After making your Vista into Windows 7 & XP into Vista, I had a little moment of nostalgia when I decided to install Windows 98 on Windows 7 via Virtual PC. It wasn’t exactly as easy as I thought, creating a bootable CD of Windows 98 on Windows 7 on a machine with no floppy drive was pretty geeky. Anyhoo … I got it done & listening to the welcome sound of Windows 98 brought back old memories, rebooting after installing every driver reminded me of what all we used to do back in the days. Life’s much simple now, Vista made it so, Windows 7 takes it further, which brings me to themes in Windows 7. After a long time Microsoft allows us to package Sounds, Icons, Wallpapers & Colors with ease & share them around. So I thought why not bring back those good ‘ol themes of Windows 98 on 7. Here are 4 ready made packages & resources for all 16 themes that were bundled with Windows 98.
The themes contain:
- Wallpaper
- Mouse pointers
- Desktop icons
- Sounds
- Color scheme
To install just double click on the file. The 4 packaged themes:
 |
 |
 |
 |
Click on the theme to download.
Download resources for all 16 themes:
Mirror links: Baseball, Jungle, Mystery, Travel
UPDATE: Free beer for Madata© for creating install packages for the rest of the themes!
If however you find that the cursors or the sound scheme is too noobish then you can choose the default schemes from the respective control panels:
Control Panel –> Appearance and Personalization –> Personalization will bring this screen:
| For Cursor: | For Sound: |
| Select Change mouse pointers from the left sidebar & select the Windows Aero (system scheme) | Select Sounds from the bottom options & select the Windows Default scheme. |
 |
 |
To change the icons:
Select Change desktop icons from the left sidebar:
NOTE: You can also disable the themes changing your Icons & Cursors by un-checking the “Allow themes to change …” in both windows as highlighted.
Update: TimTusk has been kind enough to extract the Screensavers and they are available for download. To use them you need to copy the files to:
- C:\Windows\System32 in case you’re using 32- bit Windows.
- C:\Windows\SysWOW64 – in case you have a 64-bit Windows installation.
Mirror by DZ
~Enjoy
April 9th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
So, thats why you installed Win98? cool.. great effort
The most memorable part of installing Win98 (bazillion times) back in the days was looking at that first bootup screen which says “Ready to start windows 98 for the first time” and loling…
Man.. its was so silly, to lol at that.. but oh well, we were little kids sitting and spoiling computers
April 9th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
Brings back a lot of memories.
:up:
April 9th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Nice tut.. brings back memories of late 90s
April 10th, 2009 at 1:22 am
@Reetesh sort of yes, wanted to go back in time
April 10th, 2009 at 2:49 am
Gr8.. Will give it a try for sure..
Thanks..
April 10th, 2009 at 5:18 am
oohhh Windows 98.. brings back fond.. and not so fond memories .. especially “Getting ready to Start Windows 98 for first time”, only to note it only starts the setup :-/
Oh well, Plus pack FTW! Nostalgia FTW! Thanks dude!
April 11th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Ah!
But the wallpapers does’nt support widescreen. 
April 11th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Yes, but Windows’ wallpaper resizing algo does a decent job. Set it from Control Panel
April 14th, 2009 at 5:29 am
Any chances to do this for Vista? Or better, is it working for Vista too?
Thanks.
April 14th, 2009 at 11:07 am
No, the pack won’t work on Vista. And if I do get time I might do it, a bit busy these days.
April 23rd, 2009 at 5:04 am
Do the theme packs work on XP?
April 23rd, 2009 at 8:43 am
Unfortunately no.
April 24th, 2009 at 8:33 am
how do you use the other themes,there are ne theme files with them
April 24th, 2009 at 9:43 am
FOr the other themes I have bundled all the resources ie. the cursors, wallpapers & sounds … so you’ll have to manually edit all of that stuff from within the respective panels … refer screen shots.
April 29th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Shame that you have not gone the extra step to create them as windows 7 themes. So that all you need to do is install and go
May 2nd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
For those for do not feel like manually completely the rest of the themes, i have completed them and uploaded them online. Credit remains to Manan for the great idea
http://bit.ly/3XuvF4
May 2nd, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Awesome! Thanks a ton for that. Post updated. Amazing job dude!
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:05 pm
this is so amazing. i’m not good with nostalgia, i might cry
thanks dudes
May 4th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Your welcome anything to help a good cause
May 4th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
http://bit.ly/1BnFPb
May 4th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Sweet stuff! Much appreciated
May 9th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Great themes package. Any change you have some of the Plus! themes? There was a great green germ that I have since lost. Good Job.
Thanks,
May 15th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Flashback,, YaY for Win7 ColorView Features!
May 15th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Hey Manan
Greetings from Germany, veery nice job 
lot of memories …
so i use vista … can you tell me pls, where i can get the “travel theme” background? Just the background wallpaper, nothing else … would be a dream for me
cheers,
daniel
May 15th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
The zipped package that has all the resources (download link above) contains sounds & wallpapers of all 16 themes. You’ll find the wallpaper in the Travel folder.
Cheers!
May 17th, 2009 at 3:08 am
There is a Jazz theme … it woul be great if you could put at least the wallpaper.
May 17th, 2009 at 9:49 am
I loved the “Jungle” theme in Windows 98 Plus! What a throw-back.
May 17th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
@Carlo yea I had an interesting trip down memory lane too.
@Supirole: all the default Plus! theme resources are bundled in the pack.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
It brought back college memories dude, thanks for the effort.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Primeras imagenes de un futuro Windows realizado por un usuario, evolucion del windows7
principal caracteristica, ya no hay una barra de tareas completa, si no iconos digamos sobre una barra de tareas invisible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7WzCI_yxBw
May 31st, 2009 at 7:02 pm
I like windows 98, but I can’t find the driver from the hardware provider’ webside…
July 17th, 2009 at 12:40 am
can someone please tell me how to get these windows 98 themes converted to windows xp?????please….
July 20th, 2009 at 4:10 am
ohh my got!
i like win 98.thank u for share
July 25th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Dude I love these! Reminds me of my old bedroom at my dad’s…Got my first computer when I was eight….I switched between these themes about every day, it probably drove dad crazy. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this! I just re-aquired my first computer from someone I gave it to awhile back…now I’m looking for an old copy of ’98 on ebay to restore it to original condition…
July 27th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
@Fatih & Josh I agree with! It’s an awesome feeling to go in time & remember those days
August 27th, 2009 at 6:10 am
Manan, I just found your site and noticed someone asked about the 98 themes in Vista. I still have the 98 Plus Pack and it works fine in Vista.
I’m thrilled that I’ll be able to continue using my favorite Mystery Desktop in Windows 7 when it arrives in October. Thank you for all your hard work.
October 24th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Found the screensavers for most of these (with the exception of the 60′s one). Also threw in the old OpenGL ones too (Pipes, flower box, 3d text etc)
Enjoy
http://www.filedropper.com/w98plusscreensavers
October 24th, 2009 at 8:53 am
awesome themes. Great wanna apply right now.
November 13th, 2009 at 6:56 am
Hey, cool. Thanks for this. I just found this place looking for themes for Win7.
One question though…where is the Science Fiction theme for Plus!98? I loved that thing. Wish I still had it.
Do you happen to have it, or know where I could possibly get it? Thanks in advance!
November 13th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
The wallpaper, icons & sounds of the science theme are available for download, use them and u can compile the theme
November 14th, 2009 at 12:20 am
Not the “Science” theme. The “Science Fiction” theme. Thanks though.
November 14th, 2009 at 1:05 am
I’ll look around if I can find anything.
November 15th, 2009 at 3:23 am
He means the “Space” theme.
November 19th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
That one is available in the zip file by Matadata.
November 25th, 2009 at 6:29 am
No, I mean the “Science Fiction” theme. I have it now on a VMWare Fusion Win98 install on my Mac. Im zipping up the various parts of it now. I’ll send it to you when I’m done.
November 25th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Check your mail.
November 27th, 2009 at 2:00 am
Hey, I took the liberty of copying the .dll’s and screensavers needed from my old Windows 98 box… tested them in 7 64-bit and they work great! All you do is put them into your SYSTEM32 or SYSWOW64 folder.
http://uploading.com/files/5ab3cm85/Win98SS.rar/
November 28th, 2009 at 4:35 am
Win 98 themes do work under XP/Vista/7
This guy may not have created an installer for them, but my fav ones were the jungle theme & mystery.
