I would like to know if it is possible to put WIN98 on a USB pendrive? I saw some machines can boot from USB device, could they boot from a USB stick? My computer doesn't support it, but maybe I could have it install WIN98 on it. Is it possible to set DOS to recognize the USB stick so the WIN98 installer can see it and be willing to be installed onto it?

Yes it is possible. You can put a win98 image onto the boot sector- put all the files onto the usb drive and the installer will load.
Only problem is- it will crash- because like Windows XP- you need to manually add usb drivers after the computer resets and searched for the source - adding the drivers is not easy.

I saw a website somewhere(dont remeber now) where somebody made all this possible and all you need to copy to the usb drive. Just use your favourite search engine and look around

a good start is
http://www.bootdisk.com/

and this is a nice website with free boot images and software
http://www.allbootdisks.com/

good luck

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These are very good Win98 resources:
http://www.mdgx.com/spx/
http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/8-windows-959898seme/

I put the pendrive into a computer with USB boot support motherboard. I removed every hard drive. Without any special settings, the WIN98 isntaller and boot cd recognized the USB pendrive as drive C:, and started installing the OS on it. The problem is that the install process reports disk error every time, always at varios stages of the install process. Sometimes the install process reaches a very advanced state, yet it reports problem after a while, and it stops. My pendrive is quite new, so I am not sure what may cause the problem. I freshly formatted it with FAT. Maybe the isntaller cannot use the pendrive effectively, it has no proper drivers? Or what may cause the problem?

Oh- you want to install windows onto a pendrive? I though you want to put the isntaller on the pen drive and install it onto your HDD.

Still- it will be drivers.
I installed many linux distros onto usb pendrives and used then on old and new computers no problem.
Then from inside Linmux i ran a XP Virtual Machine or use Wine. (there is no purpose in doing this) Plus there is an open source(some community is rebuilding windows using not using windows code but works jsut like windows) Windows somewhere on the internet that supports USB very well on isntall and sourcing.. again i have no links - sorry.

I manged to install windows to pen drive once- it ran like crap and it only worked on that computer.

Essentially its drivers- i think you can install windows 7 to a pen drive without any changes... but have not tried that yet.
Are you using win98SE? - you need to manually change some settings in the windows installer scripts for you to succeed in doing that.

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The Question has to be why?

Why install a dead OS on a medium it was never designed for.

1. Where is your swap going to reside?
2. As soon as you move it to another system, the drivers will be broken.
3. Are you EVER going to get it to load and run correctly?


If you really want to do such things:
1. get a bigger flash drive
2. install linux
3. Emulate win98 under linux.
The advantages are that linux is designed to work from a flash drive, the win98 will have a linux wrapper which protects the win 98 drivers and at least linux handles flash media better than win98.

But the big question still has to be why

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IF your system has more than 512mb you can turn the paging file off in Win98- if you going to use win98 to run software heavy on memory - then increase your ram and keep paging off.

In windows XP you need minimum 1gb to turn paging off and this usually works best on net books with ssd's that do not run photoshop cs3 - just msn, paint or facebook.

But the question still remains why Win98. Besides- you want to use WIN98SE. and why to a flash drive?
If you just want a clean windows environment goto to

hirendownlaod.com

burn the CD and there is a XPLite - Its loads windows XP into memory and in runs almost like normal - lots of features cut out- but you can customise that image todo what you want. i suppose.

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try those links:

http://portableapps.com/

http://www.customusb.com/portable-apps.html

http://www.pendriveapps.com/

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Win98/98SE has RAM limitations, although some people have circumvented these:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/118097- ... age__st__1

In fact problems usually start at 512MB.

I need the portable os to be able to take my own os settings with myself. I was told Win98 tolerates chipset changes, XP not, so that's why I wanted to choose that. However I didn't notice until now that there are portable versions of XP, today I managed to install such an XP to my USB flash drive, it is a full XP, not a minimal version, and it is portable, so the problem is solved now. The only thing that causes problems is that it doesn't recognise my USB modem. I says I need to isntall drivers, but it makes complications, because it is a plug and play device with no derivers.

you can build your own portable winXP btw

there is a utility for that, reads ur XP CD and customize drivers that u wanted
i made my own for most of SATA/SCSI drivers and its only 350mb i think

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

What is that utility?

hmmm google something called: "nLite"

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

Even plug and pray need drivers - so the version you have is not completely full. Finding drivers for your modem should be a piece of pie. Start with a properly installed version and trace what you need.

win98 and modems.. it brings back phreaking memories.

nLite is brialliant- forgot about that.

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you may add any driver to nLite and use it... very easy/simple

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein