Entries this day: installed_windows_98 windows_98

installed windows 98

20 July 1998

About a week ago, I got a Windows 98 CD and a new hard drive onto which to install it . My goal was to have three separate bootable partitions: Windows 95, Windows 98, and linux.

Each time I tried to install Windows 98, it tried to overwrite Windows 95. I didn't want that because I don't trust Microsoft to have written a good enough OS that I'll want to keep it.

I physically removed the two drives that have Win95 and linux on them and installed Win98 on the remaining drive.

That worked, but when I reinserted the two drives, it didn't work. I used linux partition manager to allow me to choose Win95 or linux or Win98. The first two worked, but Win98 would halt the system when it tried to load.

I guessed that was because I changed the drive letter by removing and adding hard drives. Okay, that makes sense, and I didn't get terribly pissed off at Microsoft.

So last night I had thought of a new idea.. Install Win95 on the third drive, then boot with that Win95 and install Win98 on top of *that* Win95 partition! Delightful!

I installed Win95 on the partition with no problem. I assume it was on that partition because I explicitly selected D:\Windows as the directory into which to install, and had to confirm that this drive designation was okay and changing this should only be done by expert users. yes yes yes it's fine.

I was not too surprised when after the install I found Win95 had squashed the linux partition manager so I would have to reinstall it to allow me to boot Linux or Win95 or Win95[2].

Since I had selected drive D: so carefully, I assumed the system was booting the Win95 partition on drive D. Right?

I installed Win98. This time, it gave me the option of which drive to install on. I chose drive D (short for "Duh, why didn't you give me this option last time???") and it installed.

Foreshadowing: (The procedure for installing Windows98 takes "between 30 and 60 minutes, depending on the speed of your computer." It took mine 47 minutes.) I mention this only to give you an idea of the frustration level coming up.

I rebooted and it came up Windows98 automatically. No surprise.

So I started with my Linux boot.img disk and added installed the linux partition manager. I labeled the partitions Win95, linux and Win98.

Rebooted and the partition manager prompt came up:

LILO:

This means "which partition should I load?"

I entered "linux" and it booted linux beautifully.

I rebooted and this time entered Win95. Windows 98 came up.

Oh shit. Oh wait. Maybe I got the two switched around.

I rebooted and this time entered Win98. The system halted.

Microsoft I hate you.

From a DOS prompt, it appears that all my Win95 stuff is still there, but it sure is not available from Win98. I don't know how to make it available either. What a pisser.

I went to bed, and at some point had a dream that I got Win98 uninstalled and all was good.

This morning I woke up lamenting my loss and trying to figure out how to resolve everything. I booted from my Win98 DOS prompt disk and read the help file and it said to unistall Win98, simply type uninstall at the DOS prompt.

It didn't say from what directory, so I found the executable and the executable said it could only be run from within Windows98.

Fine. So I booted Windows98 and ran uninstall and it gave me some ominous warning, something like,

"Microsoft writes crappy code. Continue?"

I did not continue. I'll call my friend Thomas who is Microsoft Certified and see if he has any ideas.

So for now, I'm using Linux to access the Internet and write my journal entries.

windows 98

20 July 1998

Well, I haven't heard from Thomas to help me get Windows 98 off of my machine here, so I decided to use it. I got my connection to Flashnet going easily enough, and got Netscape Communicator configured, but I have no frikkin' idea what Windows Messaging means by my "post office"

"Please enter the path to your post office," it says.

What? What the hell are you talking about? Is there a post office on my PC? Is it mail.flash.net? What do you mean?

argh.

So I cannot as of yet read my mail, but don't worry; I will keep working on this.

I did find that my C: drive appears to be intact. All the shortcuts are still in the C:\Windows\Desktop directory, and I just copied them over to my Win98 desktop. Most of them didn't work though; they are looking for some DLL or another.

So I can't work on my budget or me snail mail database or anything interesting. But I can access the web.

"So what, Rob," you may ask, "do you think of Windows 98?"

Well, it just looks like a cute-i-fied version of Win95. The opening screen is flashier. You can single click on icons to open them. Windows Explorer looks like Internet Explorer.

But it sure as hell isn't any easier to set up than Win95. What's a post office? Why did you eat my Win95 partition? Where's this super fast speed you were talking about?

I'm unimpressed with how much Win98 has advertising everywhere. Not like commercials on TV, but practically so with this new "Channel Guide" thing and the few specific ISPs that are suggested when I first tried to set up my ISP...

But, it's only been 1 day; we'll see how I feel about it tomorrow.