Other available upgradeable components include DirectX 9.0c, Windows Installer 2.0, GDI+ redistributable, Remote Desktop Connection (XP 5.1), and Text Services Framework. The last version of Microsoft Office capable of running on Windows 98 is Office XP. This will allow systems as old as the 80386 with 8MB of RAM to run Windows 98 (although this will be far from optimal) Hardware requirements can be bypassed in the setup with the undocumented /nm setup switch.
Important: Only the OEM Full version is bootable. All others require an appropriate Windows 98 Boot Floppy. Note: VMWare and VirtualBox can be problematic with Windows 9x. You may need to disable various acceleration features first, or consider emulators like x86Box or PCem. To speed up installation, and to avoid numerous problems, copy the win98 folder to a folder on the hard drive (such as c:\win98) and then run setup from there.Once the classic theme is loaded, you'll notice that the Desktop background is a rather insipid shade of green which was used in early versions of Windows 98. For users of Windows 98 SE (Second Edition), this may not be too familiar.įortunately there are plenty of good quality desktop backgrounds available online which imitate the Windows 98 desktop. To customize the desktop further, first find your chosen image such as this one from w ww. Next, right-click the image and choose 'Save Image As' to download it to an easy to remember location (such as your 'Pictures' folder).
Once the download is complete, open the Windows 10 File Explorer and navigate to the location of the image. Double-click to open the image in the Photos app.
Finally, right-click on the image choose 'Set as Desktop'. The desktop background will now be changed to the Windows 98 image that you downloaded. Undo your changesĪs nostalgic as the classic theme appears, it may not work well with more modern features. For instance, when using the Microsoft Edge browser, the grey look and feel can make individual buttons hard to distinguish.
To deactivate the classic theme, go to the Windows menu and type in 'Themes'. From here you can choose a theme more suited for you such as 'Windows 10' theme. To revert your desktop background, right click anywhere on your desktop and choose 'Personalize'. The 'Background' option should appear automatically.
How to run Windows 98 in a virtual machine From here you can choose a Windows 10-inspired background. While it's relatively easy to make your Windows 10 desktop resemble Windows 98, this won't change your default system applications or allow you to run certain classic Windows programs. However, you can do this by running Windows 98 as a 'virtual' machine. Virtual machines are designed to mimic a computer as closely as possible while running inside your operating system. You can manage them via a VM Manager application such as VirtualBox. The downside to using VM's is that they can only use a portion of your PC's resources but as Windows 98 only requires 24MB of RAM this won’t be an issue. To begin, visit the VirtualBox website and click the link to download.
This will take you to the downloads page.
Choose the latest version of VirtualBox suitable for your platform e.g. Once download is complete double click to launch the installer. Once the installer launches, click 'Next' to begin.
Pc 98 emulator windows install#Ĭlick 'Next' again to install default features. To complete installation, VirtualBox will disconnect your machine briefly from the internet. Save any open files and close your browser before proceeding. Windows 10 may ask you to confirm software installation. Once installation is complete click 'Finish' and VirtualBox will launch automatically. Click 'New' at the top left hand corner of the window to start creating your virtual machine. Select the 'Name' field and type 'Windows 98 SE'. VirtualBox will automatically choose the correct OS type for you. Click 'Next' to accept the suggested RAM allocation (64MB).ĭo the same in the 'Hard Disk' section to create a virtual 2GB hard drive.