Hi all,

A couple of days ago I found an old Win98 Cd, and I figured I could attempt to install it on my 250gb SATA drive, currently mounted as E:\. However, when I boot with my win98 boot disc and then choose boot with cd-rom support, it says:

Device driver not found:
MSCD001

No valid CDROM device drivers detected.

I currently have WinXP installed on a 500bg SATA C:\.

Anyone out there willing to help me through the installation process?

Regards,
Emil Olofsson

Two problems, Win98 doesn't support drives larger than 127GB and there probably aren't any MBoard SATA controller drivers available for Win98. You may be able to get around the SATA driver part by using compatibility mode in the BIOS.

You will still need to partition and format the drive with the primary partition being smaller than 127GB. WinXP will not be able to format the partition if you make it larger than 32GB. Formatting must be FAT32. Look at the instructions below for the rest.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...

http://www.48bitlba.com/win98.htm

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306...

First problem sounds like the generic CD ROM driver on the 98 boot floppy is not picking working. Download and create a new floppy - www.bootdisk.com - if that no good, suggests your CD/DVD no-standard - use another for the install. I think 98 generally just sees SATA drives - but not sure fdisk will allow you to create partition on that size drive (there are various alternative partition utilities).

Then of course, installing 98 on system already running XP needs a bit of planning (98 should go on first for dual boot). You could install it (if it will) with the XP drive disconnected, then use a boot manager (eg, www.boot-us.com) to manager the dual boot.

But I have to ask - is it worth it! How about using Virtual PC (now free, google to download) in XP and install a virtual 98 machine. Much more manageable!

You'll probably need gcdrom.sys as the cdrom driver on the bootdisk. Check my posts in this thread:

http://computing.net/hardware/wwwbo...

But even if you get 98 installed you'll still have to hunt down drivers. Likely no 98 ones were written for that motherboard. If you really want to run 98 you might consider buying a P-II or P-III at goodwill, a garage sale or from the want ads. Unless you live in a area deficient in computers you should be able to find one for $15 or so.

Or if you want to go the really cheap and easy route, run it virtually....

Thanks guys, I found a lot of help here. I will try checking out this virtual machine you are talking about.

To Steve: I'm not sure if it's woth it. I just found out that the CD worked just fine on my laptop, so I will make a try installing it there instead.

Thanks a lot to all of you!