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)
• 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.
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Win98_Reloaded.png (67.83 KiB) Viewed 12385 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!