Revisiting Windows 98's nostalgia

The other day, I was struck by nostalgia. After having to deal, at work, with the fact that Windows 7 is now discontinued, I was thinking about how some of the old Microsoft OSes were good and simply just worked.

I was just a kid when I got my first computer. My father had bought it circa 2002, and it was the best computer available in Brazil at the time, with incredible specs (which I made sure to boast while talking about it to my friends) of 512MB of RAM, a 9GB Hard Disk, 32x CD-ROM drive, and a glorious Intel Pentium III processor running at amazing 800MHz. Oh, and it came with Windows 98, Second Edition, in Brazillian Portuguese.

I think that at that time, it was already the dawn of Windows XP, since Windows 98 was already four years old, but I remember looking at Windows XP and thinking all those colors were ugly. The system was indeed very fast and capable, and as a kid I was worried that newer games were not going to run on 98 very soon, but something about 98's minimal looks always made it enjoyable to me.

Thinking in retrospect, after Windows 7, things got really really weird. I don't think that operating systems should come out-of-the-box with so many ads, online interactions and intrusive stuff such as insisting on using very specific default browsers (I'm looking at you, Edge).

So I wanted to experiment again with what Windows 98 has taught me. I decided I was going to install it on a virtual machine and do my best to make it usable in 2024, especially if I could do some programming on it. I recall that the last time I tried I failed miserably, but that wouldn't happen this time – and it didn't.

The following bits are a structured version of my notes after configuring Windows 98 on VirtualBox. Make sure you get everything you need before starting. And if you happen to find stuff you want to install but isn't here, I recommend either creating an ISO containing your files with mkisofs, or setting up an FTP server you can connect to by using the old version of FileZilla that runs on W98.

You'll need a few things along the way. These are necessary for a minimal experience:

• VirtualBox (an updated version is enough);
• A Windows 98 Second Edition ISO. I am using a Brazillian Portuguese ISO. It is not an unaltered copy, but it was the best I found since I wanted a Brazillian Portuguese system.
• A patch for allowing up to 4GB of RAM on Windows 98.
• SciTech Display Doctor video driver, as explained on this post on VirtualBox forums. This is an abandonware ISO containing the driver.
• DirectX 9.0c Redistributable.
• KernelEx 4.5.2 and unicows.exe, for forward compatibility with newer versions of Windows.
• Internet Explorer 6 installer (Brazillian Portuguese)
• (OPTIONAL) AutoPatcher for Windows 98 SE. I did not use this since it kind of messes up my language settings on the computer, but it is probably a good thing to use if you want a safer system with latest patches.

Notice that most of these software can be found on the Internet Archive, so if you're not seeing something in your desired version or language, you can always download abandonware from the archive for free – some are even posted by Microsoft themselves!

mkisofs -lJR -o util.iso util

Now let's allow up to 4GB of RAM on our Windows 98 machine. Go ahead and download the 4GB Patch I mentioned earlier. I recommend creating an ISO with mkisofs and mounting it on the VM.

The files are already disposed on the hierarchy they are supposed to be on C:\ drive, so you should just copy the files to their desired location. However, make sure you rename the files that are being replaced, in case anything goes wrong.

In case some files are apparently missing, on Windows Explorer, go to Show > Folder Options, then allow hidden files to be viewed.

After finishing, turn off the virtual machine. Go back to VirtualBox, right click the virtual machine and go to Settings. On the System section, go ahead to the slider called Base Memory and set it to 4096MB.

Start your virtual machine once again. It is possible that an error occurs on the first boot; if that happens, just turn of the machine and turn it on again.

Finally, right click on My Computer and go to Properties. You should see that your virtual machine now has close to 4GB of RAM installed.

Firstly, turn off your VM, right click it on VirtualBox, then go to Settings. On the Display tab, set Video Memory to 128MB, and activate "Enable 3D Acceleration".

Boot the virtual machine and mount the ISO for SciTech Display Driver. You should be able to run the installer from D:\ driver and you'll also find a text file containing the activation, which will be needed later.

Do an express installation and, at the end, allow it to reboot your computer.

On boot, you should see the following screen for SciTech Display Doctor. Scroll down, select Register Now, and use the credentials on the text file on the disc.

You'll be prompted to reboot at the end; do it again. Once you do, on the video driver's dashboard, select "Monitor not selected" and, on the new screen that opens, select a proper Super VGA resolution.

Reboot Windows again and you'll see that the monitor was selected.

Now click the "Disabled" link beside "SciTech Display Driver". On the new screen, select SciTech Nucleus Driver. Apply and reboot again.

Now you'll see that the Graphics Adapter for VirtualBox is properly recognized on the dashboard.

Now, right click on the desktop and select Properties, then go to the Configuration tab. On Colors, select High Color (16 bits), then click OK.

You'll be prompted to reboot once more. The reboot may hang; allow it to be like that for a few seconds, then force a reboot through VirtualBox. If Windows asks whether you want to boot on Safe Boot, just pick Normal Boot.

Once again, right click the Desktop and go to properties. Now you should be able to select True Color (32 bit) mode, and a proper resolution – I'm picking 1024x768.

Now your desktop works with proper colors and a proper resolution!

Now that we have a video driver installed, we might have problems while running applications such as the MS-DOS Prompt, for example.

This is an easy fix, but not an obvious one. According to one of the answers on a forum, it's a vcache issue.

Go to Start > Execute, and type System.ini, then press Enter. You'll be presented with an .ini file on Notepad.

Find the [vcache] section and add the new line, like the example below (do not just replace the entire section if there's something already there!):

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=512000

Save the file, exit and reboot. You should now be able to run the MS-DOS Prompt with no further problems.

Some programs will simply not run on Windows 98, period. But sometimes you can force them to run like newer versions of Windows through a compatibility layer called KernelEx.

First, run the installation for unicows.exe and, when prompted to an extract location, use C:\Windows\System (Note that this is not System32!).

Afterwards, run the KernelEx installation. Enable KernelEx extensions for all applications and, when prompted to reboot, do it.

You should now be able to right click any application or shortcut, go to Properties, and then you'll see a KernelEx tab where you can configure the kernel to act like some newer versions of Windows.

At this point, run the installer for Internet Explorer 6. It should extract all installer files and then execute the setup.

This process will update Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and Outlook Express.

Notice that the installer will automatically reboot the system after installation!

Some of the following programs are stuff I installed for enjoying the system.