The Windows 98 Installation Process: A Detailed Account

As we begin the installation process, we'll start by running ScanDisk on an empty SD card to see what it finds. Once that's done, we'll move on to Windows 98 Setup, choosing "Custom" as our installation option. This allows us to select which files and folders to install, giving us more control over the final product.

The process is quick and straightforward, with the system restarting automatically after a few minutes. We're now in the middle of the setup process, and it's clear that this will be a relatively simple installation. We'll proceed with the Product Key installation, followed by the restoreCD for Gateway applications and drivers.

As we wait for the restoreCD to load, we take a moment to appreciate the 16-color graphics that Windows 98 is capable of producing. It's a far cry from the more modern graphics capabilities that we're used to today, but it still gets the job done. Once the CD has loaded, we can begin installing the necessary drivers and software.

The restoreCD installation process takes care of most of the tasks for us, including installing hardware and software drivers. While we've opted out of installing some of the more unnecessary programs, this ensures that our system is running smoothly and efficiently. The installation completes successfully, and we're now faced with a system information page that outlines all of the support options available to us.

As an added bonus, the setup process also applied a Gateway background, which adds a touch of personalization to the system. We can see that there are some interesting options available in terms of system settings, including the ability to swap around the logo and startup animation for Windows 98. This gives us more control over the look and feel of our system, allowing us to customize it to our liking.

For those interested in creating music or sounds on their system, we've got a built-in WAV Table with MIDI capabilities that can be tweaked to our advantage. For example, we can swap between different sound settings, including a 2 megabyte WAV set and an 8 meg general MIDI setting. While the system is capable of producing some impressive sounds, it's worth noting that certain programs like AdLib FM Synthesis don't fare too well on this particular card.

Once the installation is complete, we've got our Windows 98 system up and running smoothly. With a Voodoo 3 card installed, we're ready to try out some games. Specifically, we'll be booting up Need for Speed: High Stakes, one of my personal favorites. As we launch the game, we can see that it's running in high settings, despite only being set to 640x40 resolution.

Need for Speed: High Stakes is a great example of how this system can handle demanding games like this. With its Voodoo 3 card and Windows 98 operating system, we're getting top-notch graphics capabilities that would be hard to find at the time of release. As I play through the game, I'm struck by just how good it looks, especially considering the hardware we've got installed.

In conclusion, setting up Windows 98 on our Gateway machine has been a relatively straightforward process. With its easy-to-use interface and robust hardware capabilities, this system is well-suited for a variety of tasks, from casual computing to gaming. As we continue to explore its features and capabilities, I'm excited to see just how much potential this system holds.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enGreetings and welcome to an LGR restoration thing!And today, we've got a late '90s almost-classic.This is a Gateway Essential 450 from 1999.It's a Pentium III-based PC built to run Windows98, and beyond that, I'm not yet 100% certainabout its specs or if everything inside works,but finding out and fixing it up is what we'reabout to do.Right, so this Gateway, does it work?Eh, hopefully?First a little backstory, because while Ido know that it at least powered on the firsttime I checked, that was years ago, 2014 Ibelieve.And it's just kinda sat in storage 'til Igot a chance to work on it, which is today.What happened was it was one of those situationswhere I was picking up another retro computer,actually something much older, and I happenedto notice this thing sitting over in the corner,being unused.I was interested and so we just turned iton, and it powered on just fine, booted upinto Windows and I'm like, hey do you wannaget rid of this thing, too?She's just like, yeah you can have it, sohere it is.It's, uh...Yeah look at it, it's still got the quality seal right there, so I'm assumingthat means it hasn't been, well, I don't know,that doesn't look like a thing that I've seenon my other Gateway computers, so I'm assumingmaybe it's been upgraded by a third partyand they just put this little sticker on here,I don't know.And around back though, it looks pretty typical,like they maybe have switched out a graphicscard or sound card in here, 'cause this looks,I don't know, I really, I just don't know,so that's one thing we're gonna be findingout in this video is what's been done to this,if anything.You know, how it's configured, what's goingon inside.But yeah, it is the Essential 450, and thatwas part of Gateway's main lineup of computersthey had in 1998, '99, like the year 2000.But according to this printout of the ad here,it looks like the 450 was a higher end versionof the Essential series, so yeah.This may be the specs that this has, but,you know, from looking it up, there were abunch of different variants of the 450, sowho knows exactly what's inside there.But as you can see, I mean, they have somepretty nice kind of options for someone thatwants to play Windows 98 games and such onhere, you know, AGP Graphics and Sound Blasterand, you know, other things that you mightwant, it's just one of those cool PentiumIII systems and that's why I wanted to pickit up and see what I could do with it.And you can see there was also some nice upgradesavailable, you know, Gravis GamePad and aZip drive, Boston Acoustics 3-Piece SpeakerSystem, DVD-ROM.Yeah anyway, yeah, let's just take a lookand see what's actually inside here and getit restored and working again.It sure is heavy.It's got some nice rubber feet on the bottomthat prevents it from sliding around, so Imight actually put down like a towel or something,'cause yeah, all right, let's open it up.And yeah, it actually looks like it comeswith, yeah, thumb screws from the factory,which is not the most common thing on justyour standard consumer desktops of the timeperiod.At least I don't have very many that do that.It's really just like servers, you know, higher-endIBM machines that had, oh yeah, forgot aboutthe seal.Let's see what we can do without breakingthe seal, can we.Yeah whatever.All right.Ooh, that is kinda nasty.Hmm.Well nice mixture of cobwebs and dust andgrime.We'll have to do a bit of a cleaning on this,for sure.There's an ISA slot down there, that's kindacool.And we got five PCI slots, one AGP slot.That looks like a Voodoo, yeah it is, holycrap!That's a Voodoo 3.This is not what I expected to see in here.I mean, Gateway did have an OEM situationgoing on with the Voodoo 3, they called itlike the 3000 G, is the other ones that Ihave.Got the Sound Blaster card here.That looks like a, yeah, CT5803.I think that's a 128.And then we have a modem here which, who cares, probably take that out, I don'tknow.Actually, this might be going to someone else,another YouTuber who I won't name, but hisname is brutalmoose, and he might not actuallyneed that and may prefer to have Ethernet,I don't know.Maybe I just won't mess with it and leaveit at the end, but yeah, and here is the processor.It's a Pentium III of some kind, I don't knowexactly the denomination or whatever, speed.And then there's this cooling system thatGateway did at the time, and a few other companies.And it all goes through the power supply,which always just seemed like a bad idea tome.And considering how many of these power suppliesI've replaced on various Gateways over theyears, and on IBM, like NetVistas that useda very similar system, you know, maybe itwasn't the best idea.But whatever, that's what they did.And yeah, there's a hard disk, let's see whatkinda size that is.Well, the capacity's covered up, but it doessay November 17th, 1999.And we got some RAM there.I think these came with 64 megs for the mostpart.You know what, let's just go ahead and turnit on.'Cause other than being dirty, it looks okay.I'm not seeing like bulging caps or anythingweird, leaky garbage or anything.And like I said, when I first picked thisup years ago, it turned on then.So let's just see what happens when we getit powered on.Schwew, ho ho, that thing is so gross, lookat all this.Mm-kay, let's just turn it on, see what happens.Yeah, there's theVoodoo 3 1000 G. Let's see what we got herein the system setup.All right so that is a 450 megahertz PentiumIII, as the model number insinuated.And that's what I figured, but you never know.And honestly, everything looks pretty standard.In fact, the time and date are even correct,so I guess the battery in there is still fine.Might replace that anyway, but yeah, goodtimes, good times.So far so good, nothing exploding.It does smell like, oof, not good .What is this?Gateway GoBack.There we go, got Windows 98 going.Yeah, that old cobwebs and dust smell is onlygrowing more increased as the fans do theirthing and everything warms up.All right, actually a pretty quick boot, allthings considered.At least to this point.And yeah, there we go, I mean, ooh, yep, yeah.So desktop management wasn't exactly a priorityfor the lady who had this in the past.But that's okay, she's like in her 70s.So right, well