[HN Gopher] Win98-quickinstall: A framework and installer to qui...
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Win98-quickinstall: A framework and installer to quickly install
Windows 98
Author : userbinator
Score : 197 points
Date : 2025-03-31 04:10 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| orionblastar wrote:
| Good work, I still use Windows 9X for emulation for DOS, 16 bit
| Windows, and 32 bit Windows programs. I do legacy systems and
| retro programming on them.
| krige wrote:
| What do you use it on? Do you have dedicated hardware,
| dosbox/pcem, a vitrual machine of some sort?
| orionblastar wrote:
| Virtual Box VM.
| krige wrote:
| How'd you get it stable on that? IME it tended to crash
| even more that regular 9x did.
| accrual wrote:
| Not GP but I have had the same experience. I exclusively
| use 86Box for anything older than XP these days and it
| works fantastic. The ability to swap in whatever hardware
| you want is so much fun.
| userbinator wrote:
| There are patches to fix TLB invalidation bug, memory
| limit, and several other things.
| Narishma wrote:
| I recommend emulators like 86box or PCem instead, they're
| much better for such old systems than VMs.
| imiric wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| Is there an equivalent tool for Windows 11? I've used MSMG
| Toolkit and NTLite in the past to slim down the ISO, but it was a
| very manual and tedious process, and I still have to babysit the
| installation itself. I would like a tool that takes a predefined
| config file of what to remove, and then creates a fully
| unassisted installer. Obviously bypassing the online account
| shenanigans.
| SpecialistK wrote:
| From my understanding, as someone whose job was Windows
| deployment for a few years, is... kind of? Admittedly my
| experience is with deploying to a lot of machines at the same
| time rather than to several machines more frequently.
|
| You can use audit mode from the OOBE of a fresh install,
| install your apps and changes, then run sysprep /generalize to
| clear the GUIDs and return to the OOBE - capture the image
| after the generalize but before reboot into the OOBE and the
| image will be a generalized install. All you need to do is
| restore the image (using a disk cloning software, dd from *nix,
| or a network server like FoG) create a ESP to boot from, and
| you have an image that can copy to any device at the speed of
| the disk or network.
|
| Microsoft has a Deployment Toolkit (MDT) which can take a
| Windows install image (a WIM) and copy it to a machine then run
| other tasks as part of a Task Sequence. This is handy for small
| to medium sized businesses: a WIM can be a sysprepped image
| like mentioned a paragraph up, so you can include big changes
| like removing features or installing apps and updates. But then
| it can be configured, using a Task Sequence and/or an XML file,
| to do things after the Windows install like join a domain,
| create a local account, install certain apps, run Windows
| Update, etc. It also supports driver detection and
| installation. MDT can be accessed using a USB boot drive or a
| PXE network boot (Windows Deployment Services, WDS) and then
| you just choose the Task Sequence you want then walk away for
| an hour. But there is a learning curve: people have whole
| careers specializing in this stuff. There is a more expensive
| and powerful MS solution called SCCM that can do much the same
| stuff (and a lot lot more) but the concepts are the same.
|
| What Microsoft are pushing toward now is what I'll call the
| "smartphone model" - IT departments don't reimage a machine as
| soon as it shows up, but instead register the device with a MDM
| like Intune. When the end-user receives the device, they are
| forced to use a corporate Microsoft account and then the
| desired configuration is pushed from the cloud. Without a MDM
| configuration ("Windows Autopilot") you can use a tool called
| WICD to create a configuration and save it as a "Provisioning
| package" which, when on the root of a USB drive that's inserted
| during the OOBE, will do the same configuration steps. I call
| this the smartphone model because according to MS, the Windows
| "factory reset" feature is all you would ever need rather than
| a traditional wipe-and-reinstall.
|
| What I would advise for a home poweruser is to build a Windows
| image 2-3x a year in a virtual machine: do all your updates and
| tweaks and app installs in a VM, then capture the image using
| your disk cloning tool of choice (I do a bootable Linux session
| plus dd piped into gzip), preferably to a network share. Then
| use that tool on your target devices to restore the image: it
| will write at about 112MB/s over gigabit Ethernet and after the
| reboot will install your drivers and make the install unique.
| razakel wrote:
| WDS has been deprecated - you now need to use Configuration
| Manager. Which means giving them more money. Because of
| course it does.
