This guide will give a general description of installing Windows 98 in DOSBox-X, in addition to addressing some common issues.

You first need to create a DOSBox-X config file.

Copy the above config and save it as win98.conf

The dynamic_x86 core, which should perform much better, has been sufficiently enhanced that it can now be used for most use-cases with Windows 98.

However, for now we still recommend that you do the installation of Windows 98 using core=normal until issue #2215 is resolved.

But after the installation is finished you should be able to change to core=dynamic_x86.

Should you run into problems such as application crashes or a Windows 98 blue-screen that cannot be reproduced with core=normal, please report the problem on the DOSBox-X Git issues page.

Some parts of the installation, but also starting Windows 98 can take a considerable amount of time.

You may be able to speed this up considerably (depending on the host CPU) by using the DOSBox-X Turbo mode, which can be enabled from the drop-down menu bar by selecting "CPU" followed by "Turbo (Fast Forward)". This turbo mode is not like the old Turbo button on retro PCs, but functions more like a fast-forward, and therefore should not be used when interacting with the guest OS.

By default, the moment you press a key on the keyboard, turbo mode will disengage.

You may also want to enable turbo mode by default to allow Windows 98 to startup quicker by merging the following settings into your DOSBox-X config file.

Some quick rules about IMGMAKE (for more detail, see: Guide: Managing image files in DOSBox-X):

Alternatively, you can use the -fat option to instruct IMGMAKE to create a certain FAT type (assuming that is possible for the harddisk size).

First you need to start DOSBox-X from the command-line, using your newly created win98.conf. This assumes that dosbox-x is in your path and win98.conf is in your current directory.

Then in DOSBox-X you need to create a new harddisk image file with IMGMAKE.

This example uses an 8GB hard disk image with a single FAT32 formatted partition. Technically the FAT32 filesystem is capable of supporting partitions up to 2TB, but the generic IDE driver in Windows 98 cannot handle volumes greater than 128GB. Larger partition sizes may be possible with 3rd party drivers but are not covered here.

In later Windows versions, starting with Windows 2000, Microsoft won’t let you format a volume bigger than 32GB with FAT32 using its built-in formatting tool, this was presumably to push migrations to NTFS and later exFAT.

Or if you want to create a larger disk, you can create a custom type. This is an example of a 16GB (16*1024=16384 MB) disk, which due to its size, will be formatted as FAT32.

Starting with Windows 98, it is possible to boot directly from the CD-ROM, as long as you have the "OEM Full" edition, in which case no separate bootdisk is needed.

This installation method allows both FAT16 (up to 2GB) and FAT32 volumes, which can be up to 128GB for Windows 98.

This method will start the installation from DOSBox-X and does not require a bootable CD-ROM image.

After the installation is finished, you can start Windows 98 from the command-prompt of your host PC, with the following command:

You can optionally create a shortcut on your desktop to start Windows 98 directly.

Once Windows 98 is installed, here is some additional software you may want to install or update:

This may also be of interest: Forum thread about: Last versions of software for Windows 98SE

DOSBox-X supports mounting CD and diskette (floppy) images, and making those available to an OS booted in DOSBox-X.

To do so, an empty diskette or CD drive needs to be attached before booting a guest OS such as Windows 98, or diskette or CD images need to be attached (which will automatically cause an appropriate drive type to be emulated).

For example, to specifying multiple image files with the IMGMOUNT command:

You can then swap between disk images with the "DOS" → "Swap floppy drive" or "Swap CD drive" option from the drop-down menus, or using the hot-key.

To enable networking, you first need to enable NE2000 adapter emulation in your win98.conf config file and select an appropriate back-end for the NE2000 emulation.

The default video adapter that DOSBox-X emulates is the S3 Trio64, which is the best emulated video adapter that DOSBox-X offers, with the widest range of resolutions and colour depths. In addition, this video adapter is supported out-of-the-box in Windows 98, simplifying the installation process.

The available video modes with the S3 Trio64 driver are:

A few enhancements have been made to the emulated S3 Trio64, compared to a real S3 Trio64:

However, these enhancements cannot be used in Windows 98 with the S3 video driver due to driver limitations. There is no updated S3 Trio64 video driver available for Windows 98 (not even via installing DirectX 9c). As such you will be limited to the above video modes with this driver.

The emulated sound card used in this guide is the SB16 Vibra, instead of the default SB16. This is simply because the SB16 Vibra is an ISA PnP card, and therefore automatically detected by Windows. There is no other real advantage of using the emulated SB16 Vibra over the SB16.

Both Windows 98 and 98SE include SB16 driver version 4.37.00.1998. An optional driver update to 4.38.14 is available on the VOGONS Vintage Driver Library.

If you have a working DOSBox-X General MIDI setup, either emulated or real, you can use that in Windows 98.

Go to "Start", "Settings" and open "Control Panel", and then double-click on "Multimedia Properties".

Now on the "MIDI" tab, change the "Single instrument" option to "SB16 MIDI Out [330]", and click OK to close the window.

For more information about setting up MIDI support, see Guide: Setting up MIDI in DOSBox-X

Also see the Guide: Setting up printing in DOSBox-X

The emulated 3dfx Voodoo PCI device is enabled by default in DOSBox-X, and both Windows 98 and 98SE include a driver and will automatically detect it.

Windows 98SE includes a driver dated 4-23-1999. There is a 3.01.00 update available. After the update it will show a date of 4-29-1999.

If for some reason you do not want 3dfx Voodoo emulation, it can be disabled by adding the following lines to your DOSBox-X config:

In "System Properties", select the "Performance" tab, and click the "File System…​" button. A separate "File System Properties" window will open. On the "Hard Disk" tab you can specify the Read-ahead optimization.

Based on benchmark results (WinBench 96), it seems that setting this to "None" gives the best performance in combination with DOSBox-X, although the difference is marginal. This is no doubt because the host system is better at caching then the Windows 98 cache function.

Starting with DOSBox-X 2022.08.0, there is optional support to dynamically convert a host folder mount to an emulated FAT harddisk for use when you need to boot a guest OS, such as Windows 98. This can be accomplished in one of two ways. Either when you issue the boot command, you add the option -convertfat. e.g. boot c: -convertfat.

Or by setting the following option in your DOSBox-X config file:

When you now boot from a real image file, it will attempt to convert ALL folder mounts at the time of booting to emulated FAT Harddisks.

One thing to note, is that there is no way to specify the FAT type to use for the conversion. The FAT type will be automatically selected based on the aggregate size of files in the folder, plus 250MiB (this can be adjusted with the convert fat free space option in the DOSBox-X config file). If the total space of files + 250MiB does not exceed 2GiB, it will convert it into a FAT16 disk. Otherwise, it will become a FAT32, which in turn will require a guest OS with FAT32 support.

Alternatively, you can also make the emulated FAT drive read-only by using the -convertfatro option with the boot command. Or by setting convert fat free space=0 option in the DOSBox-X config file.