Installing old Windows OS

A quick question to all of you, since this seems to be the most tech savvy forum I visit, and it has an affection towards old video games. I have an old computer with Windows XP that crashed, and since it was from Dell they never sent reinstall discs for it. I got a new computer, but I was thinking of turning the old computer into a classic gaming computer, since the hard drive still works, but I can't reinstall XP. I was thinking of buying an older Windows OS for it. Do any of you know if it would be better to install Windows 95 or Windows 98 as far as reliability playing games such as Doom, Blood, System Shock 1/2, 7th Guest, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, and other Dos based games? I'm thinking 98 might be better for stability, but I skipped from Windows 95 to Windows ME, which I think is the worst OS ever made, but I missed out on 98, NT, and 2000, so I don't know if they were more backwards compatible or offered better DOS support than ME and upwards. I've never been able to get dosbox working well, so any help would be appreciated.

If you're just after DOS games, download FreeDOS and don't waste time and money on Windows.

Beside that... Windows 95 B is the most stable of the Win9x series, although Windows Me has the best DOS compatibility.

Thanks for the reply. Mostly I'm interested in DOS compatibility, but I wouldn't mind a Windows GUI to go along with it. I liked Windows 3.1 ability to switch between the GUI and a DOS prompt, but they kind of killed that off with 95. Since you mentioned it, ME did have pretty decent compatibility, I recall playing Blood, System Shock, and Thief on it just fine. It just had a really bad memory leak problem where if you left it on for more than a day it would eat up all the available ram and crash. But after looking on Amazon, 95/98/ME are all around 20 dollars, so none of them would break the bank.

win98SE with ME DLLs (yes it's possible) might be a good bet. But if anything, win98se is the way to go. I used it for years. no problems. Heck, I used it as a primary OS up to 2004.

MikeRS said:

Windows 95 B is the most stable of the Win9x series, although Windows Me has the best DOS compatibility.

I thought with Windows Me the brains trust at Microsoft were doing their best to hide the DOS prompt and break compatibility - which is one reason why I stuck with 98SE for so long before "upgrading" to XP.

Windows 3.11 makes a great DOS shell though if any of your games require DirectX I'd use 98SE or setup a dual-boot system.

I'm skeptical as to whether 98SE and ME have any really relevant differences regarding DOS. Without specific reasons, I'd dismiss it, as on my Windows 98 (1st edition) system, I've had varying "luck" through the years depending on my settings and hardware (especially the sound card). For example, till relatively recently I had been using a Sound Blaster 16 value for sound, and Wolfenstein 3D would lock up on startup, but with the Sound Blaster 32 I have now, it works fine.

Actually, Microsoft removed the ability to boot directly to DOS in Windows Me (although it's possible to work around this), but improved support for running DOS programs within it massively (the only Windows version, of any DOS or NT ones, that has been able to run graphical DOS programs in a window!); Windows 95 and 98, if you want to play a DOS game while running Windows, you pretty much have to forget about it, reboot into plain DOS, and mess with DOS drivers and all sorts of shit (which you'd also have to do with FreeDOS somewhat for sound cards, but at least you wouldn't be wasting money on Windows...).

Unless there's a pressing reason to run Windows 9x, I would pass up on it myself.

MikeRS said:
Windows 95 and 98, if you want to play a DOS game while running Windows, you pretty much have to forget about it, reboot into plain DOS, and mess with DOS drivers and all sorts of shit (which you'd also have to do with FreeDOS somewhat for sound cards, but at least you wouldn't be wasting money on Windows...).

That's not true. I hardly ever boot to DOS anymore, and run any DOS games directly within Windows.

I'll try the freeDos on it for a bit and see how it works. There's really no pressing reason to run windows on it, but it would be nice as a backup to access the internet and whatnot in case my current PC goes belly up. From what I've seen windows 98SE might be the best bet. I'm completely fine with booting into a pure DOS environment to run games, so that's not an issue, I grew up with booting my computer into Dos before Windows 3.1 started so it had enough virtual memory to play Doom, and I miss the cd:\ days. Thanks for the suggestions.

Also, keep in mind that with Windows 95/98 (dunno about ME) it is still possible to dual-boot into pure DOS (pre-95 DOS) or any other flavor of DOS for that matter.

Yeah, that's why I think I'll go with 98SE. I had Windows ME for a good 5 years, and while it did have pretty decent built in DOS support while in Windows, I couldn't actually boot to the DOS prompt, it had to be done via a command window. Aside from possibly idiot proofing their computers, I can't see why Microsoft did away with DOS support.