| SpecialistK wrote:
| I believe MDT as a whole has been deprecated too. You can't
| use the Windows 11 ADK for the WinPE image and they're very
| much pushing toward the Provisioning Package / Intune
| method.
| Gansejunge wrote:
| I stumbled upon this tool [1] recently that does not slim down
| the image like you might want to but gives you a lot of options
| what to remove via an .xml file [1]
| https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/
| rasz wrote:
| > 60-90 seconds
|
| Thats impressive speed for an install that not just copies pre-
| installed system, but also includes Hardware detection and
| selective driver installation phase.
| szundi wrote:
| Linux detects all your hardware and use drivers accordingly at
| every boot - some seconds
| sneak wrote:
| Linux can be easily and simply modified by anyone to suit
| their needs; Win98 cannot. You are comparing apples to
| oranges.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| That's not their point? Linux has all the drivers lying
| around on disk and on every boot just does hw detection and
| loads the appropriate ones. It takes a few seconds. You can
| take a Linux install from a modern AMD system, stuff it
| into a 10 year old Intel system and it will boot up
| instantly. No driver install no "getting your devices
| ready" screen that shows up for a minute or two.
|
| This has nothing to do with being open source or being
| customizable. It's simply pointing out how fast hw
| detection is not only possible but the norm on other
| systems.
| haileys wrote:
| Windows 9x existed at a very different time.
|
| PCI wasn't a given. Plug and play wasn't a given. You
| couldn't even reliably enumerate all hardware on a
| system.
|
| Hardware detection back then involved a lot of poking at
| random IO ports and seeing what happens, using heuristics
| to select an appropriate driver. This is as dodgy as it
| sounds and would crash or hang your system if you weren't
| lucky.
| jandrese wrote:
| One thing that helps this is that most of that really
| buggy hardware has fallen into the wastebin of history
| and everything attached to a "modern" W98 machine should
| be plug and play compatible. PCI solved most of these
| issues. ISA cards gave Windows 98 and especially 95 a bad
| rap. Well, that and early USB controllers and devices.
| There was a whole lot of brand new driver code being
| tested in production back then.
| badgersnake wrote:
| Did it do that so comprehensively and reliably in 1998?
| fps_doug2 wrote:
| AFAIU the part that's doing it here is also the Linux part
| of the installer, so Linux either way. But I feel Windows
| was always slow with getting new devices ready at least
| until Windows 7, 8.1 felt much better, no idea how current
| 10/11 fares.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Reliabily yes. Comprehensively .. may have been an issue.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| > with a custom data packing method that is optimized for
| streaming directly from CD to the hard disk without any seeking
|
| This is nice. I've always wondered why they don't do this with
| the core parts of the os and then only extract additional
| components and drivers. But maybe back then the core was only a
| few MB and it wouldn't have helped so much...
|
| I remember the setup taking ages. With 9x I don't think any
| install ever lasted longer than a year, so I did this a lot. :)
| h0l0cube wrote:
| This was definitely a thing in the optical disc era of games
| where seek times were horrendous. In record mode, this is done
| by just overloading the file read functions, recording a list
| of file, seek position, and read size instructions, and then
| using that to build a .dat file. In play mode, the function is
| overloaded to ignore file opens and seeks, and to just read
| from the contiguous file. This requires the load to be
| perfectly deterministic, and preferably without redundancy.
| keyringlight wrote:
| This is definitely an interesting part of it. Copying a few
| hundred megs from CD to HDD doesn't take long even for old
| hardware, but when I was setting up a win98 rig last autumn to
| test some 3dfx cards it took the common ~45 minutes to get
| through the main install, and that's before you get into the
| post-install cycle of installing any software/drivers/updates
| that need reboots. The "unofficial service pack3" is one I'd
| love to integrate as it includes support for USB mass storage
| which made the machine a lot easier to work with
|
| On a side-note, walking the line between annoying and
| entertaining was the noise of the HD during install, which
| sounded like techno music and I should have recorded it.
| Weirdly it was only during the win98 install that it made that
| type of sound.
| BloodOverdrive wrote:
| Interesting. Will try.
