Should I install HOW on a 250mhz Win98 laptop with 96mb of RAM?

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I'm attending night school to bring my degree level to the next level, and the person who scheduled the classes forgot to include a lab session for one of my classes, and the teacher wants us to bring laptops to class. I'll probably wind up lugging the thing around at time before class and needing to kill time, so I'm installing a game or two. The problem is that I don't have any decent, current laptops. I haven't had a need for one of my own. The only thing I've got available is an old NEC Ready 440T. Specs are 300mhz processor (according to the BIOS startup screen. According to the manual it's only 250mhz), 96mb of RAM, and 1GB of available HD space (4gb total).

I think Baldur's Gate II is out, but BG1 or Icewind Dale I should work. BG1 has too much disc swapping. I need something that only uses one CD.

The HOW readme doesn't seem to increase the requirements, but do I have to worry about it pulling a full install on me the way that Throne of Bhaal did? I remember installing IWD on it before, and it ran, but not perfectly like on my Dell Optiplex GX110 (why bother wasting space on my modern computer when it runs perfectly well on the old clunker).
Will HOW degrade the performance any furhter? I still meet the minimum requirements, but not the reccomended.in HD space or CD-ROM speed. I've only got a 4X CD-ROM. Oh, Windows 98 First Edition of all things. Using my thumb drive, which is as large as the hard drive brought back a reminder of why I call it a "plug and pray" device.

Yeah, I know it sucks today in 2009, but it was given to me for free over 5 years ago.

 

Your laptop meets the minimum system requirements for BG2 (I've just checked the readme) so I guess IWD should run, the only problem will probably be disk space for a full install (it takes more space with IWD1 than with IWD2).

It's been a while since I've played BG1 (non tutu) but I remember that the CDs had to be swapped in order to read videos. Back when I first played BG I had a 150 MHz PC with 16 Mo RAM and only a 2 gig hard drive but I managed to avoid too much CD swapping by copying the videos on my drive so I think you can get away with it.

That being said I'd suggest playing other old games, for instance Fallout 1 and 2 won't need that much disk space for a complete install (roughly 600 Mo) and don't have huge system requirements either.

 

I didn't have HOW when I last tried IWD on it, I'm wondering if installing it will affect performance at all. If not, I'm installing it. If so, I'll refrain.

---------- Added 20 hours, 52 minutes and 40 seconds later... ----------

Well, I tried to install HOW. I had 1.03GB of free HD space when I started. After doing a minimum install of IWD I had around 800MB. I once again chose "minimum". I got an error that I was out of disk space.

This laptop has only a small (by today's standards, I remember when my Apple IIGS's 327MB hard drive was HUGE) 4gb HD. Could I try installing to a 4gb flash drive, then copy the install to the hard drive and modify the .ini file to point to the hard drive, or am I better off just playing without HOW? According to the readme, I should have had enough free space.

 

Copying it from a flash drive is not a bad move. By the way I've just checked and you need roughly 1.80 gb for a complete install (with TotLM).

I don't know if playing with the game installed on the flash drive is feasible with such a system.

Skipping HoW might be a safer bet since it'll save some space.

 

What do you think would be better? Full install to a USB 1.1 flash drive (the flash drive is 2.0, but the laptop is 1.1) or minimum install with a 4X CD-ROM?
Is there some way to move the cache file to the hard drive for faster access? I only see references to the CDs in icewind.ini on my Win98SE desktop.

I wonder if I can use my Vista computer to speed up the installation as the 4X CD-ROM -> USB 1.1 is taking forever. I don't have IWD installed on my Vista computer at the moment, so I don't have to uninstall anything to make an new minimum install instead of a reccomended. Otherwise I'd simply copy the existing Icewind Dale folder from my 98SE machine.

---------- Added 5 hours, 19 minutes and 47 seconds later... ----------

Well, I tried the flash drive approach. I was able to install HOW, but I was NOT able to install Trials of the Luremaster. Even managing to free up another 100mb bringing things to 1.12gb free, I was unable to get TOTLM to decompress.

If I were to install a copy with Trials of the Luremaster along with the G3 tweaks pack (or whatever they call the updated ease-of-use patch to give me larger stacks things like arrows or potions and bottomless bags of holding) on Virtual PC running Windows98 Second Edition, could I simply copy the Icewind Dale folder onto a flash drive, then overwrite the Icewind Dale folder on the laptop that has an unpatched Heart of Winter? The only reason that wouldn't work is if the TOTLM installer changes something in the registry. That, and the laptop has Win98 First Edition. While I'd like to update it to SE, I only have the OEM version that shipped preinstalled on my Dell Optiplex GX110. I remember problems getting OEM versions to install on machines made by other manufacturers due to a lack of drivers.

Otherwise I'll just forget about TOTLM, but I don't think I've ever played it. On my Win98SE desktop the attack sounds are horribly bugged and not only sound terrible, but the sound is VERY annoying. I never made it out of Easthaven before uninstalling it and just playing plain old Heart of Winter.

What upsets me is that the readme file lies, it says I only need 900mb of free HD space to install it.

---------- Added 13 hours, 32 minutes and 26 seconds later... ----------

Well, I discovered the reason for the space problems. It seems that I had accidentally disabled scandisk in TweakUI. Running Scandisk caused nearly 1gb in reported free space to be reduced as it corrected a few errors. I don't know what I was thinking when I last used the laptop by doing that. The new figures make more sense on why I couldn't get anything to install. I'm defraging the disk as well. I also found an old Microsoft backup file made before I took possession of the laptop that was wasting 1.1gb of space, which I have removed.

Good news is that I've now got IWD, HOW, and TOTLM to installed, and the attack sound bug hasn't manifested with the staffs the built-in paladin and bard are equipped with.

Oh, one final question, was I correct in the install order from scratch:
Run the installer on the Icewind Dale CDs
Run the installer on the Heart of Winter CD
Run the Trials of the Luremaster patch
Run the G3 Tweaks patch
Edit the XPCAP.2DA with Notepad to allow multiclassed characters to get slightly less than double or triple the experience of single classed characters to let them advance to the same levels as their counterparts, only slowly.

Were there any other things I should have installed like a fixpack similar to Baldurdash? Or should I have patched the game before or after installing TOTLM? I was under the impression that TOTLM counted as the final patch.
There was a fixpack included in the G3 tweaks, so I didn't think I needed another.

 

That looks swell and dandy. TotLM is actually the latest patch so no need for further patching.

I don't have that many mods in mind regarding IWD1, I recall trying the NPC mod and it was really nice to play with banters and stuff. You could consider it and tweak the NPCs to make them suit your style if you want something that feels a little more like BG2 banter and all.

Other than that it looks you're good to go!