04 Quad Boot - Windows 98
4 Themed Installs
This is a Windows 98SE quad boot VHD with 4 installs of Windows 98SE.
This was my first exercise in a multi boot w9x system done without a third party boot manager.
They're all native Windows installs using 1 hard disk and no third party boot manager.
- Partition 1 is a plain vanilla w98SE install - Revolutions Pack 9 is installed but not used.
- Partition 2 is w98SE with Revolutions Pack 9 and an XP theme.
- Partition 3 is w98SE with Revolutions Pack 9 and a Vista theme.
- Partition 4 is w98SE with Revolutions Pack 9 and a w7 theme.
My approach is to use a reboot method, where a DOS batch file on the desktop (when run) prompts you to enter the OS version number to reboot into and then reboots the system and loads the OS number you selected (the number entered is the partition number of the w98 install, in this case, either 1, 2, 3 or 4).
The batch file script updates MSDOS.sys with the boot details for the selected OS.
Run it by clicking on the MS-DOS shortcut on the desktop titled "Select OS to Reboot Into" to display the dialog box and choose an OS version to reboot into.
Works OK and rebooting is very fast.
Why the reboot method ?
Windows 98 (and 95 and ME) provides no way to select which OS to load as part of the boot process - by default Windows will always load the last installed OS.
The OS to load is specified in MSDOS.sys, so originally I created a batch file with an OS select script and added that as an entry in Autoexec.bat so it could prompt for and change the boot entry in MSDOS.sys on Windows startup.
However, Windows 98 loads MSDOS.sys before executing Autoexec.bat, so that didn't work, but it did give me the idea for the reboot method, which is to update MSDOS.sys with the <next> OS to load and this method works just fine.
I've installed Revolutions Pack 9 in each OS but not done any tweaking, apart from setting a different theme in 3 versions.
BTW, all installs are on FAT16, not that it matters. You can use the drive convert to update to FAT32 if you want.
The VHD was created with VirtualBox 6.1.26 and no Guest Additions are available for Windows 98.
The total VHD size is 1.4GB and this has been zipped to a 498MB file, uploaded here.
* Note on graphics: Allocate your VM's graphic card at least 40MB of RAM or the VBemp driver in w95-98-ME will only show a black screen on startup. The more RAM you allocate, the higher the resolution you'll be able to achieve.
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