Problem Installing Windows 98 SE

[SanAndreasEleva]

Since Sunday I've been attempting to install Windows 98 SE for the first time in Workstation 14 Pro and I keep running into the same strange problem that I haven't heard of anyone else having and have found no information neither in the VMware community nor elsewhere online about it whatsoever (I'm currently on my eleventh attempt I believe). My memory setting is 256 MB of RAM and the virtual hard disk is 8 GB (IDE), I have tried installing this with a CD-ROM bootable ISO as well as a CD-ROM ISO with a boot floppy image. As far as going through formatting the disk, going through the first part of setup, picking out components to install, entering names and product key, etc, that all goes fine. But then I reach the point where it says, "Setting up hardware: Windows 98 is now setting up your hardware and any Plug and Play devices you may have..." At this point I'm supposed to have the date & time settings come up, but instead I get two error messages:

And here's the "Explorer" error message with details:

Clicking Close and OK on both of them doesn't do any good as the operating system just sits there and when I restart the vm the same kind of messages bombard the entire installation process, doing a second restart will get me to the login window but when I hit Cancel the same messages come back up and Windows will not start up, so my vm is basically a brick.

Now I have no clue what I'm doing wrong here, because I have watched several Youtube tutorials and have re-watched them several times following their similar if not exact steps and I have done thorough research to see if anyone else has ever had this problem and as to what exactly causes this problem and have found less than relevant results. I have tried numerous methods, including:

Running hardware compatibility for VMWare Workstation (I set it to Workstation 6.5-7 in my last attempt)

Setting USB compatibility to 1.1 in vm settings

Splitting the virtual hard disk into multiple files

Reducing the hard disk size to 2 GB

Adjusting the RAM

Using a different ISO from a different source

And I STILL get the EXACT same error messages in the EXACT same point during the installation process.

I'll list the specs of my PC so that hopefully it may help someone here point out the culprit of this problem:

Motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus AX370 Gaming K5

Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 Eight-Core Processor 3.00 GHz

RAM: 16 GB DDR4

SSD: Samsung SSD 960 EVO 250 GB

HDD: Seagate Barracuda SD2000DM006 2 TB

External Hard Drive (Back-up): Seagate Backup Plus Hub 8 TB (USB 3.0)

Graphics Card: ASUS GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

Host Operating System: Windows 10 Pro x64 Version 1709 (Build 16299.125)

Two-Monitor Setup: Both are ASUS VS248 Resolution is 1920x1080

Speakers: Bose Companion 5 USB 2.0

Keyboard: Logitech USB 2.0

Mouse: Microsoft USB 2.0

I know some of these specs aren't necessary to list but I did anyway just in case they may be behind the culprit of the problem.

This is not only really irritating me because I feel that I'm the only one having this problem, but it also really baffles me because there are no videos on Youtube or elsewhere (that I'm currently aware of) that have ANY evidence of the same issue that I'm having and in some of my attempts, I've had my vm settings set to the EXACT same specs as the video tutorial on Youtube and I have problems while the installations in the tutorial videos are uneventful. And I was really looking forward to getting this running and installing Plus! on it and recreating the themes for my Windows 7 vm. Any help will be very much appreciated. Thanks.

[voidp]

VMware Documentation for Windows 98

"The recommended memory size for Windows 98 is 64MB"

Problem with instalation of Windows 98 SE

"When you run the 'Create new Virtual Machine' Wizard, one of the selections is 'Workstation version'.  This affects the virtual hardware version in the config file.  Dial it back to an older version of Workstation compatibility, in order to select Win98 as the guest OS."

[SanAndreasEleva]

Just attempted installing it with "Workstation 6.5-7" compatibility and 64 MB of RAM and still having the same scenario, both error messages still show up.

Most if not all of the tutorial videos I've seen had a memory setting of 256 MB of RAM with an uneventful installation. And a lot of them don't even dial down the hardware version.

Also keep in mind that I've already tried setting compatibility to "Workstation 6.5-7" in the attempt before this.

[a_p_]

Not sure whether it helps. but I've attached my Windows 98 configuration (.vmx) file.

If it shows the same issue, then please attach your configuration file to a reply post.

Btw. you mentioned ISO and floppy installation attempts. Assuming that you were using the same ISO image, can you confirm that this is healthy?

