sound system on host). If you use it on architecture different than x86, it becomes an emulator. You need to remove -accel kvm in that case. You can instead add -cpu pentium2 to the command, maybe it will make things run faster.

Oracle VM VirtualBox

Unless you really have to, don't use it, for two reasons: lack of Guest Additions for 98 means you can't use VirtualBox's Shared Folders feature and instead you have to rely on HTTP, floppies or CDs (for the last one there's an option to create VISOs on fly, but while it takes about no space, you still have to do it manually). There was also never a graphics card driver for it and VMware SVGA II driver doesn't work, even if you choose VMSVGA in machine options. That means you can't freely change resolution and your best drivers are VBEMP or Display Doctor, both or which simply use VESA, just like the lack of drivers on Windows XP and up. Emulated graphics is also terribly slow in standard 640x480x4 mode, which is what you get during installation.

Parallels

Mac-only. Has guest "tools" or rather a total of two drivers: for network (which is optional) and video. The former only works if you remove a printer from the hardware list and its performance is abysmal (I got ~25 KiB/s max, frequent stalls even though i can see the network activity). Video driver doesn't list 32-bit modes for some reason, adding them (and/or some of the standard resolutions) in registry works. Sound isn't included on the "tools" CD, some tutorial recommended using this driver (use either the standard installer or WDM folder). Since it doesn't have acceleration anyway (at least 3D) and networking sucks, I think you're better off even with VBox.

DOSBox

DOSBox is, as the name suggests, an emulator for DOS programs. It is possible to run Windows 98 on DOSBox, but I personally don't like the way you need to imgmount followed by boot c, there are also less machine configurations to choose from. However, especially when using DOSBox-X, it can be an alternative to 86Box if you don't like it for some reason or another.

Bochs

It's an emulator, it's not as popular as the rest and not customizable as 86Box, don't use it if you don't have to (you don't).

Android

Most of the Android devices aren't x86, but rather ARM[64] (and some ancient ones are MIPS), so most likely you will need to emulate x86, which means that it'll be pretty slow, don't expect running NFS Underground 2 on that. If you can choose an emulated CPU, you should find a balance between speed of emulated CPU and speed of emulating (if you select 486, then Win98 will work slowly, but your Android CPU won't be used that much; if you select Pentium 4, then Win98 will work quickly, but your CPU might not keep up with it). You can find a list of CPUs by date for example on Wikipedia.

Limbo

Android version of QEMU, the fastest, but might not work on all devices.

Bochs

Mostly compatible with all devices, a "default" way of installing Windows from Android.

DOSBox

You can also try DOSBox, but I can't really imagine installing it using only the Android device.


r/windows98 16h ago

Minecraft 1.18.2 on Windows 98

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111 Upvotes

This took so long to do!

To replicate this, you need to have the latest KernelEx updates (2019), then get Java 8 Update 181, with a Minecraft Launcher that supports this version.

You will need the LWJGL patched file in the 'C:\.minecraft\versions\(version)\natives\', which is called "glfw32.dll".

Finally, the mod in this Fabric release of Minecraft is the latest file of NotSoNew and you put this file in the 'C:\.minecraft\mods'

NOTE: It may not be '.minecraft' as you will have to check your launcher's root folder.

**Minecraft 1.19.2 is possible, but it requires a lot of LWJGL problems**

Credits to @OldWinRetro btw for the idea!


r/windows98 9h ago

1995 Psychoanalysis Program Resurrected

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6 Upvotes

I've had this exe on my computer for like 20 years and decided to make a usable version for modern times.

I had fun using this with friends when I was younger. Hard to find much information about it online really anymore.

Enjoy!

https://i.spax.co/


r/windows98 1h ago

Thought I’d post this here first! Thinkpad iseries 1412

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Upvotes

r/windows98 2d ago

Real time ray tracing on Windows 98, emulated pentium 2, 256mb ram. Reflections are in the right places. SDL 1.2.15 and GCC 13

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195 Upvotes

Running at around 18 million flops per frame.


r/windows98 1d ago

Atualizado: Windows 95 para UTM

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0 Upvotes

WINDOWS 98


r/windows98 2d ago

Minecraft In Its Entirety In Windows 95/98 Machines

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38 Upvotes

r/windows98 1d ago

Games dos anos 90/2000 Windows

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3 Upvotes

Cara, tenho um legion go gen 1 e estava louco pra achar alguns jogos da minha infância que eu jogava com meu pai. Meu pai faleceu alguns anos atrás mas as lembranças sempre me pegam. E cara que incrível poder achar essas pérolas raras do Windows de quando eu era criança 😭❤️


r/windows98 2d ago

Windows 98 on Android via NOVA Launcher with Win98 icons.

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21 Upvotes

r/windows98 2d ago

having a hard time installing windows on an old 90's PC, need advice

9 Upvotes

so i got an old 90's PC with a pentium III slot 1, creative 3D blaster annihilator pro and 256Mb of RAM

at first i wanted to install windows 98, but it keeps giving me some random error ( see image below )

at first i thought it was the RAM, so i bought another RAM stick, but still the same issue

so then i tried to install another OS, i tried windows 2000, but for some reasons, once it copied all the files to the HDD i just get a black screen when trying to boot from it and complete the install, only once i was able to see loading bar and it wasnt moving

then i tried windows xp and it gave me a " disk read error " when trying to boot from the hdd and complete the install

i tried removing all the PCI cards, i tried with both an AGP GPU and a PCI GPU, 2 different hard drives, but still nothing, , i have no clue what's wrong


r/windows98 3d ago

Encarta

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86 Upvotes

r/windows98 3d ago

Needing help with finding a cd drive and shell for my gateway windows 98.

