Running Win98 purely from CD or DVD

[pegg]

Hi,

My scanner doesn't have driver for XP so I need to use Win98
just to use my scanner. Has anyone tried copying the Win98
system files directory Windows and Program Files from the hard
disc to a CD/DVD, and running purely from the read-only DVD even
without a hard disc (or exclusively in NTFS for XP)? Can win98 run
where it will load up everything purely from CD/DVD? Answer this
those who have actually tried it and worked. How did you do it?

Pegg

[Justin42]

Not gonna be able to do it. Win relies too much on too many things to be writable in the System directory and the like.

If the scanner has Linux support you could possibly use one of the 'live' CDs to use it, but otherwise it'd probably be much easier to learn how to set up a dual-boot system and have a very tiny Windows 98 partition.

Edit: Ok, I take it back, apparently it IS possible but I seriously doubt it'll be very functional.. just follow the directions EXACTLY as it's fairly complicated.
http://www.lachiesadicristo.it/w98cd/page1.htm

Google is your friend.

[cfitz]

Has anyone tried copying the Win98
system files directory Windows and Program Files from the hard
disc to a CD/DVD, and running purely from the read-only DVD even
without a hard disc

(emphasis mine)

Let's say you did manage to get this up and running. You plug in your scanner, boot 98 from DVD, scan your document and then what? Where do you save the image? You don't have any hard drive.

If you do have a spare partition on your hard drive or a extra hard drive lying around unused, a better option would be to set up your system to dual-boot. Programs like System Commander will aid you in setting up your dual-boot system, although they aren't strictly necessary. You can do it yourself, but you have to know exactly what you are doing or you can wreck your existing installation. Cautions and caveats abound...

But even a dual-boot system isn't a very good solution in my opinion. It will be terribly inconvenient. Instead of just scanning directly from your image editor program, you will have to boot to 98, scan, save to a shared folder somewhere, shut down, boot back to XP, start your image editor, find the file you saved under 98, open it and finally begin to do real work. Not to mention the fact that unless you roll your own dual-boot setup, you will likely spend more for the dual-boot software than a new scanner would cost you.

If your scanner doesn't have an XP driver, I would bet it is quite old and probably neither particularly fast nor high quality. So, unless it is some sort of specialized, high-dollar film scanner or something similar that you reallly need to keep, I suggest you save yourself a whole lot of hassle and time and just spend the ~$45 ($35 if you wait for a sale) to get a cheap new scanner (e.g. CanoScan LiDE 25).

cfitz