Windows 98 on modern hardware

OK Win98 is (poo)ing me. I've tried searching around the place but relevant information seems to be very hard to find, so maybe someone around here might have some pointers.

Hardware - Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M motherboard, Sparkle GeForce 3 Ti 200 AGP.

The problem is, after installing graphic drivers, Win98 recognises and seems to have installed my card correctly, but the only resolutions on offer are 16 colours at 640x480, 256 colours up to 1024x768 and 16 million colours at 640x480. Selecting any resolution other than 16 colours will cause Win98 to reboot and when it comes back to the desktop, it's still in 16 colours and complains that the selected mode won't work.

Checklist of recommendations I've found online:
1) Yes, I have made sure the gfx card is firmly is in socket. Any firmer and I will brake something =]
2) Tried every available nVidia driver set, uninstalling the old set before installing a new one
3) Tried Omega's drivers
4) Tried various versions of VIA's and Gigabyte's 4in1 drivers for the AGP stuff
5) Tried different versions of DircetX.

The way I'm going, the only other options I see are trying Win95 or WinME (shudders)... anyone got any other ideas?

get win2k, that is all i can say

the video card obviously shouldn't be an issue... it's years behind date and was in vogue about the same time as win98 itself... The mainboard and cpu obviously are newer, but shouldn't be a problem.........................

you know... I'm thinking I remember something from way back here...

That's most likely a 16x AGP port correct? (I'm too lazy to go look it up) Try setting it back to 4x speed in the bios. I seem to remember reading that some cards required a slower speed agp port for stability, but it's something that I may be imagining. :)

6) remove most of your ram (<=512meg)

Dump Windows and install Ubuntu. Or get a Mac ;-)

Yeah. Since you've got an nVidia card, get Cedega. Getting a modern Linux to work on that PC is probably going to be easier than getting a ten year old OS (that wasn't too great to begin with) to work.

im guessing he wants to run some windows games on it, Linux if I remember correctly still has a little trouble in this area (WINE at last look albeit a year or so ago still didnt do it correct;y)!

Overclocking is bad....

I've got a win98 machine at home which rarely gets used anymore but have to follow a fairly strict procedure when reformatting/reinstalling windows on it.

Also as Skidracer says you've got to have less than or equal to 512MB ram installed (win98 won't see anymore than either that or 768, I can't remember).

Anyway,
Install Windows98SE.
Install DirectX7 (no lower or later) (unless your video card manual specifically says 8 or whatever)
Install Video Card Drivers

Install rest in any order chosen. However I find if I install directx /vid card in different order they refuse to work properly. There does seem with some video cards (mine is a Geforce2MX) Win98 and video card don't get along unless specific order is followed when installing this stuff. Also, once an install is stuffed you really have no choice but to go back to the beginning and do it all again. I also find that a specific set of drivers, not necessarily the ones that came on the CD nor the most recent, have to be installed or else once again the procedure has to be started from the beginning all over again. Windows98 (& 95) is really bad at trying to reverse problems caused by directx or driver installations.

I find that it's best to install critical drivers like gfx cards the very instant you install Win98, as it sometimes has those classic IRQ DMA conflicts and things don't work too smoothly.

I suggest for now you select the default VGA adaptor (or similiar) which although not using your gfx card properly will allow you to use high colour and higher resolutions. I had one of my machines using this adaptor for years and the games still all ran well.

Which is why I recommended Cedega.

It's 384.

Also make sure you've disabled HyperThreading, or any other 21st century technology like it.

I suppose using a current and supported OS is out of the question for some reason?

There was an announcment officially giving 98 the last rites some months ago.

A hiding to nothing is the likely outcome.

Thanks for your answers guys!


Yeah, thanks, that's amazingly useful. Especially considering I have 98 installed strictly for DOS stuff. Good job.


