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Win98-quickinstall: A framework and installer to quickly install Windows 98
- redeeman 2y agobut why not just install manually, keep an image?
- orionblastar 2y agoGood work, I still use Windows 9X for emulation for DOS, 16 bit Windows, and 32 bit Windows programs. I do legacy systems and retro programming on them.
- krige 2y agoWhat do you use it on? Do you have dedicated hardware, dosbox/pcem, a vitrual machine of some sort?
- orionblastar 2y agoVirtual Box VM.
- krige 2y agoHow'd you get it stable on that? IME it tended to crash even more that regular 9x did.
- userbinator 2y agoThere are patches to fix TLB invalidation bug, memory limit, and several other things.
- washadjeffmad 2y agoBought a minipc for a project, tried Win11, didn't hate it, but was surprised how little and poor the legacy software compatibility was. I ended up staying awake until 2am having a blast rolling a 98se VM and discovered softgpu: https://github.com/JHRobotics/softgpu https://github.com/JHRobotics/softgpu
- accrual 2y agoNot GP but I have had the same experience. I exclusively use 86Box for anything older than XP these days and it works fantastic. The ability to swap in whatever hardware you want is so much fun.
- Narishma 2y agoI recommend emulators like 86box or PCem instead, they're much better for such old systems than VMs.
- imiric 2y agoVery cool! Is there an equivalent tool for Windows 11? I've used MSMG Toolkit and NTLite in the past to slim down the ISO, but it was a very manual and tedious process, and I still have to babysit the installation itself. I would like a tool that takes a predefined config file of what to remove, and then creates a fully unassisted installer. Obviously bypassing the online account shenanigans.
- SpecialistK 2y agoFrom my understanding, as someone whose job was Windows deployment for a few years, is... kind of? Admittedly my experience is with deploying to a lot of machines at the same time rather than to several machines more frequently. You can use audit mode from the OOBE of a fresh install, install your apps and changes, then run sysprep /generalize to clear the GUIDs and return to the OOBE - capture the image after the generalize but before reboot into the OOBE and the image will be a generalized install. All you need to do is restore the image (using a disk cloning software, dd from *nix, or a network server like FoG) create a ESP to boot from, and you have an image that can copy to any device at the speed of the disk or network. Microsoft has a Deployment Toolkit (MDT) which can take a Windows install image (a WIM) and copy it to a machine then run other tasks as part of a Task Sequence. This is handy for small to medium sized businesses: a WIM can be a sysprepped image like mentioned a paragraph up, so you can include big changes like removing features or installing apps and updates. But then it can be configured, using a Task Sequence and/or an XML file, to do things after the Windows install like join a domain, create a local account, install certain apps, run Windows Update, etc. It also supports driver detection and installation. MDT can be accessed using a USB boot drive or a PXE network boot (Windows Deployment Services, WDS) and then you just choose the Task Sequence you want then walk away for an hour. But there is a learning curve: people have whole careers specializing in this stuff. There is a more expensive and powerful MS solution called SCCM that can do much the same stuff (and a lot lot more) but the concepts are the same. What Microsoft are pushing toward now is what I'll call the "smartphone model" - IT departments don't reimage a machine as soon as it shows up, but instead register the device with a MDM like Intune. When the end-user receives the device, they are forced to use a corporate Microsoft account and then the desired configuration is pushed from the cloud. Without a MDM configuration ("Windows Autopilot") you can use a tool called WICD to create a configuration and save it as a "Provisioning package" which, when on the root of a USB drive that's inserted during the OOBE, will do the same configuration steps. I call this the smartphone model because according to MS, the Windows "factory reset" feature is all you would ever need rather than a traditional wipe-and-reinstall. What I would advise for a home poweruser is to build a Windows image 2-3x a year in a virtual machine: do all your updates and tweaks and app installs in a VM, then capture the image using your disk cloning tool of choice (I do a bootable Linux session plus dd piped into gzip), preferably to a network share. Then use that tool on your target devices to restore the image: it will write at about 112MB/s over gigabit Ethernet and after the reboot will install your drivers and make the install unique.
- rasz 2y ago> 60-90 seconds Thats impressive speed for an install that not just copies pre-installed system, but also includes Hardware detection and selective driver installation phase.
- szundi 2y agoLinux detects all your hardware and use drivers accordingly at every boot - some seconds
- sneak 2y agoLinux can be easily and simply modified by anyone to suit their needs; Win98 cannot. You are comparing apples to oranges.
