Windows 98 on 98 Megabytes! - 98lite Overview & Installation

Is it possible to install Windows 98 on 98 megabytes of hard drive space? It is, thanks to 98lite! Originally released in the late '90s, it allows you to minimize your Windows installation by getting rid of components that Microsoft doesn't let you remove.

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Background Music:
"You Had To Be", "Soul and Mind" and "Brighton Lights" from the YouTube Audio Library

Outro Music: Silent Partner - Bet On It
Source: YouTube Audio Library

Some materials in this video are used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, which allows "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, commenting, news reporting, teaching, and research.

#MichaelMJD #Windows98 #98lite

[bigloudnoise]

If I recall correctly, an early version of 98lite was used as evidence during the Microsoft antitrust case to prove that Windows 98 could indeed run without Internet Explorer, despite Microsoft claiming that it was impossible.

[dudeshift]

Embedded Windows 98 can get down to 9MB (offered on the same site as Lite98). Could have been useful for embedded industrial pcs like the pc104 standard.

[NoahClevinger]

Windows 98 is the embodiment of nostalgia for me. I remember spending hours and hours on my family’s old Windows 98 computer back in the day.

[DavidWonn]

Conceptually 98lite (and especially 98micro) was wonderful at least in theory. In practice, I found it to be a bit glitchy, so I stayed on Windows 95 and NT4 longer than most people at the time. This way, I could be truly free of any of IE's modifications to the shell.

[therealjammit]

I ran Win98micro for the longest time. I also installed it to an Iomega ZIP drive. I made a special boot floppy that would recognize the ZIP drive from DOS and boot Win98micro from it. I used it to scan customer machines for viruses.
Edit: 250 meg ZIP drive was used.

[SupaPhly]

I'd like to imagine Shawn's reaction on seeing someone buy his software he stopped working on almost 20 years ago

[andresbravo]

This is one of my favorites. It could save Storage Space to fill more programs.

[KevVideos]

Pov: you're looking though comments before the video's finished

[anon_y_mousse]

I can imagine that he probably still sells that program for all the YT retro channels. There's got to be at least 50 dozen of them now and they're multiplying. I love that the final size was 98.1mb, that's awesome. Could possibly fit Win98 on a 100mb zip disk if you could trim a bit more, or did they tell the truth about the size of zip disks back then unlike with hard drive sizes? For that matter, could you boot from a zip disk? That would be extra awesome. A real recovery boot disk for older Windows computers.

[Rossco]

love software like this. i installed tinyxp and tiny7 on loads of pcs years ago. netbook is currently running win10 ghost spectre which is a full version of win10 in under 5gb. don't know why microsoft doesn't release official cut down versions when there has been demand for it for decades.

[sliverx]

I remember using this for my first 486 DX4 100MHz machine and the CeleronA 333MHz machine I got afterwards: It made a *huge* difference on hardware that slow, particularly for games and emulators.

I still do similar things to my Windows installs (Using utilities like nLite and NTLite), and they all gave me a very deep understanding of how Windows works at a fundamental level, which has served my IT career immeasurably.

[JoaquinPro]

Now try to use the unofficial service pack 3 on 98lite, i remember there was an option for 98lite users only

[johnnycha]

This video is interesting to watch, it’s nice to see the $5 Windows 98 PC back!

Also, on the subject of 98lite, I’ve also heard that this tool is also really useful for older Pentium PCs without MMX and prior, according to a video that The Nostalgia Mall posted in relation to this piece of utility (I even watched that video as well, really great video). The replacement of the Windows Desktop Update explorer with 95’s one can speed up the operating system on pre-MMX systems to an extent.

Aside from that, this tool also helps those that have less disk space available or had a low-capacity hard drive for use with Windows 98. Pretty interesting stuff!

[Gui]

Hi Michael. I actually installed the famous Win98 lite on Wii rebranded as Windows 98 and actually seeing that, the system seemed just like a broken Windows98 with access only to Safe mode. I say that because I actually also managed to install Windows 95 on Wii and everything worked just fine. You can use mouse pointer fine lowering pointer sensitivity, I could play Solitaire better than expected. You actually can use improve graphics performance and quality by choosing the proper graphics on Windows video properties in control panel, just choose Trio video driver you're able to set color quality to 256 colors on 640x480. Any greater color and resolution will work also but you ca't play on Wii, only on PC. You can actually see any screensavers on 256 colors but Pipes and Labirinth3D won't show on Wii, only on 16 colors.
I could make an entire drawing on Paint on Wii, it's just good, as any Windows application. To make MS DOS not to crash 16 color set is necessary, it works fine in window or full screen mode. DOS text capture is pretty much delayed and you have to type letters individually and press enter on Wii virtual keyboard.
DOS Box can handle Windows 95 using between 32 and 34Mb.

[GenericVideoGameNPC]

finally, an Operating System that can run on my computer

[SenileOtaku]

I still have my license for 98lite (probably bought it in 1999). Tried it out recently on my ThinkPad T23 (I wanted to do a couple of videos on the multimedia software I worked on in the late 90's). I built an image with the unofficial "Third Edition" fixpacks.

The thing I haven't gotten working is a SD card setup to replace the HDD (to make it easier to copy files and/or images to the system).

[HouseOfFunQM]

This kind of stuff is actually pretty infuriating - I remember 90s Microsoft constantly saying that they had embedded mshtml / iexplore into Windows so much that it was impossible to remove.

Turns out, even the community was able to remove it!

So many crashes. So many.

[tqrules]

Thank you for the vid mate. Made my day. 98 was alright to me. But for sure a corporate setting back in the day would have loved this.

[Smacketeer]

I had a good laugh at 8:20 with you telling the setup to shut up at the "not found" text. Reminded me of myself. 🤣

[KajuTheRudeMonke]

4:28 Installation status: *109%*
Now that's what I call "efficiency"