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Windows 98 on a Pentium 4 tweener.

T

Twospruces

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Dec 9, 2009
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Hi Folks.

In a nutshell,

I tried to load Win98 on a P4 system. It is my tweener because I can still use 5.25 floppy drive with this system.

Win98 would not install. The installation got a long way along, past the full install and then a reboot, after which it complained about not having enough memory and exited. It suggested changing config.sys to free up memory.

Now, win2k did install fine.

Anyone have an idea why win98 would not install?

Thanks..
 
You could have too much memory. I forget whether it was 1GB or 512MB that was the maximum Win98 could use. There was a patch for it but I can't find it right now.

There was also a problem with excessive clock speed.

Which Pentium 4 do you have?
 
Hmm I don't recall exactly. But it is running in an Asus P4P 800 Deluxe motherboard with 2GB of ram.
Prescott 3GHz....
 
Yeah Windows 98 doesn't like more than 1GB.

There are various workarounds including patchmem.
 
NeXT said:
512mb. I can confirm that Windows 98SE with no unofficial patches (or really any patches at all) will puke if it has more the 512mb of ram and refuse to run.
Click to expand...
I used to run Windows 98SE with 1GB RAM on an Athlon XP. Didn't need any patches.
 
In my experience, 1GB is the limit, even with the MaxPhysPage edit.

This is why I use HIMEMX and XMSDISK when running Win98. HIMEMX will see all 4GB of RAM on an x86 and be able to allocate it. XMSDISK takes up enough so that Win98 sees only the first 1GB as being available. Plus, you get a nice big fast RAMdisk...

If you want copies of my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, just ask.
 
Maybe the following will help you?

Windows Me and Windows 98 are not designed to handle more than 1 GB of RAM. More than 1 GB can lead to potential system instability.

To work around this issue, add the following line to the [386enh] section of the System.ini file:

MaxPhysPage=40000 This limits the amount of physical RAM that Windows can access to 1 GB. To add this line, use the following steps:

1. Boot to DOS

2. Use any text editor (such as "edit") to open the System.ini file in the Windows folder.

3. Add the following line in the [386Enh] section of the file: MaxPhysPage=40000

4. Save the file, and then restart your computer.
 
Chuck(G) said:
In my experience, 1GB is the limit, even with the MaxPhysPage edit.

This is why I use HIMEMX and XMSDISK when running Win98. HIMEMX will see all 4GB of RAM on an x86 and be able to allocate it. XMSDISK takes up enough so that Win98 sees only the first 1GB as being available. Plus, you get a nice big fast RAMdisk...

If you want copies of my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, just ask.
Click to expand...
yes please. about to build my own tweener box and would like to set it up like this.
 
I confess to running Win98SE mostly in MS-DOS real mode, that is "BootGUI=0" in MSDOS.SYS. Gives me a bit of control before Windows takes over and saves me the trouble of hitting F8 to interrupt the boot process. But that's just me.

Okay--here's the relevant portion of my CONFIG.SYS (Mine are menu-driven and can be a bit involved).
Code: 
DEVICE=C:\XMS\HIMEM\HIMEMX.EXE /NUMHANDLES=64
DOS=HIGH,UMB
FILES=50
LASTDRIVE=Z
DEVICEHIGH=TIMCD.SYS /D:MSCD0000

and then AUTOEXEC.BAT
Code: 
LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DOSKEY
LH C:\USR\DOSLFN
LH C:\HXRT\HXLDR32
SET TEMPDRIVE=S
SET TEMPSIZE=2048000000
C:\XMS\XMSDISK\XMSDSK %TEMPDRIVE%: %TEMPSIZE% /Y /T
SET TEMP=%TEMPDRIVE%:\TEMP
SET TMP=%TEMP%

DOSLFN is a utility that allows for long file names when in MS-DOS mode (I think it's part of FREEDOS).
HXRT is a package that sometimes allows Win32 protected-mode programs to run in DOS mode: https://www.japheth.de/HX.html
The autoexec file creates a 2GB RAMdisk and calls it drive S:.

Finally, once Windows is installed, you'll want to modify your /WINDOWS/SYSTEM.INI file so that a section looks like this:
Code: 
[386Enh]
MaxPhysPage=40000
ebios=*ebios
woafont=dosapp.fon
mouse=*vmouse, msmouse.vxd
device=*dynapage

In other words, you want to modify the "MaxPhysPage" value as shown.

If you have time, do pick up the "unofficial Win98SE Service Pack" here: https://www.htasoft.com/u98sesp/

All this works on a system that boots Win98SE, Windows XP, Windows 7 and Debian Buster.
 
You may have to slow the CPU down, Windows 98 has problems with CPUs over 1 GHz. Microsoft released a patch back in the day for the issue, but it's a chicken and egg problem. If the OS won't boot, you can't install the patch.
 
That's when you boot to DOS and copy over the patches from a floppy disk. I had that issue in the Win95 days when I had to get a new CPU and the slight speed increase of it was just enough to break windows.
 
It still happens on Windows 98 SE.

I've had it happen on Pentium 3s over 1 GHz, and pretty much every Pentium 4. Windows will start loading and crash with "Windows Protection Error, you need to restart your computer."
 
I wonder why it works so well for me--and even on 4GB-equipped Socket 939 systems. For what it's worth, I also run WIn98SE on a 2 CPU P3 system with 2GB.
 
6a0120a85dcdae970b0128776ff992970c-pi.png
 
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