1. Buy a full version OS disk.

Here's how: Find a retailer who sells it and open your wallet and give them ever how much they want for it.

2. Extract just the OS from the Restore Disk.

This takes a little more work than the above option, but here's how I did it. Some of the steps/folders/files are probably not necessary, but I'll just show and tell you how I extracted Win98SE off of a 466ix/500i Restore disk.

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have the PID (CD) Key that came with your system. This is the 25 digit number that may come on the side of your case or in the literature when you bought the system. If you can't find that number and your system is still running, try using a prog like The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder. You will HAVE to have this PID (CD) Key for a successful install. If you don't have this Key, see step 1 above. You're also going to need a Win floppy startup (boot) disk for the install. If you don't have one and your system is still running, you can make one: Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs >Startup Disk

OK, if you have the Restore Disk and the PID Key you're ready to go...

Step 1

Insert the Restore disk in an optical drive and use Windows Explorer to browse the contents of the CD. You should be looking at something like this:

E:\ is my optical drive

Step 2

Make a directory somewhere on your hard drive, I named it Temp2.
Copy the following files off of the restore disk to that directory.

CABS.img
OSBOOT.img
OTHER.img
PROGRAM.img
WINOTHER.img
WINSYS.img

Don't worry about SETUP.EXE, OSBOOT.IMG, BOOTCAT.BIN or the README.TXT files or the other folders, you won't need them.

Rename the .IMG files extensions to .rar

I also made 5 other folders within that directory with corresponding names with the files that were copied.

I used WinRAR to extract the contents of these files to the corresponding folders:

CABS.IMG ---> CABS.rar ---> CABS folder
OTHER.IMG ---> OTHER.rar ---> OTHER folder
PROGRAM.IMG ---> PROGRAMS.rar ---> PROGRAMS folder
WINOTHER.IMG ---> WINOTHER.rar ---> WINOTHER folder
WINSYS.IMG ---> WINSYS.rar ---> WINSYS folder

*UPDATE NOTE: You really don't need the contents of OTHER.IMG, PROGRAM.IMG or WINOTHER.IMG

Step 3

I made another temporary directory named Temp3 with a subfolder named Win98 SE

with 5 sub directories
add-ons
drivers
win98

Copy the contents of the extracted CABS.rar folder to Win98 SE\win98

Make sure you have at least the following files:

FORMAT.COM was not in that CABS folder but was in winother\COMMAND
Probably didn't need it though.

I also copied folder OLS and TOUR folder to the win98 folder.

I copied folder PWS to the add-ons directory.

So now you should a directory structure that looks like this:

I did cheat and use the setup.exe file off of a retail Win98SE disk that you see in the root directory.

Step 4

Now burn the contents of the Win98SE folder to a disk.

Step 5

You're done! You now have a full version Win98SE disk. To install it, you will need a boot disk (floppy) and follow the directions here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/221829/EN-US/


If you have any questions on this procedure post it at the EMACHINE UPGRADERS FORUM!