| CursedSilicon wrote:
| I debated building something like this for a couple years with my
| "Ultimate Windows 98 PC" [1]
|
| I found that I could take the machine to vintage computer events
| and it would (generally!) behave the entire event. I'd then take
| it home and put it back on the shelf for a few months. After I'd
| bring it back down to use it again, it'd throw a fit and usually
| require a reinstall! It's not disk rot since I use SSD's
| throughout
|
| While this hasn't happened (this time) it's a constant looming
| concern, particularly when pressed for time to get something up
| and running for an event.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YETxI4rA_gs
| nurettin wrote:
| I remember having to constantly reinstall win98 back in the
| 2000s. It felt like the OS kept corrupting its own filesystem.
| I ended up "borrowing" a debian potato CD from a professor's
| desk and never went back to windows (or his office).
| pndy wrote:
| Back then reinstall without formatting the drive felt like
| resetting system to defaults and was practised by almost
| everyone. I'm pretty sure W10 and W11 has similar feature
| nowadays by default.
|
| When I had chance to grab 180-days trial of W2000 I was
| shocked how stable it was - not seeing blue screen every few
| mins but modals with errors instead was... an amazing
| experience. The store where I've got my Celeron-based machine
| was installing 98 for everyone, not looking at licenses, all
| the legal stuff at all and when I ask guys there if they
| could drop W2000 they said that "it's a bad idea - many games
| won't work".
| enopod_ wrote:
| I still consider Windows 2000 the best Windows ever made.
| NT under the hood, slim, up-to-date, extremely stable, it
| ran all the games I wanted. I managed to grab a burned CD
| with a full version somewhere, the keys were not yet
| checked online for multiple installs. For a long time, all
| software and every driver for XP also worked for 2000. I
| think I should find an old retro PC and install W2000 on
| it, just for fun.
| pndy wrote:
| I really liked both stability and that subtle change from
| dark grey GUI colour to gray with a really subtle yellow
| hint that made it more pleasant to my eyes. So was the
| default blue background colour instead of teal green more
| appealing.
|
| > I think I should find an old retro PC and install W2000
| on it, just for fun.
|
| I made a W2000 install in VirtualBox with most of the old
| software I was using back then - of course without
| network connection outside. IMO that's much easier than
| dusting out old machine and wondering if it'll work at
| all after so many years but ofc there are people who dig
| that - I admire their dedication
| mcny wrote:
| I remember things differently. Perhaps it was because I
| was working with older hardware or something I don't know
| but Windows 2k felt so slow to boot.
|
| I know it isn't a fair comparison since the computer with
| windows XP was newer and I don't remember the details but
| I remember thinking windows XP boots faster than 2k.
| reginald78 wrote:
| IIRC with XP they late loaded a lot of things to get the
| desktop showing faster than 2000. My experience at the
| time was that while the desktop might have loaded faster
| it wasn't actually usable for quite awhile after I was
| looking at it, but that might have had more to do with
| all the crapware on many XP machines I used at the time.
|
| XP definitely needed more ram than 2000 to function
| acceptably. I remember 128mb being slow but tolerable on
| 2000 and absolutely brutal on XP.
| pndy wrote:
| > IIRC with XP they late loaded a lot of things to get
| the desktop showing faster than 2000
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefetcher - that's the
| thing they introduced in XP to speed up loading the
| system and programs
| Suppafly wrote:
| >My experience at the time was that while the desktop
| might have loaded faster it wasn't actually usable for
| quite awhile after I was looking at it
|
| This, I think the fastboot stuff probably seemed good on
| development machines used at microsoft, but on the cheap
| computers loaded with OEM garbage that they were pushing
| as being capable of running xp, it mostly loaded the
| desktop and then locked up for several minutes to finish
| actually booting.
| recursive wrote:
| Interesting. I have the opposite recollection. Perhaps it
| has more to do with the hardware I was using.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Or you could just run it in a browser tab:
|
| https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?url=win2k.cfg&mem=192
| &gr...
|
| This was written 7 years ago, and rather amusingly, part
| of it is called TEMU.
| enopod_ wrote:
| cool, thanks! :)
| rollcat wrote:
| Agree, W2k was peak Windows. Even the UI effects, like
| subtle drop shadows and fade-out animations looked
| tasteful, and were smooth on pretty average HW.
|
| Speaking of "workstation grade" Windows, you can still
| approximate this kind of experience by using
| "deshittification" scripts from around the Internet. IIRC
| I've used <https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat>.