They are easy to make work in XP using the theme manager that win 98 shipped with.
I also have cool XP themes including media center style, etc, that later on, I intend on making a single installer pack for.
November 28th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
@TimTusk thank you! Will update the post once I’m back home.
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Thank you for the present themes – good work! I was trying to install tiberian sun theme but I can’t get it to install as win7 does not recognise it. If you ever manage to get that up and running I’d much appreciate it:)
thnx.
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:43 pm
I finally have win7 now and will FINALLY try it out and OMG, what is this man, 100 comments? :O This is crazy, also..
Hundredth!
Woot, both First and Hundredth
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:57 pm
haha that’s trackbacks+comments.
But, yeah funny you’re the first & 100th!
January 2nd, 2010 at 3:15 am
Hi!
I love Windows 98 theme very much. So, your stuffs is so interesting. But, it’s not include screensavers. Can you do it for sceensaver too?
Thanks!!!
January 8th, 2010 at 6:18 am
Quick question. I have a mac os x, and I use vmware fusion 3 to run windows at the same time. With windows 98, will Microsoft plus 98 work inside windows 98 on the virtual machine?
January 8th, 2010 at 11:11 am
it will. But why would you want to install Windows 98 on a Mac? Anything specific?
January 9th, 2010 at 10:48 am
yo necesito instalar temas de windows 98 en el sistema operativo windows XP. DIME COMO PUEDO HACERLO
January 9th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
I love to run the classic windows operating systems, and my mac system. There’s a couple of games that I have that won’t work with the later systems, and plus, I love to see the development of the windows. I have a bootcamp partition, which I run Windows 7 professional. I then have vmware fusion, which I use to run earlier Windows, also because of some programs that won’t work. Plus, 98, and windows 7 are my favorite windows systems. I love being able to run both mac and windows. I grew up with both, so this is a great way for me to have both.
January 9th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
ah! Hard disc constraints is why I haven’t done something like this. A couple of years back I had setup a quad-boot with Linux Ubuntu, Windows XP, Vista & OS X (hackintosh) on my PC. Was great fun, Virtualization wasn’t an option due to hardware specs of my PC. I do have ready to boot VHDs of quite a few OSs though. Good fun to play around on them!
January 10th, 2010 at 7:55 am
Got a new computer with Windows7..years ago I bouth Microsoft Plus! for WindowsXP but did not have enough oomph to run it….will it work on 7 if I install the cd?
Thanks for your help!
January 10th, 2010 at 9:15 am
I doubt it but you can try it out in the Compatibility mode.
January 27th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Man u ROCKKKKKKKKKKKK
awesome stuff
brings back so many memories
*nostalgic
THANX
February 8th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
holas
February 26th, 2010 at 2:55 am
Great work!! Cool.
April 4th, 2010 at 5:34 am
Manan, you never put my screensavers in the article
April 4th, 2010 at 11:52 am
aww damn! Just did! Sorry… completely skipped my mind!
April 12th, 2010 at 12:28 am
Woah that totally roxx
So nostalgic 
May 17th, 2010 at 1:55 am
May 19th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Thanks! Btw, how have you done this – it would be nice if you could “port” the “Windows 98 Classic” theme to Windows 7. In Windows 7 there is only “Windows 2000″ color thereme… How bad!
June 15th, 2010 at 4:23 am
Do you happen to just have the wallpapers? I really just want the Mystery wallpaper. thank you so much for the theme!
June 15th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Here you go – http://yfrog.com/j8mysterywallpaperj
June 17th, 2010 at 10:53 am
Did you ever get my email about the Win98 SciFi theme I wrote to you about above?
June 19th, 2010 at 6:30 am
You are a champion! This brings back so many memories.
July 13th, 2010 at 5:37 am
I really have to thank you, this bring me back old memories
August 27th, 2010 at 1:15 am
Very nice, but I can’t get the 60′s screen saver to work right. I’ve got it set up for spiral, size 500, speed 1 and twist 1. Both “Flip Background” and “Use Wallpaper” are unchecked. when running the preview it works as expected. But when it kicks in by itself it seems to ignore my settings and runs super fast and the size is much smaller. Also, my background disappears and it leaves me with a white screen. Using a .jpg as my background.