Installing Windows 98 on a Gateway Solo 2100 laptop

03SE01, J.R. Buchanan

Here's the keywords that you were likely looking for if you found this page with a search engine:

A fatal exception 06 has occurred

Gateway Solo 2100

Installing or Loading Windows 98 (w98), Windows 95 (w95), Windows ME, Millennium Edition (WinME)

Recently I decided to install Windows 98 (W98) on a Gateway Solo 2100 that I had been running Slackware Linux on (I know, but I needed to be able to access AOL while on a trip, can't beat the $3.00 per month that I can get it for through my employer, local numbers all over too, but a shame it does not work with a better OS...). It did have the original W95 on it as well. There just wasn't enough room for Windows, Linux, data, and AOL on the tiny disk in this thing.

I used a retail copy of W98 that I bought at an office supply store. I only had one serious problem, but it was quite irritating, so I thought I'd post it here, hoping that the next person who runs into this problem has better luck with search engines than I did.

I presume that installing Windows 95 (W95), or Windows ME would result in a similar problem.

The first, and not very serious, problem had nothing to do with the "fatal exception 06", W98 simply refused to load, claiming that it saw disk compression software. LILO from the Slackware install? I cleared it with "fdisk /mbr", and LILO was indeed gone, but W98 still thought that there was disk compression software installed. I removed the Slackware, W95, and Linux swap partitions with Linux fdisk, then W98 loaded happily.

It wasn't so pretty when it got to the first reboot, that's when I got a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) with:

A fatal exception 06 has occurred

I did a quick search with groups.google.com, google.com, and then Microsoft's and Gateway's sites. I got a lot of what I already knew, an instruction that was not legal in the present context was encountered. But WTH good does that do, what one really needs to know in this case is how to make it go away.

I found I could boot in safe mode, but it put up a message saying that the installation was not complete, please reboot in normal mode. The same error would then come up.

It was late at night, and I went to bed. The next morning I had an idea. Perhaps it was looking for the floppy drive... As most people reading this know (why would you read this if you don't have a Gateway Solo 2100? -well, maybe the same error message while doing something else), you can plug the floppy in OR the CD drive. Of course, I had the CD drive in while loading W98. The drives are not hot-swappable either, you have to shut down to switch them.

I swapped out the CD drive for the floppy, and sure enough, it booted fine, and proceeded to configure the hardware. A minute or so later, it asked for the CD. Sigh...

I suspect that I could have found a way to write the required files to the HD (If I'd had enough disk space, I suppose I could have done the whole install that way). Of course, there was not a complete working OS on the machine, it would probably have meant connecting the HD drive to a desktop with an adaptor.

Instead, I shut down with a few ctrl-alt-delete's, swapped the CD back, rebooted, and the install proceeded as if it had never been interrupted! I suppose Windows crashes so often that they planned for some crashes during the install and made it capable of recovering.

A few minutes later, "A fatal exception 06 has occurred". Sigh.

I swapped again. And then again. After a few more cold-power swaps, W98 was installed and working.

There was another minor problem, perhaps related to the original partitioning and removal with Linux fdisk. Windows only saw 697M of the hard drive after it was loaded. This was easily fixed with Partition Magic. This is a great program, well worth the price.

BTW, AOL isn't too bad. As a long-time (since '93) Linux user, I thought I'd never use it, or say any such thing, but for $3.00 per month, it's wonderful for traveling, or for a back up connection at home. I could never use it as a primary ISP, as all my home systems are behind a Linux firewall connected to an @home cable modem, but it's not bad as a secondary ISP. Would I pay $21.95 or whatever the full price is now? No, but I can see why those who only have one machine, want to use Windows as a primary OS (yuch), and don't mind the heavily commercialized feel would be happy with it.