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Re: How to free DOS memory to run 677k file?

Cross-posted to 3 groups.

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DMcCunney wrote:

> It's actually off-topic here (and pointers to or a reply in a more
> relevant group are welcome,) but I have a different Win98 install
> issue.

Pointers to a more relevant group?

How about:

microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion or alt.windows98?

Of the 3 groups you posted this to, I'd say that comp.os.msdos.misc is
the least active, followed closely by alt.msdos.

microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion is very active (or it can be from
time to time).

> I was given an old notebook by the owner who upgraded but wanted her
> old machine to go to a good home.  It's a Fujitsu Lifebook p2110
> from 2002.

> She commented it was "slow slow slow".  Well, no surprise.  It has
> an 867mhz Transmeta CPU, a 40GB UDMA4 HD, and 256MB of RAM, of
> which the Transmeta grabs 16MB off the top for code morphing. 

> It came from Fujitsu with WinXP Pro SP2,

It could not have come from Fujitsu with SP2 back in 2002.  SP2 came out
in 2004.

> which wants 512MB RAM to even think about working.

XP (SP0 and SP1) will install and run on as little as 256 mb of ram -
and probably less if you can tolerate it.
 
> I'd like to replace it with Win98SE, with the open source KernelEx
> package, which looks like it will let me run enough of the 32 bit
> Windows apps I use to be adequate in the cases where I need to use
> Windows on the box for something.  The problem is, Win98 insists on
> wanting to reformat the drive, and I haven't found a way to tell it
> "Install to *this* partition."

Win98 will NOT insist on reformatting if you have a FAT32 volume it can
detect.

> One issue may be that I chose to install Win2K on an NTFS file
> system.

You claim to have several OS's on the drive - presumably not all of them
are NTFS.  Or are they?

I make it a habbit of installing XP on FAT32-formatted drives on old
systems with poor specs.  FAT32 is faster and more accessible /
controllable / workable compared to NTFS.  I hate NTFS.  It's claimed
benefits over FAT32 are largely illusionary for home and SOHO users.

> I found a utility that will convert NTFS->FAT32, and got the
> impression Win98 might just see that as a usable partition and
> install to it if I did so.
> 
> Suggestions?

Boot the machine using an MS-DOS floppy that was created from a system
that has win-98 on it (I assume you know how to open a DOS window from
Win-98 and enter the command "format a: /s" ?

Copy fdisk.exe and format.com to the floppy and then take the floppy to
your ancient laptop and boot the laptop from it.  Run fdisk and see if
fdisk can identify the partition or volume that you want to re-format as
FAT32, and tell fdisk to delete the volume.  Then reboot from the
floppy, run fdisk again, and tell fdisk to create a new FAT32 volume
using the space freed up by the previous delete operation.  Then reboot
again, and this time format your new volume using format.com. 

A faster way to do all this is to remove the drive from the laptop and
connect it as a slave to another windows system (could be a win-XP or
win-98 system) and perform these operations on the drive while it's
connected as a slave.  When you have your FAT32 volume on the drive,
copy the contents of the win-98 installation CD to the drive before
re-installing the drive into the laptop.  If you do that, the install of
win-98 will be much faster when you run it from the hard drive.

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Thread

Re: How to free DOS memory to run 677k file? DMcCunney <dennis.mccunney@gmail.com> - 2011-07-05 20:30 -0400
  Re: How to free DOS memory to run 677k file? 98 Guy <98@Guy.com> - 2011-07-06 08:49 -0400
    Re: How to free DOS memory to run 677k file? DMcCunney <dennis.mccunney@gmail.com> - 2011-07-06 10:07 -0400
      Re: How to free DOS memory to run 677k file? 98 Guy <98@Guy.com> - 2011-07-06 12:45 -0400
        Re: How to free DOS memory to run 677k file? Jim Leonard <mobygamer@gmail.com> - 2011-07-07 07:40 -0700
  Re: How to free DOS memory to run 677k file? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2011-07-06 14:09 -0400

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