A framework + installer to (very) quickly install Windows 98 on anything from a 486 up to a modern system
A framework + installer to (very) quickly install Windows 98 on anything from a 486 up to a modern system
Please don't sue. I just like old computers!! :(
Warning:
QuickInstall is not labeled, approved, or intended for use in the state of California.
QuickInstall may contain products that fail to comply with California law CA AB1043.
Do not use QuickInstall if you are located in or a resident of California.
Please consult the Known issues / FAQ before opening a ticket!
The first step when troubleshooting issues during the hardware detection phase is to disable the skipping of legacy non-PnP detection!
If possible, please also verify that the problem does not occur with the driver library turned OFF.
I cannot provide personal support via Discord messages, please open a ticket!
If you answered "yes" to any of the above, you may want to keep reading...
Windows 9x QuickInstall is a framework intended to replace the original Windows 9x setup environment and provide an extremely quick and highly optimized and customized installation process paired with integrated patches and drivers. In that sense, it is not dissimilar to nlite, but the method used to achieve this is very different.
QuickInstall images are derived from already set-up and working installations. This means that they retain any patches, drivers and software that is already installed, enabling more powerful, comfortable, modern and headache-free Windows 9x installations than ever before.
Combining this method with the blooming landscape of third-party patches and fixes, it opens up these classic operating systems to a vast variety of machine classes, ranging from early 486 systems to the very latest Core Ultra and Ryzen machines available on the market today (yes, really).
After preparation, the image is stripped of hardware detection information, and upon installation the Windows 98 Setup's hardware detection phase is re-run, accessing the vast driver library available with QuickInstall.
QuickInstall uses a Linux-based custom installation environment that quickly writes the full installation image to a target directory of your choosing, using a specially-crafted flat binary file format (MercyPak) that is designed to be read exactly once, in sequence, to avoid expensive CD drive seeking and attain the maximum installation speed possible.
This also means you can finally install Windows 9x from USB without any fuss!
...or from a CD/DVD-R. Or boot from a floppy disk and then install off of USB.
The truth is, it does not matter how you boot the system or where the QuickInstall data is located, if you manage to boot the kernlel, the installation environment will find its files. This also means that you can install Windows from USB on machines that do not support USB-Boot (using the boot floppy)!
And yes, this does mean that the effort for a user to build an ISO is higher than for example nLite, but the degree of customizability is also massively increased.
A set of reference images is also provided for your convenience and to get a feel for the vast power that QuickInstall provides to the retro enthusiast of 2023 2024 2025 2026. Enabling you to install your favorite flavor of vintage Windows faster than ever.
It depends where!
In any case, QuickInstall is at least an order of magnitude (i.e. 10x) faster than the official Windows 98 setup.exe
The QuickInstall Framework provides a set of scripts and tools to create bootable ISO / USB images that can install Windows 9x operating systems quickly using the integrated installation environment.
Support for international versions is not properly tested. It should work and in my testing it does, but YMMV.
NO versions of Windows 95 are or likely will ever be supported due to non-PNP device detection being part of the DOS-based installer stage.
Creating custom QuickInstall installation images using the framework scripts is a complex process.
Refer to the guide:
These patches and fixes do not need to be integrated into the Windows image before creating a QuickInstall image.
CREGFIX
This is a patch for CREGFIX an issue of many modern CSM BIOS implementations where certain control register bits are left dirty, causing issues when trying to run Windows 9x ("While initializing device VCACHE: Windows protection error") or while trying to run EMM386.EXE.
This universal VxD fix version was provided by SweetLow / LordOfMice
Silent Default Display Prompt
This gets rid of the "Default Monitor" install dialog that normally pops up.
UEFI boot files (CSMWRAP)
This is a EFI binary that provides BIOS emulation functions on EFI-only systems without CSM, allowing you to boot Windows 9x on them.
Courtesy of: https://github.com/FlyGoat/CSMWrap
LBA64HLP and GPT Disk drivers
This is an experimental set of drivers for Windows 9x to enable support for LBA64 disks, especially those with the GPT partition layout.
It also supports 4kn sector disks. In theory, together with Paragon NTFS for Windows 98 you can gain write access to modern Windows drives, so be careful!
NTFS driver (patched UFSD.VXD) + PNTFSHLP.VXD helper driver
Provides NTFS volume access from within Windows 9x. The UFSD driver contains fixes for volume label / Volume ID handling and resource leaks on unmount.
See sysprep/ntfs/README.UFSD.TXT and sysprep/ntfs/README.PNTFSHLP.TXT for details and registry settings.
And not to forget, the vast driver libraries:
win98-driver-lib-base
These drivers will be processed and packaged alongside the OS data. If selected during installation, these drivers are integrated into windows and will be found during any hardware detection.
This includes many network drivers, common sound and video card drivers, storage drivers, etc.
This includes the excellent USB 2.0, USB Mass Storage and NVMe driver stacks from SweetLow / LordOfMice. It also includes his patched versions of the R.Loew native AHCI SATA drivers.
win98-driver-lib-extra
These drivers will be processed and packaged in a subdirectory of the installation media, but they are not injected into Windows' automatic hardware detection. This can have several reasons:
The reference images come in three flavors:
All of these images are pre-patched for usage with both the very latest and very old hardware alike without running into the usual problems with memory size, CPU issues (TLB invalidation bug, CSM control register bug) or hard disk sizing problems (LBA48 issues, etc.).
These images also contain a lot of drivers and useful utilities for benchmarking, overclocking, diagnostics, et cetera.
The list of patches can be found in the Documentation linked below:
There are several provided methods to boot into Windows 9x QuickInstall:
floppy.img) This is a 1.44M floppy disk image that contains a full kernel with USB support.
It will find its installation source media automatically, meaning you can use it together with a QuickInstall CD/DVD-ROM, USB flash drive (even if your system does not support booting from either of them), CF-Card or Hard Disk.
Note: Due to the strong compression used in this version, the system will take a long time t
No open issues yet, or sync has not completed.