Windows 98 SE on Sandy Bridge: the debugging story

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

After playing with Windows XP on my “new” Optiplex 990 I asked myself a question: “Would Windows 98 SE run on this Sandy Bridge as well?” By running I mean: accelerated 3D graphics and 3D audio (EAX) without any hangs or lockups, being able to play games and run benchmarks.

Component	my Optiplex 990 configuration
CPU	Core i5 2500
Chipset	Q67 (Sandy Bridge, 6-series PCH)
RAM	4GB, 2+2, dual channel DDR3-1333
GPU	Radeon X550, 64bit (most retro part in here)
Sound	Sound Blaster Audigy (SB0090) in the PCI slot
Storage	128GB SATA (BIOS SATA == AHCI)
Other	USB keyboard and mouse, one PS/2 mouse so I could install USB drivers
Turned OFF:	onboard: GPU, NIC, sound; UEFI boot (legacy boot), all power saving/sleep states, virtualization, remote management

Table 1 — the test subject.

EP03 — Windows 98 meets Sandy Bridge

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Playing Far Cry on Sandy Bridge under XP is retro by age, but it hardly feels like it. Then an idea appeared — ridiculous at first, but it kept coming back, and every time it did it felt more like a challenge: can this 2011 office box run unpatched 90s games well, on the operating system they were written for?

Technically possible, it turned out — but not easy, and not on the first try. If every failed attempt had made the cut, this would be a trilogy. What you get instead is the clean run — read the full article here.

W9xfix on Peter Truchly

Windows 98 SE on Sandy Bridge: the debugging story

EP03 — Windows 98 meets Sandy Bridge