this is Windows 98 with a lotof crap going on.What all is it even loading?Oh my word.That poor hard drive just wants to die.And it's just sitting here, nothing is happeningreally.What is JAWS, I've never heard of this.A screen reading software.Well that makes sense.Yeah, like I said, older lady, she was verynice.But you know, she's getting older, didn'tneed her computers anymore.And so yeah, let's see what is actually onthis thing.This is what I'm mostly curious about righthere.Okay so we do have 64 megs of RAM.Looks like it did have a Zip drive at somepoint, but no longer does.Yeah, all pretty expected stuff here.Let's see what we got.Oh my .Wow.Mm-hmm, Microsoft IntelliPoint drivers, shortcutsto shortcuts to shortcuts, just classic.Spybot S&D, another classic.Gain Publishing, who knows what installedthat.RealPlayer, Rand McNally Trip Maker 1996,there used to be some sort of Hoyle, I don'tknow, card game, something another, probably.This Gateway GoBack thing, I'm assuming that'slike a system restore deal.I've never actually had that installed onany of the Gateways I've had from this era,but there it is.'Kay, hard disk space, it's a 10 gig drive,okay, so that's a little more than I expected.I think, so a lot of them are configured with6.4.Yeah, it's just standard configuration stuffon here.Honestly you could probably clean up thisinstallation and have it be pretty good.But I really just want to restore this tofactory original condition.All right so, I know that one thing that Gatewaydid is they have the restore CDs and thankfully,I do have that.I mean, I could just go with like classicWindows 98 fresh install straight from Microsoft,but I think I wanna use the restoration discs.All right, so we'll need some software.And thankfully, Gateway provided these softwarestorage binders for all their systems backin the day.Very handy to keep all your restoration stuffin one spot.Yeah they did supply these very handy systemrestore CDs back then.I don't know if this is the exact one thatwent with this exact computer or not.I've got, there's like a ton of these.I just pulled this one out of storage.I think this is actually the same one.It'll definitely work anyway.So we're going to be starting with just theWindows 98 Second Edition CD installation,and then the restore disc here.Should have all the software and drivers andstuff that we'll need otherwise.So yeah, let's get to it.First up, I really just, I mean, we gottaclean this.This is, it's horrendous.It's really bad .Like just this Voodoo card alone, this is,well I haven't seen this kind of dust accumulationsince doing work for like various IT things.I'm trying to keep this intact, 'cause it's kind of impressive.Look at that.I think it's safe to say this has not beencleaned or opened since 1999 or thereabouts.This is really , all right, I needa mask and we're gonna take this outside.All right just gonna blow everything out usinga compressor on a vacuum here.No sucky, only blowy.Well thank goodness I had a mask on for that,that was terrible .Little sticker came off here.NS-TECH, I don't know if that's an originalGateway sticker or not.All right I'm gonna take it back inside nowand get all the individual components cleaneda little more.Well I don't know about you, but I alreadyfeel a lot better about working on this thing.However, now it's time to get to the cleaningof all the other things.Let's get started.Mostly just a bunch of your normal kinda grossnesswhere it was used the most.Still though, even after a brief bit of wiping,you can already see we're getting some gunk.Just going over the outside of it quicklywith this sort of water vinegar mix.And definitely seeing a few stubborn spotsalready.Why are there airplanesevery two seconds?And there are a lot of sharpedges on this case, which means pretty typicalfor the time but that's one reason I liketo wear gloves like these.I would have a few cuts already.Like seriously, all those little, yeah, nope.And I'm not gonna take the entire thing apart,'cause honestly, I just don't care that much.This is not, you know, some rare, valuable,worthy of museum kind of piece.But I am gonna take those cards out becauseeven though they were blown off, I mean here,just, take a look at all that crap comingoff of there, with just the littlest of wipes.Yeah they need it.Oh come on airplanes, goaway, what are you doing?That's like the fifth flyby.And justgoing over them with a bit of alcohol.Is it just me or does that look like it'sgot a little bit of heat damage?Well we will run it through its paces oncewe get it all reinstalled and such.You can see down there in the bottom,it's still pretty gross.Oh yeah, mm.Ooh, yeahthose would have been cuts.Thank you gloves.Yeah the more I think about it, the more Idon't wanna keep this hard drive.I think I might replace this with like anSD card solution, or something