Win98SE on centrino laptop

[Sust]

I am installing win98SE b/c I want my processes to run with realtime priority and I need timing of the program to run accurately down to the millisecond.
WinXP/2000 are meant for multitasking so it will never be as "accurate" as win98SE.
Sorry, just wanted to give my reasoning before people ask, "Why the hell would you wanna use win98SE?"
Anyways, onto my question.
Has anyone tried installing win9x/Me on their centrino laptops yet?
I just wiped the HD and tried to install win98SE and it had absolutlely no clue what anything was at the end of installation.
I dont even think it recognized the CDROM drive. In fact, it thought I had a 5.25" drive when there isnt even a floppy drive on the laptop!
Anyways, I am open to any and all advice on the matter of win9x installation on centrino laptops.

I also tried doing the dual boot thing, but when I resized the winXP NTFS partition to free up space for a FAT32 partition, win98SE refused to install onto the free space I had created. I have not tried winME yet so we will see how that goes tonight.
Help please.

 

[johnjkr1]

Windows 98se wont find any hardware after installation, the chipset is too new....you need to first install the proper chipset driver for your laptop before it can find all the proper hardware......even the 810/815 chipsets from years past are detected properly by win98....

what model laptop do you have?

 

[johnjkr1]

Your computer manuf. probably wont have them, but intel does:

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/filter_results.asp?strOSs=18&strTypes=DRV%2CARC%2CUTL&ProductID=939&OSFullName=Windows*+98+SE&submit=Go%21

 

[Sust]

Great idea!
I'll decompress the drivers and burn them onto a CDRW.
Then I'll boot off of my win98SE CD and copy it over to the FAT32 partition.
After rebooting, I can then tell win98SE where I copied the drivers to...

BRILLIANT!:beer:

 

[Sust]

Okay that worked to a certain extent.
I got almost all of the centrino chipset recognized except for some Ultra ATA interface doodad.
Now, I only have to figure out how to get either USB, ethernet, or DVD/CDROM combo drive recognized and working in windows98SE.
I'm open to more suggestions for my Dell Latitude D500.

 

[johnjkr1]

those intel drivers are an executable...did you run the executable....it should take care of the controllers/dvd not being seen

If you just want 98, these are the steps

Wipe the drive...get 98 installed....first time on the desktop, run the chipset install...let it reboot and detect everything (it should find ata/usb/pci bridge,etc)...then, see if you have your cd drive and such

 

[Sust]

Hehe, the operative word being "should"

Yeh I also thought running the .exe wouldve taken care of my problem also, but it's definitely taken care of some detections and left some other things undetected. Of course they happen to be the things I want: USB, ethernet, and CD drive.
I cant really figure it out myself.
The really interesting part is that it still believes I have a 5.25" floppy drive when in fact, I dont have any floppy drive attached at all.

 

[Zepper]

The real situation is that you shouldn't have bought a Centrino based laptop at all if running Win98 was in the cards. I would restore the laptop with the restore CD and exchange it for a P4 or Athlon (even Celeron if necessary) based laptop. From there you should have no problem. No one who wants a choice of OS should ever consider Centrino, which is just another Wintel lock-in to their monopoly maintenance shceme.
.bh.

 

[johnjkr1]

I would just say start over and run the EXE correctly fresh and see what happens

 

[Sust]

It's a little too late to exchange the laptop.
Some guy in my group went out and got the laptop from dell and then attempted to get win98SE on there, but couldnt figure out how to even do that.
So then it dropped onto my lap and I just rolled with the punches.

I actually ran the inf update executable several times and it never solves the problem. Whats interesting is that win98SE is able to recognize the Ultra ATA device, but it cant find a decent driver for it.
Perhaps the one thing I'm overlooking is that I should be running these update programs in safe mode.
Maybe that will make all the difference.

Anyways, I got a little bit out of it by doing a win98SE and winXP dual boot. Since I made both of them FAT32 partitions, they are able to read and write to each other. This way, I indirectly get access to the internet and combo drive thru winXP. Not very elegant, but its the best I can do for the moment.
Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions.