Windows 98, Stuck at 640x480 with 16 Colors

guywitheglasses

Honorable
Oct 6, 2012
61
0
10,640
Hey all at Tom's Hardware! :wahoo:

Okay, I know, I need to update the video drivers, but here's the story. I've got a Gateway MX3230 Notebook that I installed Windows 98 Second Edition on in hopes of turning it into a vintage gaming and computing platform. It was designed to run Windows XP SP2, and therefore there are no graphics drivers available for it and the whole thing is stuck at 640x480 resolution with 16 Colors. Really annoying, I can't play Diablo II.

If there are any universal drivers out there anyone knows of or a way to install XP drivers, please let me know. I'd like to get this resolved. Everything else works.

Thank You,
Ritchie
 
Solution
guywitheglasses http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182751 "VGA or higher resolution (16-bit or 24-bit color SVGA recommended)" VGA = 640x480. I remember well managing these systems and then the move to 2000, then to Xp and so on.. So no not really 1680x1050.

Pinhedd Technically true, but you couldn't use 32Bit drivers (16 bit boot process) on it because they wouldn't work, two totally different coding methods (same as trying to use a modern 64Bit driver on a 32Bit system). Day to Day additionally one couldn't take a Windows 2000 or the 'new' XP software and slap it on a old 98 machine and expect it to work either, with 32 Kernel Wrapping or not, because it would normally fail if it didn't have the 16 bit dlls and such to call down...
Hi,

You need to install the drivers, if you go on gateway website, you should find the drivers there... normally.

If you can find out what video card you have, maybe you can download the driver from somewhere else. Windows 98 is a real hassle when it comes to drivers.

Good luck
 


Thanks Dexter, but the drivers aren't on the Gateway website because it only runs Windows XP, not 98. I'm working on finding drivers elsewhere, but I'm afraid this GPU is XP only as far as software goes. If you know of any universal drivers, that would be great.
 
NO. Your talking a 16Bit operating system and trying to get 32Bit code to work on it, not possible just by looking at what I just wrote. IF you want to run legacy (i.e. ABSOLUTELY NO SUPPORT) OSes, your best bet is to use a Sandbox program like https://www.virtualbox.org/ to create a OS inside the sandbox run on your XP (which also isn't supported). Hardware and software based on 32bit coding will be 'undetected' in the VirtualBox and you can set it to the 'generic' level you expect. BUUUUUTTTTT FYI 640x480 was HIGH resolution back in Win98 days, could try 800x600, but no one dreamed of 1024x768 because cards were unable to display that high with 16Bit drivers back then.
 


The Windows 9x kernel is a 32 bit kernel that sits on top of a 16 bit boot process. It is a hybrid 16/32bit OS, not a full 16bit OS.
 


Thanks a lot man, I'm downloading the driver from the second link you gave me right now. Looks promising. I'll update on what happens.



I'm pretty sure the Max Resolution of Windows 98SE was somewhere around 1680x1050.
 
guywitheglasses http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182751 "VGA or higher resolution (16-bit or 24-bit color SVGA recommended)" VGA = 640x480. I remember well managing these systems and then the move to 2000, then to Xp and so on.. So no not really 1680x1050.

Pinhedd Technically true, but you couldn't use 32Bit drivers (16 bit boot process) on it because they wouldn't work, two totally different coding methods (same as trying to use a modern 64Bit driver on a 32Bit system). Day to Day additionally one couldn't take a Windows 2000 or the 'new' XP software and slap it on a old 98 machine and expect it to work either, with 32 Kernel Wrapping or not, because it would normally fail if it didn't have the 16 bit dlls and such to call down to the driver / OS level to do things (like print, the most common time I ever seen a 32Bit Kernel error) you could in the 32Bit native Oses.
 
Solution