Windows 98 Image Preparation tool (Sysprep for 98)

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BetaNewbie
Posts: 215
Joined: Sun Jul 21, 2013 7:38 am

Windows 98 Image Preparation tool (Sysprep for 98)

Post by BetaNewbie »

Yesterday I looked up Wikipedia, and found out that NT4 supports sysprep, and I managed to download it with the help of the Wayback Machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/200212150000 ... DEPLOY.exe

But to my surprise, this self extract archive not only contains sysprep for NT4, but also for 98.
So I give it a shot.

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You can get all the info you need in the provided imagprep.doc documentation, but here is some key points.

If you are using a retail copy, not OEM or Select copy, you'll need to add the "/PSS" parameter to preptool.exe, otherwise it will fail.

You'll need to supply a msbatch.inf file in C:\WINDOWS for network configuration, the following worked for me.
; MSBATCH.INF
;
; Copyright (c) 1995-1998 Microsoft Corporation.
; All rights reserved.
;

[BatchSetup]
Version=3.0 (32-bit)
SaveDate=01/09/98

[Version]
Signature = "$CHICAGO$"
LayoutFile=layout.inf

[Network]
Display=0
Protocols=MSTCP

[MSTCP]
LMHOSTS=1
LMHOSTPath="C:\WINDOWS\lmhosts"
DHCP=1
DNS=0
WINS=D
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It seems that you can put in any value here, they won't be checked.
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The deployment process is entirely unattended. The username, registered organization and computer name remains the same after deployment. But you can add some code in msbatch.inf to change those in the process, samples are in the docs as well.
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SAIYAN48
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Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 3:22 am
Location: Ends of Eternity

Re: Windows 98 Image Preparation tool (Sysprep for 98)

Post by SAIYAN48 »

Cool find!

ralts123
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Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2018 9:04 pm

Re: Windows 98 Image Preparation tool (Sysprep for 98)

Post by ralts123 »

=O this is perfect, I thought that sysprep only works on newer versions of windows, not in 98, maybe it works on Me too.

TheWinnerCollector111
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Re: Windows 98 Image Preparation tool (Sysprep for 98)

Post by TheWinnerCollector111 »

This is the best find. I thought OOBE (or SysPrep...i don't know the difference) was only on XP & higher...who knew.

Thanks for the find! I'll try it out as soon as i can. However how would i get it working between 2 VMs?
Image

Random_User
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Re: Windows 98 Image Preparation tool (Sysprep for 98)

Post by Random_User »

TheWinnerCollector111 wrote:However how would i get it working between 2 VMs?
You can setup a virtual network for the VMs. If the sysprep utility supports UNC paths, then you can use that. Otherwise, you would need to map a network drive on the virtual machine on which you are running sysprep to the appropriate directory of the other virtual machine.

wyf180
Posts: 34
Joined: Thu Jan 25, 2018 2:52 am

Re: Windows 98 Image Preparation tool (Sysprep for 98)

Post by wyf180 »

Could the sysprep work on win95 or me?Could anyone try it?

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