How To Slim Down Win 98?

[abrogard]

I've got win98 on a 340Meg hard drive. The drive isn't big enough. It is my little boy's computer. He's only got 5meg of space right now - and that's with only 5 little tiny games loaded up.

How can I make win98 smaller? Surely it doesn't really need all that 300meg?

There is a thing called 98lite which I've heard is only about 10meg !!! I don't imagine that would serve to run a computer, put it on the home network, access the internet (via the network) and play games for him... would it?

I imagine it is something like a win98 boot disk. But I may be wrong.

The question is: how can I cut down the size of my win98 installation on this 340meg disk, without breaking it?

regards,

ab :)

[Dfyant]

Without knowing what's installed - that's a toughy.

Try starting with the Add/Remove programs and then checking the Windows Components and strip out whatever you don't need. Also run a search for any files with *.dmp (dump files) - just in case a memory dump has occurred and is chewing up space. From memory, sometimes the Windows .cab files can be installed on the disk - assuming you have the original cd - have a look in C:\Windows\Options\Cabs and if the install cabinet files are there, delete them.

Hopefully that'll squeeze some extra space....

[Rixrex]

I think a better alternative is to buy a larger hard drive and put that in. It sounds pretty tough to get Win98 much smaller. I would suspect that PC is one of the *86 models, like 486 maybe, and originally ran DOS. Or maybe it's a PC100 with very small hard drive.

I have gotten several good used hard drives off ebay from a seller who's business is to clean and recycle older hard drives, and he's very dependable, but there's others too or you can locate them locally. I got hard drives for as little as $10 for 10gig drive, and they were just fine. Gotta make sure they get read correctly by the PC, usually the PC can set the drive up right once it's in place, or you might have to go into PC setup to do it.

Make sure you have the Win98SE install disc available to boot and format the new drive, and a Win98 boot/startup disc is good too. You can also setup the drive as a slave drive or setup the old drive as a slave drive too.

Other alternatives are to pick up a used PC that has a good sized drive already, and just use that PC, or drop to Win95 but it's not that much smaller. Have you got the Win98 SE installation disc? If you have no install discs, your options are really limited.

[jdharm]

I'll second Dfyant's suggestion. Using that method I have gotten Win98SE down to 200-250 MB.

[Rixrex]

That's a fine suggestion, if the Win98 SE install discs are available. If not, that can be problematic. Well, the discs are available at pretty good prices if you don't have them on internet sales sites.

Getting a larger drive, even if only 3-6 gigs, I think is an option to consider as that will allow more types of additional programs that your son can eventually use for school and such, and will allow for internet capability later on, and no headache trying to figure out what to reduce in Win98, but it's your call.

[BertImmenschuh]

An issue will be the computer and its BIOS, some of the 386 and earlier 486 could accomodate up to 512MB HDDs, larger than that required a drive overlay software that essentially lied to the BIOS about the true size of the HDD or an Add-in controller card that could accept the larger HDDs that were coming out. I was working in a computer store shortly after my retirement in late '94 when we got an order for the first 1GB HDD they sold to be used as a bulletin board for a computer club.

[Rixrex]

I've had some compaq 486 PCs that would accept larger drives. These were some of the last of those they made, around 94-95. Still have one of these with Dos 6.0 and windows 3.1 with older DOS tax programs that we might occassionally use (we have an accounting office), or need to print copies from.

Plus we still have our original network 'server' from 1996 which was a compaq p166 with Win95 and 16meg RAM and a 1.6 gig HD. Upped it to 64meg and left Win95, and put it in use as our virtual fax/scanner PC. Works well just doing that.

[amanda]

Well first of all do disc clen up, then remove unwanted programes , then go to preftech folder in programe files delete it ....