| There are also enterprise-oriented release channels that
| keep some of the new bloat away, I think you can convince
| your existing installation.
|
| Personally I'm more offended by recent macOS updates -
| probably since it's my daily driver, so I notice it more.
| I had to resort to things like MDM profiles to keep it in
| check.
|
| Modern software just feels worse. I don't think it's
| nostalgia. A few years ago I've had my first experience
| with OS X 10.5 on a PowerBook. The system looked and
| worked better than modern macOS, even while the hardware
| was hot and somewhat struggling. Everything I needed from
| the OS was there (except for a performant web browser and
| less heat/noise). I'd switch.
| geon wrote:
| It did.
|
| Or perhaps it was because I dualbooted 98 and 2k.
|
| All my warez were on a fat32 to be accessible from both.
| Somehow the audio in my mp3 collection got replaced with
| audio from my movies.
| reginald78 wrote:
| Windows 9x suffered from DLL hell. So every time a program
| was installed it potentially overwrote dlls with a different
| version often older or incompatible. Windows 2000/XP just
| redirected the installer's dlls into a per program location
| preventing this which is a large reason those versions were
| so much more stable.
|
| Most people recommended a complete reinstall every 6 months
| well through the XP era but I found this was hardly ever
| necessary after I switched to 2000. Conversely, during my 98
| days I never had to schedule reinstalls, Windows had rotted
| apart by then forcing me to do it!
| antisthenes wrote:
| I definitely remember the DLL hell experience that
| manifested as an older 2d game overwriting some DirectX
| dlls in the OS with older versions, and suddenly all my FPS
| games stopped working.
|
| That was a fun one to troubleshoot as a 12 year old kid.
| eloeffler wrote:
| While I have no idea if this is or isn't the reason for those
| issues, I think it's worth mentioning that SSDs do suffer from
| bit rot, especially when left unpowered.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation
| https://www.partitionwizard.com/clone-disk/is-ssd-good-for-l...
| userbinator wrote:
| _It 's not disk rot since I use SSD's throughout_
|
| SSDs, unless they're very old SLC/MLC ones, do actually suffer
| from bit rot a lot more than magnetic/optical media. The
| unpowered retention ratings of new TLC/QLC flash is rather
| horrifying (months, not years or decades like they used to be).
|
| https://goughlui.com/2023/10/10/psa-ssds-with-ymtc-flash-pro...
|
| https://goughlui.com/2016/11/08/note-samsung-850-evo-data-re...
|
| If you want a reliable SSD for old systems, an SLC-based CF
| card is a good choice; it doesn't need to be very big (8GB is
| plenty), and the retention characteristics are also "period-
| correct".
| bbarnett wrote:
| While these posts are well written, one is about a cheap
| Chinese flash manufacturer, the other unknown, and the author
| muses that it may be the control chip or firmware, not the
| flash itself.
| userbinator wrote:
| Samsung famously "fixed" the retention problems in firmware
| by having it periodically rewrite data in the background,
| but that doesn't work if the SSD is powered off.
| Animats wrote:
| Is there something that lets you install Windows 7 64 bit as a
| new install? That's the last version before ads and other
| unwanted features.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| You can install Windows Firewall Control, some v4.9.x.x (before
| someone acquired it and ruined it by changing it drastically on
| v5 onward) and block all the garbage.
|
| Then you can also use ClassicShell and have the 'good old Start
| Menu' as you prefer to have it.
|
| There are also a bunch of privacy tools that can disable most
| of the garbage/uninstall the "Apps" and improve privacy with a
| few clicks.
|
| I stayed in Windows 10 for 7-8 years. After I tried Win10 and I
| saw how my machine(s) work better on the same (10yo hardware) I
| switched everything to Win10 with the above 'measures' (plus
| the hosts from someonewhocares) and I haven't had any
| annoyances for years.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysprep
| yyyk wrote:
| "my digital life" forum has many scripts for windows 7
| installation (including patches).
| jonplackett wrote:
| Fun fact: I (re)installed windows 98 so many times due to
| crashes, slowness, viruses etc that even now, 20 years later, I
| remember every digit of the 25 digit activation key.
| Codes wrote:
| And I'll bet I remember the exact same key ;)
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I still _almost_ remember all of a certain infamous "FCKGW"
| key for WinXP.
