[r2d24me]

I found in my basement a box of my old MS-DOS and MS-Win9x games and I want to replay them again.

I am trying to add MS-Win98SE to a HP Compaq d530 CMT mid-tower PC (cpu Intel P4 socket N 478, Intel 865G Chipset, PCI bus with AGP 8x) which is already running MS-WinXP Pro 32-bit, RHEL-6 64-bit, and Solaris-10 64-bit off a IDE ATA-100 500GB disk drive. HP's d530 web site has drivers for MS-Win98SE. I installed a second IDE ATA-100 80GB disk drive to load MS-Win98SE onto to get around MS-Win98 disk limit (max disk size of 127 GB). The machine has 2gb of RAM. The install of MS-Win98SE go well until I receive the error message "Insufficient Memory to Initialize Windows". I do the internet documented fix of;

• power off/power on PC,
  
• press F8, then boot to Command line only,
  
• edit file c:/windows/system.ini,
  
• Add to [vcache] section: MaxFileCache=8192 (per many game sites).
  
• Add to [386Enh] section: MaxPhysPage=30000
  
• power off/power on

MS-Win98SE finishes install just fine and boots and runs fine.

My problems start when I try to apply HP driver update SP27532 "Intel Chipset Support for Windows" (Version:5.1.0.1008 A, Januray 18 2005). It installs to hard disk good and launches. The install reboots the server, as it should. MS-Win98SE launches and begins to find new hardware devices, as it should. After processing many devices, MS-Win98SE hangs on "Intel 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller 24D2", after about 5 minutes, MS-Win98SE reboots and the GUI fails to run from that point forward. I can get to Command line mode, but not to SAFE mode. I believe I cannot get MS-Win98SE GUI to boot into SAFE mode because I understand that SAFE mode bypass all [boot] and [386Enh] sections of the system.ini file (which skips my fix of "MaxPhysPage=30000"). So I cannot troubleshoot through GUI. I need help.

Is there a way to boot MS-Win98SE into SAFE mode on systems with more than 512MB?

With SAFE mode unavailable, any suggestions on how I debug what the problem is with the HP supplied "Intel 82891EB" driver?

If I cannot debug "Intel 82891EB" driver, does anyone know of a way that I can have the installer skip "Intel 82891EB" and install all the other driver updates?

Also, does anyone know of any commercial driver update products that still support MS-Win98SE?

Thank you

[Steven W]

Quick thought, reinstall and skip updating that particular driver.

This post has been edited by Steven W: 30 September 2012 - 12:25 PM

[Steven W]

More than 1 GiB in Win9x safe mode?

This post has been edited by Steven W: 30 September 2012 - 12:36 PM

[submix8c]

Limit the RAM as per the LINK (above) so you can boot "normal" and get the 800-series INF directly from Intel and run the SETUP to "get what you need" (as in everything Intel has). After that it's just the peripherals (sound, video maybe, network, etc.). That chipset WILL boot normally (AFAIK) after the RAM is limited.

See all of the Stickys particularly this.

edit - SYSTEM.CB for Safe Mode. see stickys...

This post has been edited by submix8c: 30 September 2012 - 12:54 PM

[Sfor]

HP D530 does have some serious problems with Windows 98.

1) To get the USB drivers installed it is necesary to disable BIOS USB support. (Advanced - PCI Devices - disable all entries for USB controllers) With the legacy USB support the Windows freezes while installing the driver. It is posible to reenable the BIOS support, after driver has been installed.

2) The Intel SATA controllers are working very slow. No fix available

3) Integrated Broadcom gigabit ethernet adapter causes system to freeze during reboot or shutdown. The fix is not to bind TCP/IP stack with Microsoft Networking.

After careful examination of the HP D530 I decided to move to HP DC7100 (almost the same, but with the Intel 915 chipset). I'd rather fight with PCIE graphics than work with slow hard drives.

[r2d24me]

Sorry for delay on acting on info provided, only able to work on "hobby" machine as time allows.

Booted to DOS mode and made changes to c:\windows\system.cb as recommended by STEVEN W and SUBMIX8C. Basically put changes I had made to c:\windows\system.ini also into c:\windows\system.cb. MS-Win98 SAFE MODE now works!!!

Re-formatted disk drive.

Re-installed MS-Win98 SE.

Again install of MS-Win98SE would not finish as expected, reboot, F8, DOS mode, re-applying fixes to files c:\windows\system.ini and c:\windows\system.cb, reboot, and verifying both NORMAL and SAFE MODE booted MS-Win98SE to GUI mode. Worked GREAT!!!

Next I followed SFOR recommendation, rebooted to BIOS menu, went in and recorded settings for USBs, then disabled them all. Saved BIOS, booted into Windows, and applied HP driver update SP27532 "Intel Chipset Support for Windows" (Version:5.1.0.1008 A, January 18 2005) without issue (one or two planned reboots occurred by install of drivers). Rebooted to BIOS menu, return USBs to their original (pre-disabled) settings. Saved BIOS, booted into Windows with not issue. I have no USB devices to test if they work, but Windows is not hanging, I am HAPPY!!!

I was not able to act on SFOR recommendation to go to a HP DC7100 because; a) I don't have one, using IDE not SATA drives in my HP D530, c) I have a AGPx8 GeForce 6800GT with 512mb 128bit DDR2 that I want to install and use in system. I have read on other web sites to stay away from PCIE graphics for building a MS-Win98SE system, but I gather SFOR has that work, cool.

Thank you STEVEN W and SUBMIX8C and SFOR!!!!