Thinkpads Forum

subject says all.

cheers, thinkpadcollection

thinkpadcollection wrote:subject says all.

Not really.

Are you looking for recovery disks, or a "vanilla" version of the OS in question?

Which machine are you talking about? I think the last machine to come with 98SE as an option (via either preload or recovery discs) was the T2x/T3x/A3x generation? For any machine however, you can use a retail/generic OEM Windows 98SE disc to install, then use a burned CD-R or flash drive contaning drivers for your particular machine (be careful to get 98SE if you're using Amazon/eBay, it should say "Second Edition" somewhere on the disc/box)

The latest machines that can run 98SE/ME (albeit unofficially) are the T43/R52 generation, although you'd have to find drivers elsewhere (such as the ATI website, I managed to get the X300 working on 98SE by downloading the last Win9x/ME version of the Catalyst and manually editing the inf to add "Mobility Radeon X300" and loaded the driver via Add/Remove Hardware; I had to scour the Internet for an old Broadcom driver for the on-board Ethernet too which worked well... had no issues with anything else, pretty much all the 2000/XP drivers for everything worked for chipset/audio/etc.)

As for Windows ME, is there any clear benefit of Windows ME over 98SE? I do know ME has built-in flash drive drivers, better ACPI and WDM support, and tends to play a bit better with 1GB RAM than 98SE out of the box, but is it worth trying Windows ME in place of 98SE?

I happen to have a full copy of Windows 98 SE with genuine product key still in the original shrinkwrap with an AOL trial disc and setup guide, but I think I'll be keeping it around just in case I need it — you never know when you might need something like that!

I'd check eBay if I were you!

Or try this: http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/mswin98.htm