|
| Haven't installed it in... 20 years?
| srvmshr wrote:
| FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8
|
| I had bummed out my P-III 700Mhz desktop so many times,
| while tinkering with System32, INI files & experimental
| software etc., in grade school that this key is seared into
| some part of my cortex.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I had the first, second, and fifth sections down for
| sure, and some almost-remembered version of the other two
| but also couldn't remember which order they went in.
|
| I typed it a lot of times, but still probably only in the
| (high) tens. Crazy how long it sticks in one's memory
| with relatively little spaced repetition.
| srvmshr wrote:
| In those days of yore, the P-III was our first home
| computer (Hard to imagine for kids today that a family of
| 5 could have one PC shared between themselves).
|
| I was the experimental, eldest summer child in my home. I
| used to break things trying, open up the hood & change
| RAM or other stuff, add/remove peripherals & their
| drivers -- and to the extent of nuking Windows entirely
| to try out Redhat 7/8, Knoppix, and other esoteric
| software (because partitioning sucked back then & also,
| why not for the fun of it). I used to load up dozens of
| software on that tiny Seagate 20.4GB drive until it
| crawled & failed. A clean wipe & reinstall used to soon
| follow.
|
| The only parent-child contract was to bring back Windows
| XP to its usable state when direly needed by my mother to
| type/edit her dissertation chapters about women
| suffragette literature. I have broken & fixed Windows so
| many times, I could sing tunes to product keys
| culopatin wrote:
| That was my first CPU! Thanks for the flashback.
| userbinator wrote:
| W7XTC-2YWFB-..?
| ramijames wrote:
| Funnily enough, I use this as the base for my password (plus
| some other stuff) for anything I need strong protection for.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I hope you weren't also using the key above then...
| RedShift1 wrote:
| This may install fast but it certainly looks hard to get going
| with it...
| rasz wrote:
| This project builds the installer, there is nothing, other than
| Microsoft copyright, stopping someone from hosting compiled
| Install CD itself.
| piokoch wrote:
| Who on earth would like to install that?
|
| I can understand installing Win 95, sentiments, blah, blah, first
| "real" windows MS system (Win 3.X was still some kind of windows
| manager on top of DOS).
|
| But 98?
|
| Maybe let's go hardcore and go with Win 98ME, the worst operating
| system ever (with Vista as a strong second-place contender), at
| least we can experience random blue screens, which were the major
| feature introduced by 98ME, and that surely should be replicated
| by a simulator, to feel those old vibes.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Apparently a fringe opinion, but Win98SE was IMO the best
| iteration of Win95.
|
| For me it was faster, more stable, more polished than Win95.
|
| (a bit more bloated with the IE-integration, but that was easy
| to strip away)
| fps_doug2 wrote:
| Your memory seems to fail you. Win98SE was the most stable of
| the 9x series. ME was the bad one.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Your reading seems to fail you. That's what they said :-)
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > Win 98ME
|
| Windows ME was not a release of, nor branded with, Windows
| 98 whatsoever.
| accrual wrote:
| Right. And a fun fact for readers, it's technically
| Windows "Me" (title case) and advertising has it read as
| "me" as in me the person, not "M.E." as Millenium
| Edition.
|
| Kind of interesting history there - "Me" was intended to
| show the PC was becoming more personal. I think WinMe
| added some new "My Documents", "My Pictures", etc. that
| came with Win2k and later XP which helped drive the
| personal aspect. Then later "XP" was meant to be
| "eXPerience" as in a new PC experience. Microsoft was a
| bit more fun back then.
| estebank wrote:
| Part of the thinking behind the "My *" naming for those
| directories was forcing applications to handle spaces in
| paths properly.
| tracker1 wrote:
| That was definitely part of it... as XP SPs released,
| they locked down application access to read/write where
| applications typically shouldn't, including in their own
| Program Files directory, and this did bork some
| applications even though it was supposed to redirect the
| changes to a different directory.
|
| So many poorly written applications broke through those
| days. I may be thinking of Vista/Win7 though, the time
| has muddled my brain a bit.
| jandrese wrote:
| No, but in practice it was Win98SE3. Also, it was
| obsolete before it was even released. There was basically
| no reason to run WinME instead of WinXP, especially on a
| new machine.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > Also, it was obsolete before it was even released.
