TooMuchFreeTime

If you have MSBATCH.INF file in the folder you are installing Windows 98 from you could make following changes to it: Modify the [install] section to include the following line: UpdateInis=Edit.Files And these lines at the end of MSBATCH.INF: [Edit.Files] %10%\system.ini,386Enh,,"MaxPhysPage=40000" %10%\system.ini,vcache,,"MaxFileCache=524288" This should get you past Windows 98 installation without having to boot to DOS to edit System.ini or without having to remove RAM modules to get past the "Not enough memory" error. You could also put some other stuff under the [Edit.Files] section... some examples: %10%\system.ini,386Enh,,"PagingDrive=C:" %10%\system.ini,386Enh,,"PagingFile=C:\PAGEFILE.SYS" %10%\system.ini,386Enh,,"MinPagingFileSize=1048576" %10%\system.ini,386Enh,,"MaxPagingFileSize=1048576" Forces Windows 98 to create a fixed 1Gt swapfile called PAGEFILE.SYS at the root of C-drive... might be useful when dualbooting with Windows 2000 or XP. %10%\system.ini,386Enh,,"ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" Forces Windows 98 to use up all physical RAM before switching to the slower swap file. %30%\msdos.sys,Options,,"Logo=0" Gets rid of the Windows 98 boot logo.

Case Three seems to make sense if you absolutely have to use completely unmodified Windows 98 install CD... however making a slightly modified install CD isn't too complicated and gives much nicer end result as you don't have to do anything you wouldn’t normally do during windows installation. Here is a rough step-by-step guide: 1) Copy the contents of your Windows 98 install CD to a folder in your HDD. (Let's use D:\98CD\ as an example.) 2) Extract the contents of BHDD31.ZIP to D:\98CD\Win98. (Extracting !read.me, _bighdd.inf, _install.bat and xxFiles.txt isn't necessary.) 3) Extract the boot sector from the original install CD using IsoBuster or UltraISO. 4) Burn the contents of D:\98CD\ to CD or CD-R with your favorite CD burning program. (Don't forget to make your CD bootable with the boot sector you just extracted!) 5) Partition and format the HDD with The Ranish Partition Manager. 6) Install Windows 98 from CD like you would normally do. 7) Get back to Win 9x and enjoy it! I installed Windows 98 on a computer that has 300GB HDD with a modified install CD-R earlier today and updated versions of ADVPACK.DLL, CVTAPLOG.EXE, DEFRAG.EXE, DSKMAINT.DLL, ESDI_506.PDR, FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM, SCANDISK.EXE, SCANDSKW.EXE, W95INF16.DLL and W95INF32.DLL were installed automatically during Windows installation and I didn't have to reboot to DOS prompt in middle of Windows installation.

Why would you go through all that when you can just put the extracted ESDI_506.PDR file to the folder where you are going to install Windows 98 from? I just did this and the updated ESDI_506.PDR file was copied to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS during normal Windows install without any unnecessary reboots or DOS diskettes...