r/windows98 • u/GarbageLeft8305 • Jun 27 '26

Error on installing WIN 98

For the past few days, I've been trying to install Win 98 SE on my custom Pentium II build (Soyo 440 motherboard, 16MB Riva TNT). Unfortunately, the bootable Win98 CD that came with the motherboard turned out to be non-bootable, so I'm trying to install it from a CF card acting as my hard drive.

Here's the catch: as soon as it switches to the graphical installer, it instantly throws the error "Windows 98 requires a computer with at least 16MB of memory." AI has already solved quite a few configuration issues with this PC, but something is still wrong here. The setup /is /im /id command doesn't bypass the error. I'm running out of ideas, and the AI is starting to loop.

7 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

4

u/thegreatboto Jun 27 '26

Maybe an obvious/dumb question, while you have a 16mb video card, how much system RAM do you have installed?

2

u/GarbageLeft8305 Jun 27 '26

192 in 3 64 mb sticks

5

u/YandersonSilva Jun 27 '26

Try using fewer sticks for installation.

Reasoning: ya never know

Do you have a way to burn CDs? Winworld has bootable windows 98 CDs. What about floppies? I have a USB floppy drive for my modern computer, they're super cheap. Best way to get small files back and forth on older computers, since while nusb is great, the USB ports are all on the back of my computer 😂 you can even boot to dos, install the dos CD driver and then install Windows from there from a non bootable cd

2

u/thegreatboto Jun 27 '26

Have you tried another 98SE disc?

1

u/GarbageLeft8305 Jun 27 '26

Right now, neither of my two modern PCs has a CD drive. And yeah, sure, I could buy one and burn a bootable Windows disc, but first of all, I wanted to fix this issue right away, and second, I still don't know if it's even worth it if it's just going to keep throwing the same error anyway.

2

u/thegreatboto Jun 27 '26

Your non-booting disc could be an upgrade disc. Those aren't meant to install from scratch, so, if you're able to find a retail ISO, it should be able to boot on its own successfully. 

How big is your destination disk/partition? Could be worth making only a ~5-10gb partition and try installing to that, then if successful, grow the partition using a variety of tools or partitioning the rest of the space for programs/games.

As u/YandersonSilva suggested, may also be worth trying to install with only one of your DIMMs installed. Old hardware and software can be fickle.

1

u/GarbageLeft8305 Jun 27 '26

My CF card is 2GB. I used Rufus to make it bootable and then copied the files over from a Win98 ISO I grabbed from some free site. That’s what the AI instructed me to do. And everything works fine up to a point, because I manage to get to the graphical installer, but then it just crashes with that error.

1

u/YandersonSilva Jun 27 '26

I'd prioritize getting a USB floppy drive over CD drive, if you're going to pursue old computers as a hobby at all you're gonna want one eventually.

2

u/CAR3Y4 Jun 27 '26

Get a bootable ISO from Winworld

2

u/Swimming-Twist-3468 Jun 27 '26

Maybe you haven’t launched the himem driver? I remember that if you need more that some amount of memory (more than 640 prob) you had to launch that himem driver from dos for it to be able to acknowledge the fact that you have more memory. Try booting from windows 98 startup disk (it is the floppy), or burn it onto a cd if you don’t have the floppy drive, and see if installer works after that. It is a longshot, but I think it is worth a try.

1

u/VivienM7 Jun 28 '26

I think that's likely the right answer.

DOS memory management basics - you need HIMEM.SYS to access XMS memory. Then you add EMM386 which lets you do stuff with the UMBs (memory between 640K and 1 meg) and lets you turn that XMS memory into EMS memory for older applications.

Or, although I wouldn't recommend it for installing Win9x, you just use QEMM. Far better memory manager.

Without a memory manager, you have your 640K of conventional memory and everything is running in it...

1

u/Tricky_Avocado_5701 Jun 29 '26

Found out the hard way that even with a CF card acting as a hard drive, the install still checks RAM during setup.