Been using 98 (not SE) for the last 6 years, can't say it's failed me yet.

I've an old computer with 98 SE on it, and haven't had any problems running old-ish DOS games from Windows.

Just keep in mind that in order to do a DOS-Windows 95/98 dual boot, DOS has to be installed before Windows, and you may have to somehow format the hard disk to FAT32 *before* installing DOS, and then Windows (or you are actually limited to just FAT, I'm not sure).

Windows 98's DOS prompt can be as effective as pure DOS, assuming that you use custom-built autoexec.bat/config.sys files with a multiple configuration menu e.g. EMS and Smartdrive for Windows, EMM386 loaded with no EMS, XMS and EMS, only XMS, or a clean boot with only paths/buffers set. Plus the previous cases with or without CD-ROM.

I used to have these since 1994, and laughed at those who still stepped through their autoexec and config files, or even worse, used a boot disk for each game. If you want I can send you my old autoexec and config files, so you can adapt them to your need.

I never used anything that complex, all you really need is a config that will get you as much free base memory as possible (596K in my case). Even with all the boot disks and config/autoexec editing you can come up with there will still be games that will never run without DosBox, including some classics like Zone66.

Never managed to get Terra Nova to run properly without it either.


Both absolute must have titles.

Belial said:

I never used anything that complex, all you really need is a config that will get you as much free base memory as possible (596K in my case). Even with all the boot disks and config/autoexec editing you can come up with there will still be games that will never run without DosBox, including some classics like Zone66.

What about those games that needed both a high amount of conventional memory AND Emm386 with EMS present? Or those that needed a lot of free conventional memory but wouldn't run with EMM386 present? And when you also needed/didn't need the CD-ROM driver?

With an XMS + EMS combination, the maximum freeable conventional memory I was ever able to free was just below 600K with DOS 6.2, and somewhat less with Windows 98, due to the different size of executables/drivers.

The maximum amount of conventional memory I was ever able to free under DOS 6.2 was 621 K, using only Himem.sys (that means XMS without EMS) and no emm386 or cd-rom drivers, with DOS in UMB. Under Windows 98, with the same conditions, the max amount was about 611 K.

I have 596K with all the drivers and EMS, in Win98. If a game didn't like EMS I'd just un-rem the noems line and reboot.

It's enough to run the most basemem hungry game I have, The Chaos Engine, which needs about 591K.

Belial said:

I have 596K with all the drivers and EMS, in Win98. If a game didn't like EMS I'd just un-rem the noems line and reboot.

Which puts you in the file-editing category in my book ;-)

Seriously, I was all "LOL" and "WTF" when I saw advice such as making separate boot floppies or even editing the config files on a per-game basis. My DOS boot menu pwned, pwns and will pwn 4ever.

You can put me in the BIOS-editing category as well, because playing games like Wing Commander or Test Drive 3 without turning off CPU cache was impossible on my P133. No, programs like MoSlo were not an acceptable solution for me then.

While going pure DOS is an option, I don't think it's practical at all. You can probably find many copies of Windows 98SE online for cheap. It saves a good bit of time when you need to mess with files and installing stuff and the sorts.

I think my favorite setup over the years was MS-DOS 5.5, Windows 98SE, and Windows 2000. Triple boot, baby! I had a nifty batch program set up so whenever I was feeling nostalgic, I would boot up in DOS, and run programs from my batch script. Really brought back the old days when I had my first computer with a batch script my dad wrote, so I could play all my games without mucking around with the commandline. :D
I used Windows 2000, primarily, and when I wanted to run an older DOS-based game, I'd launch it through Windows 98.

That was a great installation.

By the way, isn't there a version of Linux that uses the Windows file system and a compatible kernel? Maybe I dreamt the whole thing up, but I thought I remember something in development that was supposed to be able to run Windows programs.

EarthQuake said:

By the way, isn't there a version of Linux that uses the Windows file system and a compatible kernel? Maybe I dreamt the whole thing up, but I thought I remember something in development that was supposed to
be able to run Windows programs.

You were probably thinking of ReactOS, however Windows != DOS, except in an extended compatibility sense for pre-2000 desktop versions of windows.

However, seriously, wtf@ all that messing with BIOS and config files...it reminds me those people that prefer keeping 1000 .bat files for 1000 WAD files. Surely, none can force a "One, True, Right" way down one's throat, that's one thing ....but advocating that there's nothing wrong with following the most convoluted and long approaches on the other hand...