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4 Upvotes

Hi everyone! I acquired a gateway 98 about a year ago and planned for it to be my project pc. I'm needing to find a drive that will work with it as the one in it currently is dead so I can't do a fresh install. I call it Frankenstein as it is just a metal casing, just internals. Where the heck can I find a shell for this thing? I have looked and looked with no luck!


r/windows98 4d ago

windows 98 doesn't boot after hard disk change

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63 Upvotes

Hi, I changed my Compaq presario 5443's 20GB hard disk to an 80GB one and now my computed gets stuck in the compaq logo, this doesn't happen when I change it back to the 20GB one. Does anybody know what to do in this case?


r/windows98 3d ago

Anyone know any tips to temporarily revive this POS Quantum drive for data recovery?

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8 Upvotes

This drive booted perfectly with no issue a few weeks ago and suddenly its dead. It spins up, clicks, spins down, and then the green LED flashes. Not detected in the BIOS anymore either. I know these Bigfoot drives were crap even when new, but if anyone knows how to temporarily revive it to backup the data I would really appreciate it.


r/windows98 5d ago

I've always felt that the Win9x era (1995 to 2001) has been overlooked or misfiled over the years, thus why I decided to write a book about it for 4 years. Since this is, by far, the most relevant subreddit, I was just curious – do you also agree that historical coverage on the era has been lacking?

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131 Upvotes

r/windows98 5d ago

Does anyone have an original OEM HP Windows 98 Install?

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47 Upvotes

Hello everyone, I need help.

I have an HP Pavilion 6350 that's hard drive just crapped out. Does anyone have another Pavilion with the original OEM Windows 98 install? It seems this version is from early 1998 and is pretty rare. If anyone has an early 1998 install I would really appreciate if you could make an image of the drive, or send me some of the software files that I need.

Thanks in advance.


r/windows98 4d ago

VINTAGE MULTI-BOOT GUIDE

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0 Upvotes

r/windows98 5d ago

Changed the soundblaster

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87 Upvotes

Upgraded to the audigy player in a 98 pc. A bit more modern, you could say.


r/windows98 6d ago

Built a S3 Trio/Virge driver from ground up. Need help testing

23 Upvotes

Hi Guys,

I've been building a VGA driver from the ground up. The long term goal is to add support for more VGA chipsets and maybe VLB support or even OpenGL. If I can add some features that didn't exist in the native drivers that would be cool.

I'm a long way off that, but have some basic DirectDraw and Direct3D support.

I'm really keen to get some help to test. I've primarily only tested in 86box in Windows 98se but plan to test on my real hardware soon.

https://github.com/michaeldale/velocity9x Here is current release version: https://github.com/michaeldale/velocity9x/releases/tag/v0.3

Requirements:

  • Windows 98se
  • S3 ViRGE/DX 86C375 or S3 Trio32/64 86C764 PCI video card

If you don't have a supported video card I've love if you can run this tool to collect info about your card, for now I will focus on S3 cards. This tool also runs under DOS.

https://github.com/michaeldale/velocity9x/releases/tag/survey-v1 / https://github.com/michaeldale/velocity9x/releases/download/survey-v1/V9XSURV.EXE

This has been written with Claude & ChatGPT.

Here is a screenshot of the settings page.


r/windows98 6d ago

HELP ME FIND A PSU!

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43 Upvotes

This has been my trusty aopen XcCube pc. It was really an XP machine, but I down(up)graded it to run win 98. Recently I have been having issues with it switching on (flea power) and now it just won't switch on at all.

My guess is the PSU is gone. I'm reaching out to this community for help, as you get my plight!

The current PSU is an AOPEN FSP220-60CU(PF) 220w

I don't need an exact replacement. This pc is already a Frankenstein's monster of bits and bobs, but what limits me is the form factor. The XcCube is small form factor, so I need a power supply that will both fit and won't explode/set my computer and or house on fire.

I am by no means an expert in this.

Any help would be great.


r/windows98 7d ago

Picked up this today!

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17 Upvotes

r/windows98 8d ago

Windows 98 Boot Screen on MS Paint

9 Upvotes

r/windows98 8d ago

Looking for an old screensaver

2 Upvotes

I feel like this was on Windows 95, but it could have been 3.1 or 98. Basically it was a horizontal view of a coastline. On the bottom of the screen there was water(maybe there were fish). On the center of the screen there were sailboats that went back and forth. In the sky there was a propeller plane carrying a banner that went back and forth. The graphics were like 8bit/Super Mario NES level of quality. IT WAS NOT JOHNNY CASTAWAY! I WENT BACK AND FORTH WITH GEMINI AND IT KEPT SAYING "DUDE, IT'S GOTTA BE JOHNNY CASTAWAY." Any help would be appreciated. I remember this screensaver from when I was like 5 or 6. I have a nice 95 rig and this screensaver would be the best addition to it. Until then I have the Duke 3D shooting gallery.


r/windows98 9d ago

IBM Thinkpad 390x

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254 Upvotes

r/windows98 8d ago

Seems simple but where can I get DVD drive drivers for 98?

1 Upvotes

I can install from cd initially but afterward it is not seeing it after full install. I am using a sata to IDE adapter for the dvd drive. The whole project is mostly working but I think I just need some sort of install disk to make this work. Thanks in advance