Windows 98 on CD

What you Need:

First off, here’s what you need. Its not a short list by any means, some things are absolute musts and some things are really important, and some are just nice to use.  You decide what your needs and possibilities are, and respond accordingly.

Absolute Necessities:Don’t neglect these, or IT WILL NOT WORK!!!

1. A licensed copy of Windows 98 1^st edition or SE

2. Xmsdsk.exe  (http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/4825.html) Ramdisk Driver for DOS/WIN9X

3. Coa2.exe. This is a utility released by PcMag but which can still be found lying around the net here and there. I found it at at http://ftp.ucv.ve/pub/SistemasOperativos/Windows/Aplicaciones/Freeware/Coa2/coa2.zip

4. Pkunzip (I found it at http://www.vobis.de/bbs/shareware/brett09/pkz204g.exe ). Any number of freeware/GNU unzippers would work though.

5. Doslfn(http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~heha/hs_freeware/doslfn.zip).  This is a freeware API that lets you write long file names in DOS. Its an absolute must if you want everything to work right.

6. 98lite by Shane Brookes. This is a killer program, folks. I would recommend purchasing the full version; it is only $25 and it opens up great possibilities for this windows on CD project. Otherwise, an older 2.2 beta version is available at http://www.tweakpc.com/Download_files/98lite22.zip .  New versions, including professional with micro install, at http://www.litepc.com/ . You can pick up ieradicator there also!

7. Ettool.exe              (http://www.nu2.nu/nu2files/ettool14.zip ) This will be discussed later.

Very Very Very Highly and otherwise incredibly recommended:

I would say not to miss out on these tools – its great stuff, some of it really great although hard to find at times.

1. drive rescue 1.9d: DO NOT MISS THIS PROGRAM.  It is no longer available for free from most of the net, but I tracked it down for you ( from this page: http://www.norman.riel.com/downloads.htm ).  It can salvage deleted files, lost files, and do all kindsa cool stuff.  Pick it up and save it with all your archives, cause it won’t be findable much longer.

2. power quest partition magic 5. You must have the dos versionwith this; I’ve seen it for sale pretty cheap and where I live it has been a freebee with some computer magazines. It’s a nice tool and can deal with ext2/ext3 and NTFS.  For those of you who are a little less than honest, a search on google or filesearching.com for pqpb.rtc will found the dos version sooner or later.  Axcel216 also provided this link to some help with PM5 (and a dload)   http://www.mvps.org/dts/WinME_DOS/partition_magic_5.htm.  TNKS.

3. ICEows (http://www.iceows.com/HomePageUS.html) 7-zip, or any one of the tens of freeware zip utilities

4. Grisoft antivirus (free for personal use: http://www.grisoft.com/html/us_downl.htm) – or else get your favorite AV software

5. Windows 95 power toys:  send to extensions, target, command prompt here, tweakui

http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/WUToys/W95KernelToy/Default.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/WUToys/W95PwrToysSet/Default.asp 

http://ftp.urc.ac.ru/pub/OS/Windows/utilities/w95gray.exe

Check out these other send to toys:  http://www.gabrieleponti.com/software/

6. Freeware Hex Editor – Funduc makes a nice one

7. A replacement notepadthat doesn’t limit itself to smaller files. My preference: http://www.gena01.com/win32pad/

8. Defrag.exe and Scandisk.exe from Windows Millenium. You technically need a licensed copy of this OS to use these, but they are incomparably better than their predecessors from windows 95 and 98.

9. Multiple Rename– this is a great little utility originally put out by PCMag.  It is very useful, especially if you work with digital cameras and lots of images. They want you to pay them for it now, but you can find it in various places on the web. I found it here: http://www.tparents.org/Lib-Othr.htm

10.  Handyfile find and Replace – this is a kewl tewl that does what the name says. It’s a no go for binary operations, but it’ll work miracles on web pages, .inf files, text files, etc.  Its real small, fast and you can get it at: http://silveragesoftware.com/hffr.html

11.  Analogx’s Dll Archiver– great program to help you trim down the windows\system folder!  Get it here:  http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/dllarch.htm

For a list of all kinds of things which YOU might want to include and take a look at are over at axcel216’s site: http://members.aol.com/axcel216/95.htm .  It’s a long read, but he has some good suggestions.  Be careful of space restrictions, though –it’s easy to go over 110MB!

Internet Access: If you plan on using the net, I really recommend getting these things. They are very small programs, do their jobs well, and best of all, they are mostly freeware / GNU.

1. Miranda IM – (http://www.miranda-im.org) GNU freeware messenger – compatible with ICQ, AIM; MSN, etc.

2. Opera 7 – easy on the disk space, includes browser and email client

3. Haim’s netmeter or a similar network monitor ( a freeware version is available at ftp://ftp.freenet.de/pub/.disk0/filepilot/windows/netzwerk/netmetersetup.exe - this version will work with windows98 but not with 98lite’s micro 98 modification, for which you would need haim’s netmeter 1.3. can’t tell you where to get it though.)

Multimedia: Who doesn’t like a little fun while at work?  These are my suggestions if you want a little music or video action.

Winamp 2.8 – (www.winamp.com) I wouldn’t go beyond this for space concerns

Divx Codecs

Mp3 codecs

Mpg etc.

For Real TechnoGeeks: Most of these things costs money and aren’t for the faint of heart. If you know what they are, then you probably know what they’re ofr and what they’re worth. 

1. Winternals’ ntfs for NTFS read/write access from within windows 98. Unfortunately, this is somewhat self defeating unless you use multiple copies of system.ini.  The Winternals driver prevents quick restarts of windows and would therefore loose any kind of changes necessitating a restart, which then returns the system to the pre-mod state.

2. Explore2fs(or better, one of the similar packages that allow write access to ext2/ext3)

3. Binary search and Replace by fundus

            4. Resource Hacker

          5. Dependecy Checker