Windows Quäler Windows 98

[Babass]

I have a lot of luck that i got it with 3*2Mb of external RAM. Even if it's a poor quality computer made by Zenith, it's a pretty cool computer to use. When i bough it the backlight was done, but i repaired it (some tracks on the inverters's board were... cut due to bad capacitors). Also the orignial 84Mb HDD is done too, i tryed with killdisk, i can't do anything. I use a 270Mb HDD from my 486 laptop.
To do this I used my 12Gb HDD from my 486 laptop, but i don't want to install Windows 98 again and then delete all and reinstall Windows 95 and all apps...
Next time i have time and another HDD i'll try with 4Mb RAM in SafeMode, and make a boot video.

[Babass]

Ok I did a little mistake in the description.
"After about 2 hours (estimated 14 mins to install the drivers and to finish the installation), Windows 98 booted correctly."
I wanted to say that the last part of the installation (drivers) AND the boot tooks 2 hours.
"After 6 minutes, the background and the cursor appears, but you need to wait about 2 more minutes before you can "do" something."
So the boot time is about 8 minutes, not 2 hours, sorry.

[Dirk]

okay, i correct this tomorrow. thx for feedback

[Babass]

Hello everyone, I finally got a new 2.5" IDE HDD, so I could do more videos.
I386SL25 @ 6MHz, 6Mb of RAM, Windows 98 First Edition:
https://youtu.be/PDgotLxQ2OA
So, When the computer start I change the "color" palette, and i quickly set the computer to Slow mode, before EZ-DRIVE loads.
As you can see, net start is loading, even if there is no network card in this computer. However, even by deleting useless lines in Autoexec.Bat, i couldn't get Windows starting with less than 6Mb.
However, before stoping everything because of lack of time, i decided to try the safe mode (Mode sans échec in French)... No useless drivers loaded.... Tada:

It works, i was amazed, like Windows 95 have trouble loading with 4Mb, but Windows 98... Another funny video:
https://youtu.be/2b148VR6R_k
Nevermind, i don't think there is a way to make it works with less than 4 Mb.
Tooks me 3 hours to install it...

[Dirk]

Nice (even its a city in french), safe mode is a little bit cheating, but okay I mention this trick on the site.

[Babass]

Ok, it's been a while I haven't played with Windows 98. For the first edition I can't improve that. But what about the SE ?
Well, Windows 98 SE won't work on a 80386 because of IE5 and the webby desktop. So explorer.exe will crash, try to reload, crash again...
So, without any modification I don't think it's possible to make it running on a 386 based machine. So I wanted to investigate and found the suspicious files that prevent explorer.exe from working.
After few days of making some frankenstein installation of Windows 98 SE with some 98 First edition I found out that the file SHDOCVW.DLL is (one of) our culprit. There is the plan:
During the installation, Windows 98 SE will restart one it finished copying files. At this point we need to replace this file from the one that come with Windows 98 "FE". Then we'll continue the installation. However at the end there will be some error message due to the modified file, as the system might be creating the registery. Anyway, it worked on a emulator, let's try with a real machine:

BUT... another problem:
Anywhere on the web we can see that by using the undocumented /nm swtich we can install Windows 98 on a 386 machine... That's WRONG!
So again, we have a file do modify in order to make the installation running on a 386 machine (it won't affect the OS itself).
I tryed some Memphis builds on an emulator, and it looks like Memphis 1488 is the last one that can be installed under a 386 machine.
I took the file WINSETUP.BIN from the build 1488 CD, renamed it W98SETUP.BIN and replaced the original file by this one.
And yes, it works... The first part of the installation took about 4 hours at 33MHz... And guess what ? It failed...
I only got Windows 98 SE running in safe mode...
Anyway, removing some RAM, unactivating the Turbo... There you go:

Ok so, I want it to run without the safe mode... Well, have to do the installation all over again...
4 hours for the first part, 2 hours for the last part... But it finally worked.
Remouved some RAM, slowing down the CPU:
Am386 SX 33 CPU at 7MHz, 6MB of RAM...

I also recorded a video for this one. However it's quite long and will take some time to upload it. Because yes, it's slow, painfully slow. It takes minutes to do basic tasks (opening a folder...).
As the system has been slightly modified it's not a really legit record, but anyway, that was... "fun".

Oh, i'm sure you are wondering, what about Windows Millennium ? Well, I'm working on it, but the kernel looks very different from 95's and 98's one.