I know they 'shouldn't'... but I do suspect the motherboard. It has been quirky on Win2000 previously and Vista outright crashes on boot whenever I plug in my GeForce 6600. It also treats some memory sticks badly. I may even go so far as to say it could be defective, if only I figured it out before the warranty expired... I'm too poor to buy anything else right now. But given all that, it does seem to work more or less perfectly fine on Win2000, XP, Vista (except for the 6600 problem), Ubuntu 6 and Mac OS 10.4.1, not that I would know. ;]


Sadly, the BIOS is crap and offers me no real configuration options like that at all. Nothing hardware related, anyway. And yes, it's the latest/last BIOS they released.


I have got that covered by the MaxPhysPage=30000 entry in SYSTEM.INI... actually removing my RAM is not an option as I am dual booting with Vista =]


Been there, done that, wiped it. Dungeon Keeper 2 has terrible support and is practically why I am doing this. DK2 (and Tiberian Sun, which I also tested) works better under XP...


According to MS, it's 768.


Will try that... I tried v9 and v6... actually I thought my card was a DX8 card... guess I'll just try them all. =] Is it actually important that video card drivers are (re)installed after DX?


Helps when I read. Well thanks, I'll give it a shot =] The rest of what you said sounds really boring and I think I'd rather say to hell with DK2 ;]


Actually it limits me to 16 colour 640x480 and no game will even install in less than 256 colours <Grin>


Yeh I realise I'm probably in a battle I can't win here... but dammit I'm gunna give it a shot (and my left arm) first!

I use VMWare for my legacy DOS stuff. Run XP as a primary OS, and have an emulated install of Win98 inside of VMWare.
While the emulation is a little slower than running natively, it will still be able to run faster than it could 10 years ago on a brand new PC.

IIRC, both VMWare and VirtualPC are free these days.

Yeh and any mid-era games run like crud, if they run at all.

I'm stuck in this dead zone where my favourite games fall outside of the really old/really new areas that are easily accessible =]

VMWare Player is free by the way. That only allows you to use existing virtual environments, not create one. Of course, VMWare Player reads VirtualPC environments, which did just become free, so that's a nifty way to go about things. But they are both really only useful for apps.

VMWare Server is free too, now... although I'm not sure if it also support DirectX acceleration and such like VMWare Workstation does.

> Actually it limits me to 16 colour 640x480 and
> no game will even install in less than
> 256 colours <Grin>

Sorry, I meant the default SVGA adaptor :) not the normal VGA one.

Oh yeh I did try that and it does the same as all the nVidia drivers. That's what gave me the hint it wasn't them =]

Having a PCI card sharing the same IRQ as your AGP can cause the problem you're having (good old 98). If you have PCI cards unplug them temporarily to see if one of those is causing the problem. If so, you'll have to try different slots until win98 is happy :)

Ugh. Thanks, will give that a shot. =]

DosBox works fine for me when it comes to DOS...

Just bite the bullet and move to XP

See above: Yeah, thanks, that's amazingly useful. Especially considering I have 98 installed strictly for DOS stuff. Good job.

the XP command prompt will NOT run many of the older DOS games properly, since it prohibits direct hardware access. Win95/98/ME have much better compatibility with old games than XP does.

That said, as Mr. Picklesworth pointed out, you may want to take a look at DOSBOX on XP.: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1
Essentially it's a DOS emulator for windows, which supposedly has a pretty good track record.

from the page above: DOSBox emulates an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound, graphics, mouse, modem, etc., necessary for running many old DOS games that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux and FreeBSD. However, it is not restricted to running only games. In theory, any DOS application should run in DOSBox

I guess the next best option would be to buy a crappy gfx card off ebay and fit that into your PC instead. You'll probably find it runs better than your GForce in 98 anyway.

Also get yourself an AWE32 or AWE64. It is *THE* best soundcard for Win98 and old Dos games.

Don't get an AWE64 if you can get an AWE32.

AWE64 is not 64-bit as its name may suggest - its 16-bit. AWE32 is 32-bit.