- iforgotpassword 2y agoThat's not their point? Linux has all the drivers lying around on disk and on every boot just does hw detection and loads the appropriate ones. It takes a few seconds. You can take a Linux install from a modern AMD system, stuff it into a 10 year old Intel system and it will boot up instantly. No driver install no "getting your devices ready" screen that shows up for a minute or two. This has nothing to do with being open source or being customizable. It's simply pointing out how fast hw detection is not only possible but the norm on other systems.
- haileys 2y agoWindows 9x existed at a very different time. PCI wasn't a given. Plug and play wasn't a given. You couldn't even reliably enumerate all hardware on a system. Hardware detection back then involved a lot of poking at random IO ports and seeing what happens, using heuristics to select an appropriate driver. This is as dodgy as it sounds and would crash or hang your system if you weren't lucky.
- jandrese 2y ago
- iforgotpassword 2y ago> with a custom data packing method that is optimized for streaming directly from CD to the hard disk without any seeking This is nice. I've always wondered why they don't do this with the core parts of the os and then only extract additional components and drivers. But maybe back then the core was only a few MB and it wouldn't have helped so much... I remember the setup taking ages. With 9x I don't think any install ever lasted longer than a year, so I did this a lot. :)
- h0l0cube 2y agoThis was definitely a thing in the optical disc era of games where seek times were horrendous. In record mode, this is done by just overloading the file read functions, recording a list of file, seek position, and read size instructions, and then using that to build a .dat file. In play mode, the function is overloaded to ignore file opens and seeks, and to just read from the contiguous file. This requires the load to be perfectly deterministic, and preferably without redundancy.
- keyringlight 2y agoThis is definitely an interesting part of it. Copying a few hundred megs from CD to HDD doesn't take long even for old hardware, but when I was setting up a win98 rig last autumn to test some 3dfx cards it took the common ~45 minutes to get through the main install, and that's before you get into the post-install cycle of installing any software/drivers/updates that need reboots. The "unofficial service pack3" is one I'd love to integrate as it includes support for USB mass storage which made the machine a lot easier to work with On a side-note, walking the line between annoying and entertaining was the noise of the HD during install, which sounded like techno music and I should have recorded it. Weirdly it was only during the win98 install that it made that type of sound.
- BloodOverdrive 2y agoInteresting. Will try.
- Animats 2y agoIs there something that lets you install Windows 7 64 bit as a new install? That's the last version before ads and other unwanted features.
- yyyk 2y ago"my digital life" forum has many scripts for windows 7 installation (including patches).
- HenryBemis 2y agoYou can install Windows Firewall Control, some v4.9.x.x (before someone acquired it and ruined it by changing it drastically on v5 onward) and block all the garbage. Then you can also use ClassicShell and have the 'good old Start Menu' as you prefer to have it. There are also a bunch of privacy tools that can disable most of the garbage/uninstall the "Apps" and improve privacy with a few clicks. I stayed in Windows 10 for 7-8 years. After I tried Win10 and I saw how my machine(s) work better on the same (10yo hardware) I switched everything to Win10 with the above 'measures' (plus the hosts from someonewhocares) and I haven't had any annoyances for years.
- 1970-01-01 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysprep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysprep
- CursedSilicon 2y agoI debated building something like this for a couple years with my "Ultimate Windows 98 PC" [1] I found that I could take the machine to vintage computer events and it would (generally!) behave the entire event. I'd then take it home and put it back on the shelf for a few months. After I'd bring it back down to use it again, it'd throw a fit and usually require a reinstall! It's not disk rot since I use SSD's throughout While this hasn't happened (this time) it's a constant looming concern, particularly when pressed for time to get something up and running for an event. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YETxI4rA_gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YETxI4rA_gs
- nurettin 2y agoI remember having to constantly reinstall win98 back in the 2000s. It felt like the OS kept corrupting its own filesystem. I ended up "borrowing" a debian potato CD from a professor's desk and never went back to windows (or his office).
- pndy 2y agoBack then reinstall without formatting the drive felt like resetting system to defaults and was practised by almost everyone. I'm pretty sure W10 and W11 has similar feature nowadays by default. When I had chance to grab 180-days trial of W2000 I was shocked how stable it was - not seeing blue screen every few mins but modals with errors instead was... an amazing experience. The store where I've got my Celeron-based machine was installing 98 for everyone, not looking at licenses, all the legal stuff at all and when I ask guys there if they could drop W2000 they said that "it's a bad idea - many games won't work".
- enopod_ 2y agoI still consider Windows 2000 the best Windows ever made. NT under the hood, slim, up-to-date, extremely stable, it ran all the games I wanted. I managed to grab a burned CD with a full version somewhere, the keys were not yet checked online for multiple installs. For a long time, all software and every driver for XP also worked for 2000. I think I should find an old retro PC and install W2000 on it, just for fun.
