Forums - Win98

Just for you buddy! :ok:

Firs of all, after installation, make a copy of your original autoexec.bat and config.sys. Some users might not be able to see system files! In that case you have to open ‘My Computer’, select ‘View’ from the menu toolbar, then select ‘Folder Options…’ at the bottom of the menu. Folder option window will open in ‘General’ tab, so change to ‘View’ tab and under options for hidden files select ‘Show all files’ and click OK.
Now, open C drive and create a copy of autoexec.bat and config.sys.

Both files should be empty, as windows takes care of drivers and memory, which is fine for windows games, but makes silent or unplayable DOS games.

Omit next step if you know exactly what hardware you have!

Get Everest Home Edition ( http://www.lavalys.com/ ), install it and run it. With this software you should be able to find all information about sound card, video card, network card (if any) and CD Rom drive. Use Google to search for DOS/Win95/Win98 drivers. After you install sound card and cd rom driver, most likely your autoexec.bat and config.sys will change. Notice those changes, and make sure you have a copy of new settings.

Now, open again C drive, Windows folder and find: ‘MS-DOS Mode for Games with EMS and XMS Support’. Copy this file to Desktop. Close all folders and select this file by right clicking on it, and go to properties.

New window will open in ‘General’ tab. ‘Font’, ‘Memory’, ‘Screen’ and ‘Misc’ should not have any selectable options! Select ‘Program’ tab. It should say MS-DOS Prompt on the top line, Cmd line should be: ‘C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM’ and Working directory should be ‘C:\WINDOWS’.

Click on ‘Advanced…’ button. New windows will pop-up with checkmark next to ‘MS-DOS mode’ and with selected ‘Specify new MS-DOS configuration’ radio button.

This two windows are CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files that you will edit. The files should look like this. (Copy them in notepad to edit them, and then from notepad back to this windows)

CONFIG.SYS

Code:

REM ******************************************************

REM ** Sample Windows 98 Program Information File

REM ** Optimize Conventional Memory (TPA)

REM ** Expanded (EMS) and Extended Memory (XMS) Support

REM ******************************************************





REM ** This example assumes C:\WINDOWS is the Windows directory

REM ** Modify the path to match your configuration



REM ** Increasing available TPA improves performance in MS-DOS mode

REM ** Load items high to increase available TPA

REM ** The order in which items are loaded may affect utilization of the UMA



REM ** Following are required to load items in upper memory

DOS=HIGH,UMB

DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS

REM ** EMM386 can emulate EMS within XMS 

REM ** The RAM switch sets aside 64K of the UMA as a page frame for use with EMS

REM ** Using multiple of 1024, this example reserves an additional 4mb of XMS for EMS emulation

DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE 4096 RAM



REM ** DEVICEHIGH= is required to load a device in upper memory

REM ** OAKCDROM.SYS is a IDE/ATAPI CD ROM driver

REM ** Copy OAKCDROM.SYS from Startup disk to C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND

REM DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:mscd001 



REM ** If compressed with DriveSpace

REM DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DRVSPACE.SYS /MOVE



REM ** Install MS-DOS support for hardware in this environment

AUTOEXEC.BAT

Code:

REM ******************************************************

REM ** Sample Windows 98 Program Information File

REM ******************************************************



REM ** Set environment variables

SET TMP=c:\windows\TEMP

SET TEMP=C:\windows\TEMP

SET PROMPT=MS-DOS Mode $p$g

SET winbootdir=C:\WINDOWS

SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND



REM ** LH is required to load items in upper memory

REM ** MSCDEX is required to access the CD ROM in MS-DOS mode

REM ** Specify a CD ROM drive letter with /L:[drive letter]

REM ** Load MSCDEX file into EMS with /E 

REM LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001



CLS

ECHO ******************************************************

ECHO ** * * Windows 98 MS-DOS Mode * * * * * * * * * * * **

ECHO ** * * Expanded Memory (EMS) Support * * * * * * * ***

ECHO ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ***

ECHO ** * * Type EXIT to return to Windows 98 * * * * * ***

ECHO ******************************************************

You already have all needed settings, as HIMEM, UMB, etc. Now, I changed emm to use 8MB instead of 4MB, so my line looks like this:

Code:

DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE 8192 RAM

As you can see, lines from your Autoexec.bar and Config.sys are not included here, so add them. Add missing lines in config.sys at the bottom of the file, and in autoexec part just above CLS command. When you done, copy configurations back to appropriate windows (if you are using notepad, as I am) and click OK on all windows, till you don’t close them all.

Now it’s time to try your DOS shortcut. Double click shortcut, and click ‘Yes’ on prompt when asked to continue to MS-Dos mode. Your computer will reboot, but instead of loading windows, it will load Windows 98 MS-DOS mode. This mode is different then one when clicking to shot-down to ms-dos mode, as this one loaded different autoexec.bat and config.sys. If you read autoexec.bat and config.sys now (you can open them by typing: ‘type c:\autoexec.bat’ or ‘type c:\config.sys’, you will notice that shortcut replaced empty one with one that we created. When you type EXIT, windows will move back old files with only installed driver lines (you can even remove this, if needed).

This way you can create multiple configuration, for example EMS mode, no EMS mode, with or without CD rom drive, mouse etc. Every mode will have different memory available.

Attached is screen shot what should look like after you run MS-DOS mode.

Using this method, I was able to run games that will not run under default MS-DOS, or with changed Autoexec.bat and Config.sys. As you can see from the first post, memory get messed up if you edit those default files, and windows will be unable to controll memory, and most importantly your system might become unstable. Using this method, I did not have any problems to run any game I hade, and my win98 side was very stable.

Hope this helps.

(It might be nice if I can create another instruction/tutorial from this post :) – if you guys find this helpful)