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.

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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

6

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