André

[SanAndreasEleva]

Apparently the download won't work for some reason "Failed - File incomplete" (Chrome). Why don't I attach my configuration file and see what happens for you.

And I've tried 3 ISOs so far, two of them are CD-ROM bootable (where the first thing that comes up upon power on is the Windows 98 CD-ROM startup menu) and 1 is the ISO that requires a boot image (where you have to manually run FDISK and format C:). I got the same error messages on all three of them.

Anyways here is my configuration file.

[a_p_]

A quick look at the files (i've uploaded my .vmx file again) didn't show many differences. The main difference I'm seeing is that I'm running Workstation 8 on Win7.

I'm can't really say what's causing the issue. What may be worth trying, is to remove unnneeded virtual hardware from the VM's configuration (e.g. the USB controller).

André

[voidp]

Your .vmx file includes the line:

virtualHW.version = "14"

Are you sure you chose hardware compatibility 6.5-7.x?

I just installed 98 SE to a new machine in vmware workstation 11.1.4 with hardware compatibility 6.5-7.x and my .vmx file (attached) includes the line:

virtualHW.version = "7"

Also: I sorted our respective .vmx files before comparing them (with the utility Beyond Compare).

[SanAndreasEleva]

Sorry for the late reply, I was away from my PC and got busy with other things.

USB was one of the first things I had originally thought would be behind the problem because I've heard Windows 98 can be a bit persnickety with USB devices. I just tried installing it with the USB controller removed, still getting the exact same error messages.

Not sure if this would help but would giving you my log file do any good at determining anything out of the ordinary? I'll attach it just in case.

[a_p_]

Did you try it with the configuration file I posted before?

Maybe the virtual hardware version - "14" in your .vmx, and "8" in mine - makes a difference!?

André

[SanAndreasEleva]

Just tried installing it with your configuration file, same result.

I am at a complete and total loss here...

Very strange problem... Isn't it?

[Susie201110141]

What about your other Guest OS installation ?

What's your host OS version? I have an AMD Ryzen machine, and will try to see whether same situation will happen.

[SanAndreasEleva]

Host OS is Windows 10 Pro x64 Version 1709 Build 16299.125

How did the installation work for you?

[Tony_Goodhew]

Did anyone happen to find the answer to this as I'm having exactly the same issue with Win98SE

[senoctar]

Hi,

I had the same issue and solved it by disabling acceleration, but the system will be slow. It's probably an issue with ryzen CPUs because I also have the issue in VirtualBox (I have the same CPU and a different Gigabyte MB). With VirtualBox however I was able to disable only "Nested Paging", which fixes the issue and doesn't slow down the system as much.

[ncuky]

Disabling "Nested Paging" solved the problem for me!

I had the exact same problem at the same place in the setup process (using VirtualBox, not VMWare), with very similar host hardware (AMD Ryzen 7 2700x 8-core 3.7GHz on a Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi). Disabling "Nested Paging" fixed the issue and I was able to log into Windows 98 with no problem.

Thank you senoctar!

[miquelito]

I'm having similar issues, but not quite the same.  I get to the Windows 98 Setup portion where you enter your Time Zone and then various setup features occur.

Then, I have a problem with Regsvr32 as seen in this screenshot:

I'm really at a loss here.  I've tried several things but to no avail. 

I've seen the posts regarding Nested Paging, but I've been unable to determine what that is or what settings to apply to disable it.

Do you or anyone else have any thoughts on this particular issue I'm seeing?  It is consistent.  It doesn't matter how many times I start over and repeat the install, this is generally what I see at this point.

I'm using VMWare Workstation 15 with Workstation 6.5-7.0 compatibility, 128MB memory, 10GB fully allocated HD, networking, and USB.

Here are my host machine stats:

Windows 10 Pro (lastest update)

AMD FX-8350 8-Core Processor

MSI 970 MB

32 GB RAM

Any insight or tips on what to try next would be appreciated.

[Joatamonk]

I was able to resolve the Windows 98 issue on AMD Ryzen by making 3 changes to the config. The workstation was the "latest (15.x)".

First under edit the VMware config pages, click processors, and check "Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI" and "Virtualize CPU performance Counters". Under, options tab, under advanced, I checked "Disable Memory Page Trimming"

See if that helps.