|
| How so? Windows NT and 2000 were not designed for home
| use, and Windows ME released (September 14, 2000)[0] over
| a year before Windows XP released (October 25, 2001)[1].
|
| [0] https://news.microsoft.com/2000/09/14/microsoft-
| announces-im...
|
| [1] https://news.microsoft.com/2001/08/24/an-Inside-look-
| at-the-...
| barotalomey wrote:
| Win98SE was the final usable Win9x version and the most stable
| version of them all.
|
| There's a crapload of late 90s / early 00s Windows games that
| isnt compatible with modern Windows, so running or emulating
| Win9X is really the only way of accessing them.
|
| If you are doing Win9X today, you would only be using Win98SE
| or you're doing it wrong.
|
| And let's not mention Windows Millenium again.
| keyringlight wrote:
| One of the big changes with ME was cutting out DOS mode as
| much as they could, and if you're doing a system for retro
| computing then it's hard to see why you'd constrain what it's
| capable of. If you don't need that and you've blacklisted
| 95/98 then I don't see why you wouldn't go for win2k onwards
| as it'll be a lot easier to work with, but it's a different
| animal.
| accrual wrote:
| Yes, agree on Window Me. It's not a lot of use for a retro
| gaming system by default. It's not too difficult to
| rollback some of the changes and re-enable the ability to
| exit to MS-DOS 7, but it is extra steps for not much gain.
|
| IMO, the main reason to run Windows Me over Windows 98 SE
| is if one likes the Windows 2000-style shell updates that
| were bundled into Me. Me also has a more mature network
| stack and some other updates ported over from the 2K
| kernel. If one likes those features then by all means - re-
| enable DOS mode and it's a decent alternative to 98 SE.
| accrual wrote:
| I just wanted to add that Windows 3.X is capable of running
| independently of DOS and BIOS calls. By default yes, it uses
| the BIOS for disk access. But with a disk driver (e.g.
| Microhouse driver, FastDisk driver), Windows 3.X can live
| entirely in 32-bit protected mode. Windows 95/98/Me are the
| same way, they are real 16/32-bit hybrid kernels that used DOS
| as a bootstrap but nothing more.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| After getting blue screened one too many times with Windows 98, I
| ordered a Red Hat Linux CD.
|
| I never went back to Windows and still use Linux to this day,
| nowadays with NixOS.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Running Win98 is still the most reliable way to get Discworld
| Noir to actually run; a gem of a game, made almost useless by the
| aggressive DRM practices of the time.
|
| Bookmarking this for future use :)
| pathartl wrote:
| For games like these I tend to use a base Win98 image with
| DOSBox and then mount the game as a separate drive, disable the
| Windows shell, and auto start the game.
| LocutusOfBorges wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody has created a way to automate this
| process - I imagine that any tool that makes it trivial would
| be quite popular, given what a pain it can be to set up
| manually.
| pathartl wrote:
| I actually dev a project called LANCommander which can be
| used as a sef-hosted digital game distribution platform ala
| Steam, Epic Games, etc. It has built in support for
| redistributables. What i would actually do is make the
| DOSBox/Win98 combo a redist and then have the individual
| games require that redist.
|
| That way if you wanted to make changes like install patches
| on Windows or change the DOSBox config you only have to do
| it to the redist.
| piperswe wrote:
| Decided to take a look at LANCommander since it sounds
| interesting - looks really cool! But the website is
| currently giving 502 errors, so I'm only able to see the
| README.md
| pathartl wrote:
| Yeah, working on rebuilding the site. The GitHub and
| documentation sites should be the most up to date
| information: https://github.com/LANCommander/LANCommander
| https://docs.lancommander.app/
| zb3 wrote:
| For those who don't want to install:
| https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98
| nness wrote:
| I have Win98 in an 86box just for fun, and yet it feels like
| that version runs much more smoothly...
| accrual wrote:
| Interesting! Maybe it's taking a more direct path to
| emulating the hardware. I found I have to use pretty modest
| emulated hardware in 86Box to have performant results.
| submeta wrote:
| No offence to Windows lovers, but my God is this ugly. Current
| versions of Windows look great. But back then Windows looked
| horrible. Apple managed to produce beautiful interfaces back
| then, as they do now.
