What's the best way to do this? We have a old blocky, not-working ME computer, and I want to install windows 98 on it, just to get it working. I've read guides, but they talk about owners manuals and such, which I do not have. Help?

You don't need the manuals except for finding out your hardware in case something doesn't get automatically recognized by Win98. But you can also open your case and read what's written on the components. Or you download a computer inspection program like Everest.
Anyways, be sure to download all necessary drivers, especially the ones for your network card (so you can get whatever you missed on your new OS) before you format.

Then you can format your system drive and optionally partition it. If you want you can use a partition program to separate your system drive from your data drive. Makes things easier should you ever need to reinstall again. 20 GB should be sufficient.

After that, reboot and put your Win98 CD in your CD-ROM drive. Maybe you'll have to change boot priority in the BIOS to do that.
When it asks, tell your computer to start from CD and the setup should come up. The rest should work pretty much automatically. Once you have a Windows Desktop, install all drivers that are missing and enjoy your Win98.

Partitioning isn't really optional, but most people just make it one big fat partition, just a minor correction

As long as you haven't really added any components, you should be fine switching to 98, one thing I like to do in regard to partitioning, is shrink down my old OS to as small as a partition as it will fit on, by using a program like EASEUS Partition Manager, and then installing the new OS in the blank space, that way I still have complete access to the old OS's files, while running the new OS.

The Windows 98 installer is fairly straightforward, just pop in the CD and follow the onscreen instructions. As Nude said, if you don't see the "Press Any Key to Boot From CD..." text, you need to go into BIOS, most of the time the hotkey to do so will show up when you first turn on your computer, it may say Setup: F2 or something like that, if it doesn't, Delete, Esc, F1, and F2 are the most common buttons to access BIOS, once inside, go through the sections looking for something along the lines of Boot Order, and change it so the CD Drive is before the Harddrive.

Also, some machines also have a Boot Menu option displayed when you first turn on, if you hit the hotkey for that it'll give you a list of boot devices and you can select you CD ROM drive.

Floppy, not CD

I have a CD of it, my only real experience installing it is on a Virtual Machine, so I never used the floppies.

When we're talking about a hard drive that is currently in use it's safe to assume that it is already partitioned in some way and formatting it won't alter the partition information, so it is optional. Otherwise it would destroy the purpose of it because you couldn't just reformat your system partition while keeping the data partition.
Only new hard drives have to be partitioned before their first use.

I don't know what drivers I have, and where would I store the files for them? just on the computer I'm using now? also, "partitioning"?

Most of the drivers are on the CD anyways.

Partitioning tells the drive to cut itself into virtual chunks. These chunks serve as different drives, although it's really just one drive. You'd only need two. Maybe three if you're running multiple OSes

http://www.debian.org/
oh hai, I upgraded your OS

Get DoubleDriver and just back them all up to a CD, or any other removeable media.


It's when you split your hard drive into different sections, at least on the OS, Nude is right in that yours should already be partitioned, so when it asks you where to install Windows, just pick the first one.

Every device in and outside your computer needs a driver. Most of them already included on the Win98 CD, but common exceptions can be graphics cards, sound cards, printers, USB Drives, special mice/keyboards, and network adapters. There could be more since I don't know what hardware you have.
Basically if you're unsure, get the driver. Better safe than sorry. With the exception of USB drives you should get the drivers from the manufacturer's site.

With USB drives it's a bit annoying. Although Win98 and ME are pretty much identical ME comes with a generic USB driver, while Win98 (even Second Edition) does not. So technically you'd have to install a driver for each and every different USB drive you plug into your computer. But many manufacturers didn't even bother to write one. So just get the generic USB driver I linked you to and you should be ok (in most cases).

When you format your computer everything (on that drive) is wiped. So keeping it on that very drive is unwise.
Burn a CD or put it on a USB drive.

If you don't know what it is, don't bother. Google can help you explain what it is, but I strongly recommend against doing it yourself because misuse can make your computer unbootable.

I can't recommend this procedure. It might be easier, but it could cause more trouble than it saves. And when something goes wrong you might make your windows unbootable. This isn't a major problem if you know what you're doing, but judging from your questions I'd assume you wouldn't know what to do then, so better go the safe/clean route and download them all manually.

To explain this a bit: If I understand it right the program rips your current drivers from your current system and stores them wherever you tell it to.
This can cause a couple of problems:
- Driver is outdated. Newer drivers usually perform better and/or have more features. This can mean up to 20% more fps in games for graphics drivers.
- Driver is broken / gets broken during extraction.
- Driver is for the wrong OS. While ME and 98 are very similar and most drivers work for both, not all of them do.

Also it's usually a good idea to do things manually to familiarize yourself with your computer. You never know when your gained knowledge comes in handy.

-He's installing Win98. I doubt he plans on playing Crisis.
-Very unlikely, I've used the program several times, never had this issue
-Good point, and there's a good chance this could happen, so I would recommend not only backing up the original drivers with DoubleDriver, but also getting one of these, more specifically this, as well, and first trying to get drivers off of it, then if they aren't on there, use the backed up version of the driver.

To check for missing drivers, Click Start>Settings>Control Panel>System>Device Manager, and from there, if anything is uncollapsed, and has a yellow question mark, then that means you're missing a driver for it, a completely finished computer should have all categories collapsed by default.

Okay, I was trying to be very brief so maybe I didn't get my points across well enough.
Firstly, imo, for old computers it's even more important to squeeze the last bit out of them. New computers will run anything decently anyways.
Then newer drivers are more compatible (was much more important back then) and usually more stable.
They also might add features to the interface such as profiles and whatnot.

Meaning the current driver is already not working properly / virus infected / what have you.

This was actually just a guess. Feel free to discount my claim if I'm wrong but let me elaborate first. I wasn't assuming you'd recommend buggy software on such an important matter, but the method seems weak to me.
I find it hard to believe that a simple driver extraction can do the same as a full setup .exe. The setup can integrate into the explorer (very convenient for gfx cards) and offer a nice user interface (printers!) while I assume the driver rip will only ensure that windows runs the device properly but offers no UI or any other advanced functions.

And don't forget
(But this decision is ultimately up to HaZ.)

Admittedly, no, it will not install the GUIs and extra software with the drivers, but IMO if the computer is already slow enough to require an install of Win98, then I'd prefer to keep my startup free of excess programs. From what I can tell it looks like he just wants a working computer, possibly to be used for internet or basic office work, and the easiest way to get it functioning is like I said, of course there are methods that give a better final solution, but it looks like this is his first attempt at this, and I'd rather not overwhelm him.

God, yes, if you choose to install the downloaded driver then please avoid installing any extra software, be it image editing or whatever. 99% of the time these suck.
User interfaces and settings dialogs are loaded on demand, not startup.
Downloading the correct drivers shouldn't overwhelm anyone who's paying attention to what he's doing.
Neither should running them.


EDIT: I haven't checked Falk's link to the open driver CD before. Actually this looks great. Go for it.
But still I'd get the driver for your network adapter beforehand because not having access to Internet can become very annoying when trying to install a new computer.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Feb 5 2010, 1:26 pm by NudeRaider.