Windows 98 – Reloaded!

[jorgensen]

Windows 98 has been running pretty well in VirtualBox, but with the latest motherboard and VirtualBox updates, it has not been possible.
Decided to give Windows 98 and VirtualBox a new tryout and ended up with a Windows 98 version much better than in DOSBox-X.
Motherboard is now Intel 11th Gen, 32GB RAM, NVMe drives and VirtualBox 6.1.42.

So here is how I accomplish to get Windows 98 back to VirtualBox.
Creating the Windows 98 Guest.

• Create a New Machine (Ctrl-N) and give it a descriptive name.
• Choose Microsoft Windows 98 as Type and Version.
• Set Memory to 256MB or 512MB – any higher will lead to installation problems.
• Click Create and now choose the size for the harddisk, at least 5GB is recommended.
• Add the new guest with Create.

Open the Settings and change the following:

• Boot Order: Floppy, Hard Disk, Optical
• Video Memory: 32MB or 64MB.
• Storage Floppy:
  Floppy image: patcher9x-0.8.5.ima (Modified version of patcher9x-0.8.50-boot.ima)
• Storage IDE:
  The newly created ’harddisk’.
  Windows 98SE disc or name of this file, e.g. Win98SE.iso
• Save these settings.

Start the Windows 98 Guest.
The guest will boot using the floppy image and showing the A:\> prompt.
Partition the harddisk with fdisk.exe [Y, 1, 1, Y, Esc, Esc] and then restart the guest (Host+R).
Always run the format.exe C: before this Windows 98 installation.
After formatting, start the Windows 98 installation by typing the below:
d:\setup.exe /p j /nm /ie
/p j - enable ACPI.
/nm - disable memory check.
/ie - disable the creation of the Startup Disk floppy disk. If this parameter is not included, the already attached floppy image might be destroyed and make this installation impossible.
After the Setup program has copied required files to the Windows folder, the guest will restart - do not remove the floppy image if requested.
After restart to the A:\> prompt, remove the attached floppy image via the guest menu Devices->Floppy Drives and reset with
Machine->Reset (Host+R).
Windows will then initialize the settings and during this process it is important to reinsert the previous floppy image via the menu system to avoid Windows starting up again.
After a new restart to the A:\> prompt, the Windows memory fix can be executed by typing the command patch9x.exe.
Select Enter for the default Windows System path, Enter again for the default selection (2) and Y for Yes and Enter.
After returning to the command prompt remove the attached floppy image and reset the guest as earlier.
Windows 98 will now initialize the installation with various question and make a new reboot which finally will shows the standard intro desktop.

Drivers and programs can now be installed to a well functioning Windows 98 system as below.
Download the attached file for further documentation, drivers and programs.
Note: The attached file has been updated to version 2 including new additions.
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Win98_Reloaded.png (67.83 KiB) Viewed 83753 times

[mpack]

Hi Jorgensen, thanks for this post. Is it your intention that this goes into the Tutorials area?

One thing: we generally would never recommend that people make a snapshot, for any reason. If they want to preserve a clean base state then the correct procedure IMO would be a proper backup.

[Banshee]

Hello! I really appreciate these instructions. They've helped me immensely. Thank you.

I do have a question, though. When I went to the link for patcher9x, there was no .ima .Where can I get the .ima?

EDIT
I found something similar on JHRobotics. Hopefully it works!

[jorgensen]

The above attached description has been updated to version 2 including new additions:
1: Internet browsing using a HTTP proxy server.
2: File sharing using HFS server.
3: An All-in-One installation.

[jorgensen]

This is the second update and properly the last one.

A new WDM Sound driver including MIDI support.
Improved USB driver installation.

A Windows Millennium Edition installation guide is now included.
The major advantage of Windows Me was new updated drivers, but they lead to so many problems for Windows 98 users, that this version basically was abandoned and replaced with Windows XP.
Of interest the Windows 98SE with enhanced drivers is close to the Windows Me standard performance.