| fps_doug2 wrote:
| Sorry, but no.
|
| This is MacOS in 1998:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mac_OS_8.1_emulated_insid...
|
| I think this is way uglier than Win9x.
| barotalomey wrote:
| potato, potato.
|
| And Bob's your uncle
| smusamashah wrote:
| This reminds of the Ghost (was it Norton Ghost?) tool. I use to
| experiment with the file system and try out many many all kinds
| of softwares from Internet and software CDs. Those CDs use to
| come with 100s of softwares of all kind. I use to buy them and
| then try out every single one of them. I use to maintain an
| index, using IYF, to find a software in any of those CDs.
|
| Anyway these softwares use to have there crack/patch tools with
| them (with music and effects and whatnot). These cracks often had
| virus or trojen in them. I have bored my windows many many times.
| Ghost helped with that immensely. I had 1 or 2 fresh install with
| basic setup ghost backup always available. After every bork, it
| only took a minute to restore my windows to fresh clean state.
| Kaspersky was the best anti virus back then, no other tool
| repaired my corrupted softwares like it. Norton anti virus use to
| scream only after getting infected itself.
|
| We have it lot easy now.
| unixhero wrote:
| Kaspersky was the very best, it could handle any bad case
| better than any of the others.
|
| I used to use the cataloging software WhereIsIt. It was really
| genious.
| txdv wrote:
| I also reinstalled windows one too many times and used norton
| backup.
|
| I am not clever enough to understand that I could just do it
| with linux by disk dumping into an image, but hey, old times
| dmd wrote:
| Ghost was descended from my absolute favorite late-90s / early
| 00s tool, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoBack which, as you
| say, let you undo absolutely anything you did to your machine.
|
| I wish I had something like it on Mac.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Superduper is a useful Mac utility, as is CCC (Carbon Copy
| Cloner)
| dmd wrote:
| Those are backup tools, which have little to nothing to do
| with what I'm talking about.
| spmurrayzzz wrote:
| GoBack was great. I gotta believe there's a way to manually
| instrument this using `tmutil` to create incremental APFS
| snapshots and some middleware code that knows when to wait
| for for the FS to be idle, but that's handwaving a ton of
| details.
| astrostl wrote:
| > GoBack was designed by Wild File, Inc., a company located
| in Plymouth, Minnesota. The software was shown at COMDEX in
| November 1998 and released in December 1998.
|
| > GHOST (an acronym for general hardware-oriented system
| transfer), now called Symantec(tm) GHOST Solution Suite (GSS)
| for enterprise, is a disk cloning and backup tool originally
| developed by Murray Haszard in 1995 for Binary Research.
|
| ^^ GHOST was not descended from GoBack
|
| As for something like GoBack on Mac, if you're using a recent
| macOS and have an APFS filesystem you can take/restore whole-
| disk snapshots with Time Machine, tmutil from the CLI, or a
| third-party tool like Carbon Copy Cloner.
| dmd wrote:
| You're right, the article said "replaced by" and I assumed
| it had some lineage, but no.
|
| Time Machine is file-based, whereas GoBack was block-based.
| GoBack could revert absolutely anything - even changes a
| program made to the OS or even to the boot sector! If you
| did something that made the machine not bootable, it was
| still a matter of seconds to boot into the GoBack
| supervisor and ask it to revert to a previous state.
|
| APFS is quite powerful but its functionality hasn't been
| really exposed very well to the user.
| astrostl wrote:
| Since Catalina the OS itself is in a read-only volume and
| everything else is separate - by default, respectively
| "Macintosh HD" and "Data" as exposed in Disk Utility.
| Strictly speaking, I think programs _cannot_ change the
| OS or boot sector. The only thing I know of that can is a
| macOS upgrade itself, and it does automatically take a
| pre-upgrade snapshot for the ability to restore.
| dmd wrote:
| Sure, but suppose I run something that spews all over,
| say, my homebrew install. That's not "part of the OS",
| but it might as _well_ be.
|
| Can apfs snapshots roll that back? Probably? But that
| functionality isn't exposed to mere mortals (and
| certainly not on the startup volume).
|
| If there's a way to do this:
|
| 1. make-some-kind-of-snapshot abc123
|
| 2. make some changes all over the place (I don't know
| where!) that i then want to revert
|
| 3. restore-to abc123
|
| and at this point, the entire system is exactly,
| precisely, bit for bit how it was after step 1 -- and
| where step 3 takes just a few seconds -- well, I'd love
| to know about it.
