Installing Win98se from harddrive

[Fern]

I saw someone install 98 a slick way. He copied the win98se cd to the hard drive and launched from there. It was real handy, all the drivers were on the hard disk so no annoying swapping disks etc.

I thought he used xcopy or copy (DOS) but dang if I can get it to work. And I think my win floppy start up disk has a cd driver, so thats probrably not the problem.

Anyone done an install this way? any suggestiond greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[xcript]

xcopy /?

 

[weber]

I'm guessing he used the win98se startup disk to start the computer and that floppy contains those Cd rom drivers you speak of.
After partioning the HD with fdisk and formating the drive then create his secret receipe.

Reboot and get to the A: prompt....convert to C: , then md windows, cd windows, md options, cd options, md cabs, cd cabs .....so it should like this C:\windows\options\cabs

at this point type: C:\windows\options\cabs>copy d:\win98\*.* it might be copy E:\win98|*.* You will copy a 101 files or so in DOS. These 101 files are stored on the HD and this is so you won't need to put your win98se disk for future hardware installs.
Then C:\windows\options\cabs>setup this will copy your win98se disk

 

[Fern]

Thanks, I'll give it try soon. Mobo's out on RMA, so when it comes back i'll do a reformat/reinstall and have a go.

 

[trevinom]

It really doesn't matter where you put the cab files. You can take the install Windows 98 Install CD and copy it to a folder on your c: drive. There is an even better way...If you have a blank harddrive or partition in your current drive and have WIN98 installed on another drive or partition, you can 'XCOPY C:\ <TARGET DRIVE> /C /H /E /K /R /S.

This will install the whole operating system on your new partition, HD.

The new partition has to be a primary partition (can be done with a partition software like PQMagic) and has to be made active for it to take effect. You do this by going into Fixdisk (FD) and going through the menu options to activate it.