Both tutorials are attached below.

[Phil Lloyd]

Hi,
Thanks for this work.
I am using Virtualbox v6.1.42 and following instructions from Reloaded V3.
During the Windows 98 setup (the AIO), I am getting an error:
"Windows 98 requires a computer with at least 16MB of memory."
I had it set to 512 MB, but with this error, I then dropped it to 256 MB, then to 64 MB and even 16 MB.
I still get that error message.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
[edit: The setup98.bat did not work for me (path issue?), so I changed to the [Win98] folder myself and ran the setup...but failed to include the switches. Once I included them , setup ran fine. I realized that I was following the instructions for the Retail instead of the AIO]

[Sandshark]

Thanks, this made it easy for me and works fine on VBox 7.0.22. I don't know if it just wasn't available when you put out the instructions, but VBox automatically chose "SoundBlaster 16" for the audio, and it just worked with no additional driver needed. One thing that is NOT included in the "All in one" package is Active Directory Client Extensions (DSCLIENT.EXE), which is needed to add NTLM 2 for accessing any modern server or shared folder. I was able to find it on archive.org. It does require a registry edit to activate, but that's easily found via Google (but all the articles point to a no longer valid Microsoft server to get DSCLIENT). Do make sure you get the DSCLIENT for Win9x, as the one for WinNT will not work on Win98.

The way I got the install package on my Win98 VM was by accessing a shared folder on it from an XP VM, as XP can speak the right language to access the Win98 shared folder. Now that I've got NTLM 2 enabled, I can access my NAS when I need to transfer files.

[Rabid Guineapig]

Hello, thank you so much for this post! I'm working on a youtube project (not monetized for now) if anyone is still around who can help me though, can someone please help me fix some of the choppiness in the sound please? I don't think there's a way to outright fix the delay, I'll just have to edit that in post for my videos but I wanna make games like StarCraft sound a bit smoother.
Thank you an advance!

[jorgensen]

Regards Windows 98 sound there basically are 3 options when using VirtualBox.

1. Use the default SoundBlaster setting which works fine for the standard sound, but MIDI is not supported and most games lack sound.
2. Use a Windows 95 driver and the AC97 setting as described in the v2 documentation (Driver folder=AUDIO).
3. Use a newer WDM driver and the AC97 setting as described in the v3 documentation (Driver folder=ac97).

Hardware settings can be accessed by right clicking the Windows 98 speaker icon in the notification area and select Adjust Audio Properties.
Otherwise DOSBox-X could be an alternative, but a little tricky to install Windows 98 and networking.
++
There is a new version of the HFS Server which is recommended for file sharing with Windows 98 - more information below.

[D1P0M4V3R]

Hi jorgensen, thank you very much for your explanation for a better Win98 installation inside VirtualBox.

Few minutes ago i installed windows inside the VM and everything was perfect

I tried to play some games (FIFA 99, Tomb raider, Army men, etc.) but in some cases the display turns completely black and I don't know how to resolve.

Could you please help me? What information should be shared in order to understand my problem?

Thank you very much

[jorgensen]

I tried to play some games (FIFA 99, Tomb raider, Army men, etc.) but in some cases the display turns completely black and I don't know how to resolve.

There are further informations about display problems here and here.
VirtualBox 7 uses a new 'problematic' graphic engine which can be changed - see links.

[kairisuna]

Hey do you have any idea why I am getting errors after doing this step?
I'm following everything exactly and double checking before moving forward however I get here and it fails, all I can do is abort or retry.

"After formatting, start the Windows 98 installation by typing the below:
d:\setup.exe /p j /nm /ie"

[jorgensen]

"I realized that I was following the instructions for the Retail instead of the AIO"
I have learned people easily mix up the instruction for a standard Windows 98SE image and the AIO downloaded iso image.
Also non-English versions may use another name for the setup.exe file.