like that.So we'll go ahead and take that thing outof here.Ah, there's another screw.Don't you hate it when you think you're donescrewing and it's just like, oh, once more.And you're like, but I'm tired.There we go.Well.Oh man, I've seen much worse, but it's certainlythe worst I've had to deal with in a longtime.You know what, I might just leave this inhere, just as kind of a back up of sorts,and then I'm going to install, oh my goodness,is it that airplane again?It is.Seriously, this guy just get his pilot's licenseor like?Come on man.You're like right above the house.Fly somewhere else.Anyway, as I was going to say, just gonnause one of these SD card, SD to I to IDE [blowsraspberry], SD to IDE adapters.It's got a power thing there to, you know,you can use the 4 pin from either floppy diskor the original hard drive.Got a 32 gig Class 10, you know, it's quickenough for this kind of usage, and it tendsto work pretty well.This is what I use in my main Windows 98 CapturePC for awhile now, and it's doing great.Do I have anywhere to mount it, though?Not exactly, but we'll just sort of pop itin there.It's not a big deal, it'll be fine.While we're in here, though, we'll go aheadand take a look at that RAM.Haven't seen one of these in awhile.This is a stick of Hyundai RAM, PC100.Classic, used to have a, I believe it's aCompaq that had some Hyundai RAM like that.64 whole megs, amazing.We'll put that right back in there.I could upgrade the RAM, but I don't see aneed to.I mean, it's a 450 megahertz Pentium III.If I was to upgrade CPU, maybe, but just gonnaleave it as is.And yeah, just gotta go over some of theselittle corner spots with a brush, here.Just to get the last bits of stupid crap.Okay, guess I should take care of that battery.All right, hope there's nothing weird withthe BIOS, that it like doesn't know what todo.Sometimes you run into that and you'll replacethe battery, and then it freaks out, and,I don't know, I think this is an advancedenough BIOS, it'll be fine.Oh my word, there he comes again.I swear, this is like the 10th time.I've cut out so many of the planes, and yetthey keep coming.I hate you, sir.I really do.And I like airplanes, man.It's just, why you gotta fly so low?Over my house, in particular?As much as I enjoy working on '90s computers,I hate this part of it.About one of the unsung advancements in computing,just case design, ergonomics.Literally everything about the process internallyis better now.Old cases with their weird bleh and the stupidcaddies and trays and stuff, they can allgo straight to, okay.This is coming along nicely.In fact, I'm hoping this is like the easiestrestoration, restoration, just cleaning upand fixing up that I've ever done.And that's really the whole idea, I'm justkind of doing this because I can.Ooh I missed a spot.Yeah this is oddly cathartic, just, you know,kind of like a Lego kit.You're just sort of putting it all together,you know exactly how it works and how it'ssupposed to look and stuff, and just gettingit all clean and nice and pretty and functional.Yeah that's it really.Okay so as far as this thing goes, I don'tbelieve, yeah there's no jumpers on here,so plug in the IDE cable and then, yeah, we'lljust use this 4 pin little extra power, andthat should be pretty much it for that.I don't know what I'm gonna do with that yet,but we'll set it there for now.You got a CD analog audio right here on thesound card.Yeah screw it, we'll put the modem back inthere, too.And last but definitely not least, our Voodoo3 1000 G that hopefully is fine.Oh and in case you're wonderingwhy I don't have like this mounted in ourfront or back drive bay, I don't have oneof those on hand right now.But even the ones that I do have, they'reall really weird in terms of their placement.If you saw my Windows 98 Capture PC build,the bracket is too far over that way, it endsup bunching up against things in the motherboard,where this is mounted, so you have to kindof make a custom mount, and like I said, Ijust don't have one of those on hand, andjust kinda sucks and whatever.It'll be fine in here for now, I just wannaget it up and running.And there's our airplane friend again, I swear.I swears.Let's go ahead and get the front of this cleanedup, just a little bit more, 'cause it's stillkinda grimy.Maybe that guy's doinglike tours or something.I mean this is a weird day to do it.It's like a Monday evening.And it's raining.I really don't know what that guy's doing.Like all things considered,this is coming together nice and clean.Haven't even had to break out the Magic Eraseryet, there's like one spot over here I probablywill, but other than that, I mean, this is,I mean it's one reason I picked it up allthose years ago, I was just like, yeah thislooks like it has potential.Yeah there's like these few spots that I thinkmight be good for a multi eraser.Super extra strength multi eraser.Yeah that's like the one main scuff rightthere.It's kind of in the plastic.And this is plastic except for, nope, it'sall plastic, the whole case.Externally anyway.Like obviously inside, there's a metal cage,but you know, late '90s cheapness.Get the butt wiped off here while I'm lookingat it.It's good enough.What little bit is left are like little bitsof gouging.But you know, that's how it goes.I've noticed this has been sitting prettylopsided this whole time, and I think that'sbecause, yeah these feet melted and moved.Like there's one here, one here, not one here,and only one in the bottom, sort of, off tothe left.So in the interest of completeness, we gonnafix that.Come off there.Nobody likes you.And I've got just the thing here.I like using these little furniture pads.I mean, sometimes it makes sense to go withrubber or something, but these look like they'reabout the right size.And, you know, considering how annoying itwas to just slide around.I think that's a nice fit.There we go .Wee!I like it.Okay, now let me give it one more wipe toget some of that residue off of there.And we'll get Windows 98 set up, hopefully,and yeah.Power.Very quiet without that hard disk.And we've got a boot.So let's see what it thinks of our SD harddisk alternative.And there we go.It detected that just fine which, awesome.I've been really impressed with these SD adaptersthat are out there.I mean, they're pretty brain-dead.You know, well you have to, whatever, foolproof,that's the word I'm looking for.You don't have to do much and they just kindawork.We're gonna boot it from this disk then.See what happens.All right, got the CD detected, sweet.And I forgot, I'mon an SSK keyboard.Let's switch.All right, so it does actually have it onthere already.Yes that means I don't have to do crap.All right well, seems to be reading disksokay.It's still probably gonna be a good idea tojust clean out the inside of that thing, anyway.Noticed it had one of those like foam edgesaround the disk front itself, and sometimesthose particles get in there and do weirdcrap, and honestly, it just needs a littlebit of cleaning anyway, so I'll do that later.We'll see if we can get Windows going.ScanDisk, you scan that SD card with nothingon it, see what you find.All right, Windows 98 Setup.Go with custom, because that's the way I roll.Ooh and we're restarting.That's always a good sign.Yay!Well this is not gonna be my machine so, actuallydoes he use Pascal case?We'll go with yes.Product Key.Here we go.Sweet.And yeah well, so far so good.I think this might end up being pretty simple.After this we'll just kind of run the restoreCD for the Gateway applications and driversand all that crap, I think, and that shouldbe about it.Then we'll try some games.Wow, that was a quick boot.It restarted and got right back tothis in no time at all.So we've got a very base Windows 98 installationhere with no drivers.Gotta love those 16 color graphics.So yeah, it's all good though, pretty much,so that's good stuff.Cool.Well let's go ahead and get that restore CDgoing, and yeah.Ooh, look at all this stuff.So instead of Clippy, we have a cow boxy,I suppose .I'm here to help you out.Nar-nah-nar.Right so we got, yeah, hardware and softwareand all sorts of cool, I mean, we're prettymuch just gonna do all the stuff, but let'sgo ahead and do the software for now.Like I'm gonna replace some of these driverswith like better ones, anyway, so whatever,I guess.But we'll just install it by default firstand see how it goes.Yay graphics.So we have 800x600 16 bit.Good, good, good.Yeah well, I'll just let it do the rest ofits thing here, and I'll come back wheneverit's got all these drivers and software thingsout of the way.Installation ofdrivers and software completed, although Idid opt not to install a lot of the softwareside of things, just a bunch of bloat andcrap that I don't think anyone's gonna everuse.But it did go ahead and apply this Gatewaybackground.The system information, all this kind of supportstuff is there and looking proper, all thedrivers are good.Oh yeah, and there was also a bit of an interestingthing where it chose to swap around the logo,startup animation for Windows 98.Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how this hasturned out.I've always quiteliked the built-in WAV Table, MIDI capabilitiesof the 128 D here.Although there are some different options,so for instance.That's justthe normal, like default 2 megabyte WAV set.But if we swap this around from 2 meg to 4meg.Sounds quitea bit different.And then you can go to this 8 meg generalMIDI.Those are prettysimilar but quite different from this one.Honestly, fora lot of DOS games, I prefer the 2 meg one,but you know, it's up to your preference andwhat you're trying to make happen on here.But either way, it's got some options forWAV Table.On the other hand, things like AdLib FM Synthesis is really garbage on thiscard, but that's just how it goes with theselater Sound Blasters, it's just emulatingstuff like, for instance, listen to how badCommander Keen Episode 4 sounds.Apologies for the flicker, this'll only takea moment.It'sreally bad .No matter what you try to play, it does notdo Ad Lib emulation well whatsoever, but again,that's just down to really this card and,but yeah, it does some pretty good emulationof various things of MPU-401:330 as the port.It's a very compatible card, it's just everythingit's compatible with, or tries to emulate,doesn't sound particularly good.But the actual Sound Blaster sound effects,PCM and all that, combined with general MIDI,I mean, it sounds pretty good, I think.- Damn, those alien bastardsare gonna pay for shooting up my ride.Cool. Holy cow!- Yeah, and I have some things thatI wanna try.Because we've got that Voodoo 3 card in there.So I've got Need for Speed: High Stakes here.One of my favorites.And it is from 1999 and specifically, thiswas the very first Need for Speed game tosupport the Voodoo 3 by default.[beatboxmusic] Oh yeah.So I've got everything set to the highestsettings.It is only running on 640x40 resolution, butconsidering this is a 8 megabyte Voodoo 3card, that should be just about right.[\"Need for Speed: High Stakessoundtrack\"]- Three, two, one, go! [tiressquealing]- Oops, oops, whoops.- 316 to central.- Nope.- In mission of a white McLaren at the village.- All units be advised.Be on the lookout for a McLaren at the village.- 316.- So yeah, not like amazing performanceor anything, but pretty darn good and absolutelyplayable.I like to play that all day.Let's try out something else.How's about Quake II.I could go with Quake III, but I wanna playQuake II.[monstersgroaning] So that worked well.Moving right along to one more game.I don't know, I just feel like trying a humongousgame on here, it feels appropriate.So we got Putt-Putt Goes To The Moon.This'll be just a teensy bit less chaoticthan Quake II.- Mr. Firebird invites everyoneto come down to take a tour of the CartownFireworks Factory today.- I better hurry over to the fireworks factory.- Yeah you better.- Hi Mr. Firebird.- Welcome, Putt-Putt.Would you like to help me make a skyrocket?- Bright stars.- Ha ho, the squiggly worms are my favorite.- They're neat.- So pretty much everything worksawesomely on here, again, except for the thingsthat don't , you know.Most all of these do.This is kinda my standard selection of randomDOS games.I always like to put those on this kind ofmachine.While I'm thinking about it, got one morething I wanna do here.Got some extra little goodies I wannaput on the backside of this.Made some copies of the software restorationstuff that goes with this computer.Just going to put that in an adhesive sleeveand keep it with the computer by putting itright about there.I like to do this with my restorations now.I've found it a good idea to keep the backupsoftware with the computer like this.And just because I feel like it, and ego stroking,I've got a LGR adhesive vinyl stickerhere, a nice little decal.I was thinking about putting a case badgeon the front, but it's a very rounded machine,and there's not really anywhere that a casebadge makes a whole lot of sense, so yeah,why not put this inside, so you know for surethis is an LGR-restored product.Nice.I really should get my own warranty stickersmade.Wouldn't that be kinda cool?I mean there'd be no reason for it, otherthan it's probably fun.Well I suppose that's about it for this video,putting back together of this Gateway Essential450.Nothing to complex.Just a pretty dirty machine that needed alittle bit of TLC to get back up and lookingand running as it should.Honestly, I will take an easy project everyso often.That's really the biggest reasonthat I tackled this particular machine forthis particular purpose.As I mentioned earlier, this is going to begoing to a friend of mine, Ian, who runs thebrutalmoose channel on YouTube.Go check that out if you haven't.He does some excellent work, very entertainingand bizarre stuff, and he's covered some randomWindows 98 things and such in the past andhe was looking for another machine.I'm like, yeah you know, I've got one, justneeds a little work.So here it is.Hopefully he enjoys it and hopefully you did,as well, you who are watching, or listening,or whatever you're doing with this video.I don't know, man, I'm not gonna questionor even think about it, it gets weird sometimes.But yeah if you enjoyed this kind of thing,well this is the kind of thing that I do hereon LGR.Not exclusively, but definitely on occasion.You know, old computers and software and hardwareand all that.It's just my thing.So if you liked this, feel free to stick around.There's new videos every week.And as always, thank you very much for watching.\n"