| astrostl wrote:
| Time Machine can do that. Whether they're automatic or
| manual backups, you can boot your system in recovery mode
| and restore from a backup to fully revert to a previous
| snapshot. It will require a reboot and the speed of
| execution will depend on the size of the changeset from
| the current state.
| 101008 wrote:
| Reminded of DiskFreeze (or something ismilar, Freeze was for
| sure in the name), that i installed in my PC after seeing it as
| some cyber cafes. Basically, one partition with all the
| software was under this DiskFreeze, and another partition /
| disk where I stored documents and files. DiskFreeze restored
| the disk/partition with OS+software on every restart, meaning
| that I was infected or corrupted or anything, a simple restart
| would fix the machine.
|
| The trick to install a software was to disable it, restart,
| install it, enable it again and restart again. I only did that
| after installing a software and test it for a few hours or
| days, which of course didn't mean anything, but at least I
| didn't see any visible problem.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Deep Freeze
| userbinator wrote:
| This: https://www.faronics.com/products/deep-freeze
| rzzzt wrote:
| XP had a good snapshot/restore tool:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_SteadyState
|
| You can install a write filter on later embedded versions of
| Windows but this was available for home or cafe use as well.
| pixelbath wrote:
| It was simply "Ghost" before Norton bought it and made it more
| terrible and bloated over time. We (at a computer shop I worked
| at) used Ghost to build a pre-OOBE image for several common
| Windows configurations and then just image them to new PCs in a
| few minutes, then apply the license key afterward.
| klaussilveira wrote:
| We need one of these for the Raspberry Pi, but native. And old
| monitor + pi inside would be an amazing retro PC build. I have it
| running on DosBox, but it's not that great.
| naikrovek wrote:
| This is very cool but who is installing Win98 so much that this
| is useful?
|
| That said I am all for this project, I just don't know who would
| use it.
| accrual wrote:
| Retrocomputing has blasted off into a larger hobby as of late.
| I think it's a combination of COVID free time in 2020, plus the
| demographic that grew up with early Windows is now old enough
| to appreciate the OS more and wants to re-experience it with
| modern tools and knowledge.
|
| I don't personally install Windows 98 nearly often enough to
| justify a tool like this, regular vanilla installs are fine
| with me. But some do a lot of benchmarking and testing on
| modern hardware, e.g. user "O_MORES" has a configuration to run
| Windows 98 alongside Windows 11 and frequently expands it.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| This just begs the question: Why was the basic Win98 question so
| ^%$#^% slow?
| wg0 wrote:
| I'm too far away from a windows machine for far too long. Is it
| possible to run Windows 98 on modern hardware especially when no
| one would be shipping any drivers?
|
| Also, what's the use case for it?
|
| Lastly, wondering if MS still sells Windows 98 if someone needs
| because of some specific reason.
| accrual wrote:
| Yes, actually! Search for user "O_MORES". They're active on
| Reddit and possibly Vogons. They have successfully dual booted
| Windows 98 and Windows 10/11 on modern hardware. The key is to
| use a supported PCI/PCIe graphics, audio, and network cards
| then slot them into a modern motherboard. The sheer speed of
| modern hardware makes up for a lot of shortcomings.
|
| For use cases - for me at least, it's for fun, nostalgia, and
| because I enjoy diving deeper into old hardware and OSs that I
| didn't have the experience to when they were new. Everyone has
| their own reasons, but I think this is a common one.
|
| No need to buy Windows 98 anymore though, clean known-good OEM
| ISOs are available on WinWorldPC along with accompanying
| product keys.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@O_mores/videos
| chungy wrote:
| > Lastly, wondering if MS still sells Windows 98 if someone
| needs because of some specific reason.
|
| They do, in fact buying Windows in a commercial setting
| basically entitles you to all the prior versions:
| https://download.microsoft.com/download/6/8/9/68964284-864d-...
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| I saw this demoed on this video where the guy builds the fastest
| DOS computer possible
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LIPTQjQAPE
| andix wrote:
| That's exactly what I was looking for, around 28 years ago ;)
| redeeman wrote:
| but why not just install manually, keep an image?
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