Win98 without floppy?

[Lars(NL)]

Hello CodeGuru community,

I've been trying to install Windows 98 on my laptop under VMware with the purpose of being able to test programming projects of mine under Windows 98 and spot incompatibilities so that I may fix them.
Thus far however, various attempt to make it install properly have had no avail.

The problem is as follows:

When I first boot the VM it starts the CD (which it does from my physical DVD-R/W drive) properly.
I first select "Boot from CD-ROM", then "Start Windows 98 setup from cd-rom.". and it enters the setup just fine.
Then I follows these steps:

I select "Configure unallocated disk space.".
Then "No, no support for large drives.".

At that point I get a screen that reads the following:
The computer will be restarted.
Please make sure that the Windows 98 boot floppy is in drive A:
Press ENTER to proceed.
Thus I press ENTER, as it is the only option I have but then it restarts and I get an error message from VMware saying "no bootable floppy, cd-rom or hard disk" was detected.
As for the floppy part, I indeed have no floppy drive, so I cannot supply a bootable floppy through a physical drive and even if there's a workaround I wouldn't even know if I have a Windows 98 boot floppy at all.

My question: Is it normal that you always need to supply a floppy during the Windows 98 setup and if so, is there any way I can still install the OS somehow without one?
I think I must be missing something, if anyone knows what please let me know...

Thanks in advance,
Lars

PS: Before anyone starts to wonder why all the messages are somewhat off, which I expect them to be; it's because my version of Windows 98 is dutch and I translated the messages in this post.

[Krishnaa]

As I remember, you can boot from 98 CD Rom without starting the installation, there you can make changes to file system(creating etc.) and later you can re-boot and run 98 setup from same disk. You dont need floppy.

[PeejAvery]

"No, no support for large drives."
Why did you select that?

[Lars(NL)]

Why did you select that?

I didn't need it, but I also tried with support for large drives just to be sure and it went the exact same way.

[Lars(NL)]

As I remember, you can boot from 98 CD Rom without starting the installation, there you can make changes to file system(creating etc.) and later you can re-boot and run 98 setup from same disk. You dont need floppy.

Right, I now started from CD without going into the installation, I went into fdisk, created a partition for the OS and rebooted.
Then it didn't even attempt to boot from CD or floppy anymore and immediately displayed the dutch version of the message "Missing operating system.".

[PeejAvery]

What version of 98 are you attempting to install. I don't remember any versions ever asking for a boot floppy.

[Lars(NL)]

What version of 98 are you attempting to install. I don't remember any versions ever asking for a boot floppy.

Windows 98 SE if I'm not mistaken.

[PeejAvery]

Well, try another method...

Boot the CD without installing. This should bring you to DOS. Run the sys command to give the drive a boot sector. Then use copy to copy the cab files over to the hard disk. From there, you should be able to boot the install without recognizing a CD-ROM. There should be no asking for peripheral devices.

Summary
1. Boot CD without install.
2. DOS command => sys c:
3. DOS command => xcopy /e CDROMLETTER:\win98 c:\win98
*xcopy can be found under the folder CDROM:\tools\oldmsdos
4. Run the install from the HDD. c:\win98\setup.exe

[Lars(NL)]

Well, try another method...

Boot the CD without installing. This should bring you to DOS. Run the sys command to give the drive a boot sector. Then use copy to copy the cab files over to the hard disk. From there, you should be able to boot the install without recognizing a CD-ROM. There should be no asking for peripheral devices.

Well, after it finally worked I've been trying to figure out what exactly was the problem and I'm not even sure what it was still. :-P

First, I tried through the setup and it would force a reboot, then say it couldn't find either a floppy, a cd-rom or a local hard drive, even though at least those last two were present.
I could change the boot order in my BIOS to anything, with no avail, it would keep displaying the message even if I put floppy last or anything.

Then I read this message and tried that.
I'm not sure how I was supposed to get "sys c:" working without a formatted partition, but either way in the end it did appear to work if I went into fdisk to create an unformatted partition, then reboot and change the boot order in my BIOS (this time wielding an actual result) and booting into the setup which finally allowed me to format and install.

I'm guessing I just missed some detail somewhere that you - PeejAvery - would've seen, but I didn't.
I guess it's because I'm pretty much from the Windows XP era myself. ;)

Thanks for your help anyway, poking around in the direction you sent me eventually got it to work... somehow. :p

Thanks and regards,
Lars

[PeejAvery]

I'm guessing I just missed some detail somewhere that you - PeejAvery - would've seen, but I didn't.
I guess it's because I'm pretty much from the Windows XP era myself. ;)
Haha. Yeah, a lot has changed since I started working with Windows 3.1. You could have used FDISK and FORMAT before sys-ing the drive. Oh well. I'm glad your problem is solved.