98SE and an old Sony Vaio laptop

[lolwut767]

Hi all.

I have spent nearly all day trying to work this out.

I have an old Sony PCG-Z600RE, that I want to install 98SE on.

Problem is, the PCMCIA CD drive does not like to be recognized by the virtual floppy that my CD copy of 98 has. (it seems to have an A: drive when there isn't, it starts from that and you can run FDisk and things.)

The main CD drive loader fails to find any disk drives.

(I managed to get it formatted with a bootable CD of a 98 bootdisk.)

I've tried injecting drivers into the 98 bootdisk CDs to no avail. I've tried searching the 98 disk for the dos files but came up empty.

Any help would be appreciated.

The drivers are fully supported, once you install windows 98.

Thanks.

 

[KingOfTheP4s]

So by my understanding, your copy of Windows 98SE is an ISO of the floppy disc version of windows 98SE?

If I'm imagining this correctly, your external CD drive is probably listed as the D: drive, so when you try to run the floppy version of windows on a the D: drive, you're doing something the original programmers didn't think of.

I believe that the floppy installation software is made to look for drivers and files only on A: and B: drives, which are the two letter commonly reserved for floppy drives. Because the software is actually on your D: drive, your hitting a bug where you can launch the installer off the disc, but it can't find the drivers and files because it can't find an A: or B: drive.

My suggestion would be to obtain an actual CD copy of Windows 98SE on Ebay or at a garage sale; they should be cheep and this option should work with no problems.

Your other option would be to find a way to assign your CD drive to be designated as drive A: or B:. This is the route of more resistance because DOS and/or Windows may throw a fit when you try to do this.

PS: A side note on the latter option

Although I'm not sure about Windows 98 install discs; some floppy disc installation software would instruct the read/write head to go to a certain sector on the floppy disc and read it. The sector wouldn't be listed as a file and might even be marked bad; but it would actually contain a sort of "authentication key" so-to-speak to verify that the disc was an original and not a copy-floppy. If the Win98SE floppy installation does this, you may hit a road block because the sector layout of a floppy-on-CD isn't the same and it may be missing these 'codes' altogether. Not sure if this is the case, but be forewarned; your best option is to buy a legit CD version of Windows. Make sure you get the matching serial key.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

The method of installation you are attempting is not supported. You have to boot off of a real floppy in order to install the necessary CD drivers.