"I'm confused about that, though, 'cause I thought all the necessary drivers for Windows 98 would be on a Windows 98 CD. I mean, it would...make sense" The Windows CD can't possibilty contain ALL the drivers for ALL the different devices in existence. In many cases, there are generic drivers on the CD but drivers are constantly being updated so even if your video card (for example) works with the generic 98 drivers, it would be better to locate & install the most recent video drivers available. "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions" - Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction

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Well, actually, if the Gateway computer was new in 1998, and all (or most) of the hardware is the original which came with that specific model of computer, then it is possible that during install Windows 98 will detect and load most all of the drivers that are needed. Brand name manufactuers provided Microsoft with the current drivers at the time for their hardware products. At least, that is the way it works when I have installed Win98 on Dell computers from that time period. That doesn't mean that there weren't new, updated drivers produced later that it would be worth trying to find, but it is possible that things on your old Gateway computer would work pretty good just after the install. Here are the steps I'd take to change your Gateway from a NT machine to a Win98 machine. Some of this is just personal opinion and preference, so other's might disagree and you might find their suggestions better: 1. Use the existing NT installation to identify the specific hardware. Write this information down somewhere so you can refer to it during installation and setup of Win98. 2. Find a Window 98 Second Edition setup CDROM for new computers(computers without an OS). Or, if you can only find an upgrade version, then you'll also have to find a Win3.1 floppy disk set. 3. Prepare a DOS 7.1 boot floppy with the specific tools you'll need. You might find what you need on the Internet, but the best way is to use a working Win98 machine to make this disk. Besides the basic DOS 7.1 boot files, it will need: - FDISK.exe - FORMAT.COM - MSCDEX.exe - A DOS CDROM driver which works with the drive in your system It would be "nice to have" as well: - EDIT.COM (with EDIT.HLP, in case) - ATTRIB.exe These are just the basics, you can add other utilities to this disk until it's full. 4. Check the boot floppy in your gateway. Make sure it sets up your CDROM drive and you can read CDs without problem while booted from the floppy. 5. Make your final decision that you are going to wipe NT off this computer and install Win98. The next steps provide no turning back or changing your mind. All the current data on the Gateway's hard drive will be forever gone. 6. Boot the computer with the DOS 7.1 boot disk. Run FDISK. It will ask on startup if you want to enable "large disk support". If your hard drive is over 2GB, go with the default "yes", if your hard drive is under 2GB, then select "no". It will still work to enable large disk support (FAT32) on a smaller disk, but there is no advantage to doing so. 7. From the FDISK menu, select "display partition information", this will show partitions FDISK currently sees on the disk. If you have just one NTFS partition, FDISK will show a single NON-DOS partition using 100% of the disk. You want to delete all the current partitions, starting with the last one if there is more than one. FDISK is designed to keep you from doing this accidently, so you'll have to go through several prompts and selections for each partition deleted with a final warning that you are about to destroy any existing data on the hard drive. If you've made up your mind, then go ahead. 7. After you have deleted all the partitions, you start creating new partition(s) that you want. The easiest thing to do is just to select "create DOS partition" and just take the defaults to create a single DOS partition for the whole disk. You could also just make a single partition which uses only half the disk (for example) and just leave the rest as empty space with the idea that you may want to add another OS in the future. It would be better at this time to just make a single Win98 partition and find another hard disk to play with after your more experienced at this stuff. 8. After you've created your new partition(s), you quit FDISK. You'll have to reboot the computer now for the new partition(s) to be recognized. Just use ctrl-alt-delete for a soft boot. 9. After you've rebooted to DOS, you will now have to FORMAT the new partition before you can actually use it. Just run the command FORMAT C: /u. Just ignore the warning about "destroying data", there currently isn't any data on the new partition, but FORMAT.COM doesn't know that. If it's a large disk, it might take a while to format. At the end it'll prompt you to name the newly formatted partition. The default name for a Windows 98 partition is "Win98", but you can call it anything you want within eleven letters. 10. Now that you've got a partition ready to install Windows 98 into, you can put your Windows 98 installation CD into the CD drive and (assuming it's D:) run D:\setup. This starts the Windows 98 setup program. It was designed by Microsoft and is intended to be used by inexperienced people. So, you can just follow the prompts and in an hour or so, your Gateway computer will be running on Windows 98. It'll be like a new Gateway Windows 98 computer from 1998 (if you really want to be cute, you could have gone into your BIOS before the installation and changed the date to 1998 and as far as the software is concerned, it was installed in 1998). As I mentioned in a previous post, I also use 98lite in the installation, but that's jsut a personal choice. You might will consider it not worth the effort.

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One little caveat re' dos/'9x versions of Fdisk... It will only remove a Primary ntfs partition; it will not remove an Extended one... This limitation gave rise (tis sed...) to delpart.exe (M$ util from NT days...); which will delete just about any partition - permanently; likewise Killdisk and other similar utils... Prior to delpart etc. the usual way to delete ntfs Extended areas was to boot to NT and then use Disk Manager to do it (provided the system-files were'nt in that area...); after-which a dos boot and Fdisk would allow the removal of the ntfs Priamary... Otherwise you slaved the drive to another NT system and used Disk Manager on that system... Some reported that DR-Dos version of Fdisk would remove Extended ntfs areas and possibly Gdisk would too? As regards a dual-booot '98/NT... the approaches are legion... I tended to favour a small active (fat16) Primary (around 100-150Meg - max of 250Meg; installed dos 6x there. Then using a '98 bootdisk create the Extended partition, and subdivide into at least three logical drives... '98 goes into the first one; and install it first. Then install NT and it will create the dual-boot (actually a triple boot.. - dos6x (in c: ), '98SE and NT...) The small fat16 Primary holds the boot/startup files for all installed OS... '98 is in its own space, likewise NT. Balance of drive is for data... Remember that dos/'9x cannot handle a fat16 area in excess of 2Gig (NT can handle upto 4gig...) so keep any shared data areas to a max of 2Gig... if using fat16. If using fat32 then NT will need a util to allow it to access it; and if using ntfs then '98 will require a similar util... and both are around read-only as freebie and read/write as a few pennies(I think...)? Once system installed - make and keep safe the ERD for NT.

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