True, but the AWE64 is exactly the same as AWE32 with regards to getting the same output in DOS games. You choose AWE32 even tho you have an AWE64 and it all works fine. I thought AWE64 was also 32 bit.
As the name doesn't suggest it was 64 instruments and not in relation to bits.

I recently got a copy of Queen: The Eye. The game requires dos/windows95/98 to run, it refuses to run in XP past a certain point in the menu.

So, my two choices: DosBox, and VirtualPC.

now, dosbox took a bit of configurating, but using one of the GUIs for it, i created a shortcut to boot the game. It runs fine, but a tad slow when the whole screen is accessed (FMV...)

VirtualPC works wonders but it's harder to use than a Shortcut. Should be fine for you, but for my dad, who I got The Eye for, he doesnt know anything about PC's.

MS VirtualPC 2004 just became free, this is what I've been using :)

Nope its def 16.

That's surprising considering the 64 ws the "improved" 32!

> Nope its def 16.

It must have been inspired by the Atari Jaguar.

Run DoSBox under XP

I didn't repeta myself for the XP suggestion because XP is the best NT operating system if you want to run legacy stuff. It's almost a valid solution. Almost.

Yes, DOSBox is very good, unfortunately it doesn't do networking and it doesn't do 3D. Or if it does, it does them both very badly. =]

> I guess the next best option would be to buy a crappy gfx card off ebay and fit that into your PC instead.
Actually, I work at a computer refurbishers. I might just be able to nick a crappy old box and use that.

Well, I tried the remove the PCI cards suggestion as well as removing my 1gig stick of RAM (leaving just 512MB) to no avail. Even tried reinstalling. What did solve it? Windows ME. Shudder shudder.

Fortunately, I don't have to actually install ME... 98SE2ME gives me the benefit of all of ME's upgraded features (graphics handler and mem handler in my case) and none of the stability issues. Nice.

Dont install 98 its "2006" dude.

Yeh thanks really useful advice.

Addendum : After plugging my 1GB stick back in, the problems re-appeared anyway... heh... but setting MaxPhysPage as low as 10000 (!) gets things going again. I guess I can live with 'only' 256MB for DOS stuff =]

I thought that DOS was only a myth....

Scrap everything I said. 10000 for MaxPhysPage only makes it pretend to work (display at 32 bit, but many random out of memory errors for simple things, like command.com)...

Guess I'm stuck with a full blown install of ME.

Using years to denote product releases was a stroke of genius.

Few users care if they run version 5.0 of something in 2006 (when version 7.0 is all the rage), but they can't possibly bear the thought of having to use the 1998 release...

8 years is like a million and a half years in internet time.

Office 97 vs. Office 2003. That's what matters, even though aside from the the info in the "About" box, for the average user there is next to nothing that Office 2003 will do for them that they couldn't already do in Office 97.

/Still using Office 97 at home
//using OpenOffice on the other PC, since there is no more point in paying for an office suit at all for typical home use.

lmao...

That's what I do, I spend a few thousand dollars on nice hardware and put Windows 98SE or perhaps 95 on it :-P



You would be correct however the one HUGE difference is support. When the creators no longer support the software, and no one makes anything for it, you're kindof at a loss aren't you. Yes using your example 2003 is backwards compadible, however the newer file formats are much more efficient. Lastly calling microsoft on a access 97 issue will meet you with a wall (which is why our company who uses access as a database front end was required to upgrade to access 2003 last year).

It's the nature of the beast, and it is in your best interest to keep up with the times. Yeah, software upgrading sucks, however you can't be installing an o/s that's 10 years old and not expect issues.

I don't.

Anyways, even ME is giving me some problems (uh, that was expected back in 2000 even)... now I get a BSOD whenever I install nVidia drivers. Strange... I tested a Win98-->ME upgrade and that appeared to work fine... so I thought a clean install would do well. But I think I'm getting closer to some sort of solution =]

Just Wait And Upgrade To Vista! You Will No Longer Need To Run DOS Software Because Vista Has Better Software With More Interoperability And It Is SHINY!!!!

Glee!!!

I am already running Vista. =]