Windows 98 SE installation troubles

[HeroRareheart]

I found an old PC which was designed to run on Windows 98 SE. It had XP on it and after poking around a bit I wanted to put 98 SE on it. I went to https://winworldpc.com/ and picked the OEM Full ISO then burned it to a CD. I booted from that CD and started the installer which wiped the drive and formatted the partition. It then told me to put the Windows 98 boot disk into drive A and restart the computer but there are a few issues with this. This PC has no floppy drive bay or even a drive A, and I have 0 way to even make a floppy if I even had access to one. Looking around online people keep saying you don't need the floppy to install 98 and can do it all from the CD but I can't figure out how, I need help.

[heimdali]

You may be better off installing 2000.  2000 was the first version that was at least usable.  98 has always been particularly awful.

 

Or put Linux on it.

 

[HeroRareheart]

5 minutes ago, heimdali said:

You may be better off installing 2000.

 

I'm aware but I want to do 98 for the hell of it.

[mariushm]

12 minutes ago, HeroRareheart said:

I found an old PC which was designed to run on Windows 98 SE. It had XP on it and after poking around a bit I wanted to put 98 SE on it. I went to https://winworldpc.com/ and picked the OEM Full ISO then burned it to a CD. I booted from that CD and started the installer which wiped the drive and formatted the partition. It then told me to put the Windows 98 boot disk into drive A and restart the computer but there are a few issues with this. This PC has no floppy drive bay or even a drive A, and I have 0 way to even make a floppy if I even had access to one. Looking around online people keep saying you don't need the floppy to install 98 and can do it all from the CD but I can't figure out how, I need help.

When it tells you to put the boot disk, you should just restart the pc, go in bios to configure it to boot from C: drive and eject the disc from the drive. Then once the installation resumes, insert the disc back in the drive.

 

I second what the guy above me says, you should install Windows 2000.  It's MUCH better than Windows 98 SE and less intensive than Windows XP  ... and you'll find drivers easily. 

 

Anyway... i'm at work now, but I have have old copies of Windows 98 on my home computer. If you're interested, I could upload them somewhere when I'm home, in around 8-10 hours.

[HeroRareheart]

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

When it tells you to put the boot disk, you should just restart the pc, go in bios to configure it to boot from C: drive and eject the disc from the drive.

Alright I'll see how that goes, hopefully that works.

[HeroRareheart]

3 minutes ago, mariushm said:

When it tells you to put the boot disk, you should just restart the pc, go in bios to configure it to boot from C: drive and eject the disc from the drive. Then once the installation resumes, insert the disc back in the drive.

Didn't work, rebooted and it just skipped the CD drive because it was empty and skipped the HDD because it's empty and it tries to boot with the Intel Boot Agent and fails. No installation ever resumed.

[mariushm]

Then I guess your hard drive is now formatted and there's no boot loader or anything on the drive. Try booting from CD now and run the setup. 

 

My memory is a bit rough, but I think if you previously had a newer operating system you may have to clean the MBR  (master boot record). That's usually done with fdisk tool, which is located on the floppy disk  ... you'd run the command fdisk /mbr  to clear/reset the master boot record. 

 

You could try to make a CD with FreeDOS - https://www.freedos.org/download/ -  (or a bootable usb stick if the computer supports booting from USB), the FreeDOS package has a fdisk utility that's similar to the old DOS fdisk 

 

[HeroRareheart]

5 minutes ago, mariushm said:

clean the MBR...with fdisk tool...run the command fdisk /mbr

This did something I assume as I didn't get any sort of error but the drive has somehow managed to retain all of its information despite me running it thus implying nothing has happened. I'm very confused.

[HeroRareheart]

Screw this I'm caving and putting 2000 on here. its 3:30 AM and this fucking plastic and silicone heap has beat me. I've been at this for hours and I wanna go to bed.