Hi,
I recently got an older laptop that has no OS. I just purchased win 98 se, but can't install it. I had some troubles with formatting drive c, but I think I fixed that. The big problem is that now when I type in D:\setup. I end up with this message "Windows setup requires 7340032 bytes available on your c: drive."
Now, this laptop was supposed to have 160mb, but when I go to the BIOS setup, I see that it says: System Memory: 640 KB Extended Memory 31744KB.
If I only have 640 KBs, then I guess the reason I can't install win 98se, is I don't have enough memory. What confuses me, is that this laptop came with windows 98se(when it was new), so I would think I would be able to reinstall the same OS. Plus I was told it had 160mbs of memory, so it should have enough to install.
Is there anyway to install the OS with less memory, am I doing something wrong, do I need to buy more memory?! Please help, I don't know hardly anything about memory, computers, operating systems, etc! I just wanted to be able to put the disk in and make it work for my daughter. I really hope someone has some suggestions, this was supposed to be a birthday present for this Sunday
Thank you in advance

Hello Tootsie,

Windows 98 needs 500 megabytes of free space to install. It also needs 16 megabytes of memory. If that computer in fact only has a 160 megabyte hard drive and 640kb of memory, you wouldn't be able to install Win 98. Considering it had Windows 98 on it before, then I would be pretty sure you are reading something wrong. It is possible your partitions are corrupted and the setup is not seeing the entire drive. Or maybe you have bad sectors. This problem is definitely on the technical side.

If you want to try to do this all yourself I can try to help you. If I am reading your problem right, your hard drive is pretty much empty and you're not worried about the data. I am also assuming your hardware isn't defective. You can use the following guides to try to start over from scratch. I warn you though, this is a technical process. Nothing in these guides can actually "break" your computer, but you are going to be wiping your hard drive completely clean...

I would first suggest you read through both guides.

Before you can install Windows 98, you will need to have a Windows 98 startup disk. Here is a link to do that - How to Create a Windows 98 Startup Disk that Supports FAT32

Here is an article explaining how to install Windows 98. It is somewhat technical, but it is a complete tutorial - How to Install Windows 98 on a Computer with No Operating System. One thing it doesn't show you is how to delete partitions with FDISK. You will need to navigate through FDISK to where it lets you delete partitions. Once all the partitions are deleted, your drive will be ready to have partitions created and formatted. Then you can continue with the tutorial and create a FAT32 partition. Don't follow the FAT 16 steps. When it asks you if you want to use the entire space, hit yes.


If you're not to keen on the idea of doing all that yourself, then your best bet would be to maybe look up some local computer shops that sell older used computers. They would most likely have a clean hard drive with a fresh copy of Windows on it installed by a professional.

Hope any of that helps!

look at the
System Memory: 640 KB Extended Memory 31744KB

you have 32 MB of ram in the laptop