- jonplackett 2y agoFun fact: I (re)installed windows 98 so many times due to crashes, slowness, viruses etc that even now, 20 years later, I remember every digit of the 25 digit activation key.
- Codes 2y agoAnd I'll bet I remember the exact same key ;)
- userbinator 2y agoW7XTC-2YWFB-..?
- alabastervlog 2y agoI still almost remember all of a certain infamous "FCKGW" key for WinXP. Haven't installed it in... 20 years?
- srvmshr 2y agoFCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8 I had bummed out my P-III 700Mhz desktop so many times, while tinkering with System32, INI files & experimental software etc., in grade school that this key is seared into some part of my cortex.
- culopatin 2y agoThat was my first CPU! Thanks for the flashback.
- alabastervlog 2y agoI had the first, second, and fifth sections down for sure, and some almost-remembered version of the other two but also couldn't remember which order they went in. I typed it a lot of times, but still probably only in the (high) tens. Crazy how long it sticks in one's memory with relatively little spaced repetition.
- RedShift1 2y agoThis may install fast but it certainly looks hard to get going with it...
- rasz 2y agoThis project builds the installer, there is nothing, other than Microsoft copyright, stopping someone from hosting compiled Install CD itself.
- piokoch 2y agoWho on earth would like to install that? I can understand installing Win 95, sentiments, blah, blah, first "real" windows MS system (Win 3.X was still some kind of windows manager on top of DOS). But 98? Maybe let's go hardcore and go with Win 98ME, the worst operating system ever (with Vista as a strong second-place contender), at least we can experience random blue screens, which were the major feature introduced by 98ME, and that surely should be replicated by a simulator, to feel those old vibes.
- rickdeckard 2y agoApparently a fringe opinion, but Win98SE was IMO the best iteration of Win95. For me it was faster, more stable, more polished than Win95. (a bit more bloated with the IE-integration, but that was easy to strip away)
- fps_doug2 2y agoYour memory seems to fail you. Win98SE was the most stable of the 9x series. ME was the bad one.
- Zambyte 2y agoYour reading seems to fail you. That's what they said :-)
- theandrewbailey 2y ago> Win 98ME Windows ME was not a release of, nor branded with, Windows 98 whatsoever.
- accrual 2y agoRight. And a fun fact for readers, it's technically Windows "Me" (title case) and advertising has it read as "me" as in me the person, not "M.E." as Millenium Edition. Kind of interesting history there - "Me" was intended to show the PC was becoming more personal. I think WinMe added some new "My Documents", "My Pictures", etc. that came with Win2k and later XP which helped drive the personal aspect. Then later "XP" was meant to be "eXPerience" as in a new PC experience. Microsoft was a bit more fun back then.
- aussieguy1234 2y agoAfter getting blue screened one too many times with Windows 98, I ordered a Red Hat Linux CD. I never went back to Windows and still use Linux to this day, nowadays with NixOS.
- tpoacher 2y agoRunning Win98 is still the most reliable way to get Discworld Noir to actually run; a gem of a game, made almost useless by the aggressive DRM practices of the time. Bookmarking this for future use :)
- pathartl 2y agoFor games like these I tend to use a base Win98 image with DOSBox and then mount the game as a separate drive, disable the Windows shell, and auto start the game.
- LocutusOfBorges 2y agoI’m surprised nobody has created a way to automate this process - I imagine that any tool that makes it trivial would be quite popular, given what a pain it can be to set up manually.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pathartl 2y agoI actually dev a project called LANCommander which can be used as a sef-hosted digital game distribution platform ala Steam, Epic Games, etc. It has built in support for redistributables. What i would actually do is make the DOSBox/Win98 combo a redist and then have the individual games require that redist. That way if you wanted to make changes like install patches on Windows or change the DOSBox config you only have to do it to the redist.
- piperswe 2y agoDecided to take a look at LANCommander since it sounds interesting - looks really cool! But the website is currently giving 502 errors, so I'm only able to see the README.md
- 2y ago
- zb3 2y agoFor those who don't want to install: https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98 https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98
- submeta 2y agoNo offence to Windows lovers, but my God is this ugly. Current versions of Windows look great. But back then Windows looked horrible. Apple managed to produce beautiful interfaces back then, as they do now.
- fps_doug2 2y agoSorry, but no. This is MacOS in 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mac_OS_8.1_emulated_inside_of_SheepShaver.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mac_OS_8.1_emulated_insid... I think this is way uglier than Win9x.
- barotalomey 2y agopotato, potato. And Bob's your uncle
- smusamashah 2y agoThis reminds of the Ghost (was it Norton Ghost?) tool. I use to experiment with the file system and try out many many all kinds of softwares from Internet and software CDs. Those CDs use to come with 100s of softwares of all kind. I use to buy them and then try out every single one of them. I use to maintain an index, using IYF, to find a software in any of those CDs. Anyway these softwares use to have there crack/patch tools with them (with music and effects and whatnot). These cracks often had virus or trojen in them. I have bored my windows many many times. Ghost helped with that immensely. I had 1 or 2 fresh install with basic setup ghost backup always available. After every bork, it only took a minute to restore my windows to fresh clean state. Kaspersky was the best anti virus back then, no other tool repaired my corrupted softwares like it. Norton anti virus use to scream only after getting infected itself. We have it lot easy now.
- pixelbath 2y agoIt was simply "Ghost" before Norton bought it and made it more terrible and bloated over time. We (at a computer shop I worked at) used Ghost to build a pre-OOBE image for several common Windows configurations and then just image them to new PCs in a few minutes, then apply the license key afterward.
- nigel_bree 2y agoSymantec left our team - which was basically identical before and after acquisition - pretty much alone beyond adding in some (badly needed) release process and i18n requirements. Almost the entirety of the growth in the size of the imaging executable, which did get hugely bigger, came from a constant drive to add capability to the NTFS support to match the FAT support, most crucially to allow the images to be edited in Ghost Explorer. The initial NTFS support that Ghost had prior to the Symantec releases was really crude, basically the content in the .GHO file wasn't files, but a raw-ish dump of used disk extents that it tried to always put back in the same place to avoid having to fix up attribute runs, whereas the FAT16/FAT32 content was basically a file archive where all the filesystem allocation metadata got recreated on the fly. Customers wanted and pushed hard to have NTFS images editable, and that made life really hard - the approach that was ultimately taken meant creating a full read/write NTFS implementation, and those aren't small. And the design of that code interacted really badly with the C++ exception implementation in DJGPP (which before that work had begun, I had warned them about), so that eventually exception frame information was taking up ~25% of the on-disk size of the UPX-compressed binary!
- klaussilveira 2y agoWe need one of these for the Raspberry Pi, but native. And old monitor + pi inside would be an amazing retro PC build. I have it running on DosBox, but it's not that great.
- naikrovek 2y agoThis is very cool but who is installing Win98 so much that this is useful? That said I am all for this project, I just don’t know who would use it.
- accrual 2y agoRetrocomputing has blasted off into a larger hobby as of late. I think it's a combination of COVID free time in 2020, plus the demographic that grew up with early Windows is now old enough to appreciate the OS more and wants to re-experience it with modern tools and knowledge. I don't personally install Windows 98 nearly often enough to justify a tool like this, regular vanilla installs are fine with me. But some do a lot of benchmarking and testing on modern hardware, e.g. user "O_MORES" has a configuration to run Windows 98 alongside Windows 11 and frequently expands it.
- gwbas1c 2y agoThis just begs the question: Why was the basic Win98 question so ^%$#^% slow?
- wg0 2y agoI'm too far away from a windows machine for far too long. Is it possible to run Windows 98 on modern hardware especially when no one would be shipping any drivers? Also, what's the use case for it? Lastly, wondering if MS still sells Windows 98 if someone needs because of some specific reason.
- accrual 2y agoYes, actually! Search for user "O_MORES". They're active on Reddit and possibly Vogons. They have successfully dual booted Windows 98 and Windows 10/11 on modern hardware. The key is to use a supported PCI/PCIe graphics, audio, and network cards then slot them into a modern motherboard. The sheer speed of modern hardware makes up for a lot of shortcomings. For use cases - for me at least, it's for fun, nostalgia, and because I enjoy diving deeper into old hardware and OSs that I didn't have the experience to when they were new. Everyone has their own reasons, but I think this is a common one. No need to buy Windows 98 anymore though, clean known-good OEM ISOs are available on WinWorldPC along with accompanying product keys.
- rzzzt 2y agoAlso on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@O_mores/videos https://www.youtube.com/@O_mores/videos
- chungy 2y ago> Lastly, wondering if MS still sells Windows 98 if someone needs because of some specific reason. They do, in fact buying Windows in a commercial setting basically entitles you to all the prior versions: https://download.microsoft.com/download/6/8/9/68964284-864d-4a6d-aed9-f2c1f8f23e14/downgrade_rights.pdf https://download.microsoft.com/download/6/8/9/68964284-864d-...
- Synaesthesia 2y agoI saw this demoed on this video where the guy builds the fastest DOS computer possible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LIPTQjQAPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LIPTQjQAPE
- andix 2y agoThat's exactly what I was looking for, around 28 years ago ;)