I bought a used Dell Latitude E6430 laptop without an OS along with a Win98 install disc. Will it install just like any other OS or am I in for a big hassel?
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Installing Windows 98 SE on Dell computer
Started by
roadbum1660
, Feb 03 2023 09:49 AM
12 replies to this topic
#1
roadbum1660
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#2
cryptodan
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Posted 03 February 2023 - 10:26 AM
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#3
Porthos
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Posted 03 February 2023 - 12:15 PM
I have a feeling the hardware is too new for 98. XP is the oldest OS Dell supports for the e6430.
#4
ranchhand_
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Posted 03 February 2023 - 03:19 PM
I'm afraid that Porthos is correct; it doesn't hurt to try, but W98 will be looking for hardware that has gone extinct long ago. I have tried installing '98 on new machines a couple of times and it won't work. Also...remember that any drive you attempt to install on must be formatted in FAT, not NTFS.
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#5
roadbum1660
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Posted 03 February 2023 - 07:23 PM
Thanks ranchhand_ this was what I was afraid of, Well I haven't done it yet so we'll see. Looks Like I'll have to do a little more research on the subject. By the way, all I was really interested in doing was to play around with it. Win 98 was the first OS I remember when I first got into computers.
#6
roadbum1660
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Posted 03 February 2023 - 07:26 PM
That's it, I ordered it off Ebay with no OS
#7
cryptodan
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Posted 03 February 2023 - 07:46 PM
Put linux on it.
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#8
ranchhand_
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Posted 04 February 2023 - 08:00 AM
Windows 98 can run a lot of Abandonware games that were DOS games. I also tried Dosbox and some other VM machines, but it wasn't smooth sailing with them either. There are always glitches, sound problems, etc. Sometimes the game ran, but it was so fast that you couldn't play it. Other times the keyboard didn't work right, mouse was glitchy, and so forth.
I have an old 98 machine that was a hot machine for its day, and it runs perfectly, so I use that occasionally.
I'm really not into games any more. Too many other interesting things to do.
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#9
roadbum1660
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Posted 04 February 2023 - 12:36 PM
I've got DOSbox downloaded onto a laptop running WinXP for playing abandonware like Daggerfall but I'm just not catching on as to how to get it to run properly, but that's another story. I've watched a video describing how to download 98 onto a thumb drive but that too comes across as a complicated mess. As things now stand, I'll just have to return the copy of Win 98 I ordered and hang onto the laptop I also bought off of Ebay. Another case of "Live and learn," I guess.
#10
ranchhand_
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Posted 04 February 2023 - 01:53 PM
Well, keep your eyes open; sometimes someone will have an old computer sitting in the basement that he forgot about and it's a W95 or 98 machine. That's what you need.
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#11
roadbum1660
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Posted 05 February 2023 - 09:33 AM
I'm going to send the OS disk back but keep the computer. There are several laptops available on ebay that have Win 98 installed on them but you can't touch any of them for less than $200.00 ain't that a kick in the head?
#12
JohnC_21
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Posted 05 February 2023 - 12:58 PM
Instead of Dosbox look and Dfend Reloaded which is a GUI front end to Dosbox.
https://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/
#13
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