installing win98se on old laptop

[b-man1]

ok, how do i do this?!?!

i have an old laptop that only allows 1 peripheral at a time (i.e. can't have both the floppy and CD at the same time...)

i can't boot w/ cd support if the cd drive is not attached, so i can't get to the installation setup!!!!!

i've been trying to do a network install, but the best i can do is get to the share with the 98 setup files...but the DOS boot disk i'm using is disabling the c: drive for some reason??? doesn't make sense.

if i run setup over the network, it says "can't create the temp directory needed for the setup files"...because the c: drive isn't available after i network boot in DOS. weird.

any ideas, or am i selling this baby w/ a formatted drive?

i should add the following:

1. it's too old to boot from CD
2. p133 / 40mb ram / 2GB hd

[vwkess]

make c: bootable and use xcopy to copy the win98 folder to your hard drive. Then run setup from your hard drive.

[b-man1]

i've tried every possible boot disk (www.bootdisk.com)...none of the win98/win98se disks would work (i know they WORK..but i suspect the laptop is messed up somehow). i kept getting "config.sys line 1 is invalid" and then press a key and "line 2 is invalid"...and on and on.


i'll keep plugin.

[b-man1]

ok, what a pain in the @ss. i had to get the c: drive bootable...but also get the cd-rom drivers loaded for use in DOS...which is a big pain in butt to me. i only needed a few files to do it, but wasn't sure exactly what ones. anyways, winbloze is installing as i type. should only take about 45 minutes on it! hehehe

[FlyingPenguin]

If the lappy is REAL old (early Pentium or 486) you'll want to disable the eye-candy features in 98.

If you disable the enhanced explorer features you basically turn 98's GUI into 95's (95 runs like greased lightning on older systems for this reason).

Install the latest TweakUI and in the TweakUI IE tab, uncheck "Shell Enhancements". You'll lose the quick launch bar, web view, active desktop and folder customization features but you'll be amazed how much faster it will run.

This trick converted an old 486/25 laptop I had from totally unusable to a decent system.

[b-man1]

i got it all installed and updated...i have everything set normally (no winbloze candy disabled) and it actually runs quite well! the weakest part of the system is the 2gb HD, but for normal use it seems perfectly fine. no q3/ut servers will be run...hehe

p133 mmx
40 mb ram

do you think throwing in a bigger stick 'o ram would be worth it, or not a good justification for the $$? i've never messed with laptop memory, so is it all proprietary or can i buy cheap-o stuff?

[FlyingPenguin]

I'd try to get at least a full 64Mb in there - it'll improve performance a lot. If it's standard SDRAM Sodimm, it's dirt cheap now - about $30 for 64 Mb.

However, it's old enough that it MIGHT use non-standard memory, or older memory.

Best thing to do is go to Crucial.com and look it up my the lappy manufacturer and model. They have free shipping now too.

If you think it's running snappy now, trust me, just try disabling the Explorer Shell Enhancements using TweakUI. You won't believe how much faster it'll run.