The boot disk that you're using doesn't seem to be loading a memory manager. If the disk only has command.com, msdos.sys and io.sys on it, then you'll need to make a disk that has a memory manager and the config.sys file to load it. You can get such disk images easily at bootdisk.com; a standard Win98SE boot disk will do.
DOS has several levels of memory. "Conventional" memory is the first 640k, since that's what was available for a long time and what DOS was written for. When systems started using more memory, special drivers were added into DOS configurations to allow the OS to see the extra memory, rather than rewriting DOS to natively read the memory. The "himem.sys" driver accesses the 380k or so remaining to the 1MB mark (the "high memory area"). Then EMM386.exe allowed access to much higher levels of memory (not sure what the limit is). QEMM was another brand of memory manager available that was popular, but EMM386 was part of standard DOS, so of course most people used that. The memory above one MB is configured as extended (EMS) or expanded memory (XMS). Extended and expanded are two different ways of accessing the memory, and some applications would only work with one form. EMM386 usually used portions of XMS memory to create "virtual" EMS memory blocks for applications that needed it.
If your boot disk doesn't load himem.sys and emm386.exe, then DOS only has access to 640k conventional memory, and the Win98 setup gives you that error.
Facebook
Twitter