the xt guy

Hmm, just counting "PC" style, I've got four green-on-black monochrome monitors! Two are IBM 5151's (from the original IBM PC's 5150 series) and two off brand. I've also got two amber-on-black monochrome monitors in storage (I always hated the amber ones) and one of those "looks like a portable TV set" green monochrome monitors for an Apple II+. That doesn't count the several green mono monitors I've got for the CP/M computers!

The last version of definitions to work with Ad-Aware Personal on Win98 was version #247 (May 13, 2008). Later update files will not work on 98. There was a big debacle at the time over on the Ad-Aware forums with accusations being made, Ad-Aware evading a direct answer, closing threads, tempers flaring, etc. Ad-Aware may still be of some limited use even without the lastest definitions. Fortunately the latest version (1.60) of Spybot Search and Destroy still runs fine on 98. In fact, I was surprised to see on their website that the previous version of Spybot (1.52, now no longer updated) still worked on Windows 95! BTW, I'm still using Ad-Aware Personal on my Win2K box with the latest definitions!

Thank you for the link to this, but I cannot get the installer to run. It keeps complaining it cannot find the files, even though I have them in the directories it requires. Does it perhaps run only on XP? (my computers use Win 2K and 98.)

What is the 'micro' version of Nero? I've got nero 6 and I hate all the extra crap that it installs. Somebody else on the 98 forum mentioned using 'Nero 6 lite'. A google search wasn't much help. Is there a way to make a light or micro install of Nero 6?

I agree with you 100%. Basically, after Microsoft used IE to kill Netscape, they let IE6 rot on the vine. IE6 is definitely the biggest vulnerability in 98, and if you uninstall it (along with ms java) and use any alternate browser, your system will be much more secure. I have been using 98 lite after running 98SE2ME and have had problems crop up after removing IE (for instance, not being able to open 'My Documents' in the start menu and problems with Zone Alarm not always loading correctly at startup, forcing a reboot.) Probably most of you have seen this, but for a chuckle, go to this guy's 'Internet Explorer Is Evil' website: http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html (He hates Win98 because of its active desktop/IE Integration, but don't let that bother you!)

For about three years (2002-2005) I had my primary computer dual booting Win2K and Win98. I used fdisk to divide the (blank) HD into two equal partitions. I installed Win 98 on one partition. Then I installed Win2K on the second partition. WhenWin2K was installed, it saw the installation of 98 and made a dual-boot loader where I could choose which OS to runa at bootup. The Win2K partition was formatted as NTFS and the 98 partition was FAT32. When Win2K was booted, it saw itself as Drive C and the Win98 as Drive D. When Win98 was booted, it saw itself as Drive C and did not see the 2K installation at all. The drive letters assigned between the two systems were not consistent. On 2K, my D drive was the 98 installation and the E drive was a CD-ROM. On 98 my 2K was ignored since it was NTFS, so my CD-ROM became Drive D. My other hard and optical drives past letter D were also not consistent between 98 and 2K. When you install Win 98, it's going to ask you where you want it to install it. Your only option will be whatever Win98 sees as 'Drive C'. If you already have Win2K installed (as NTFS) on a hard drive (taking up all the space on that drive) Win 98 will see that drive as unformatted. It doesn't matter if Win2K calls that drive 'C' while you are running win2K. To Win98 it is an unformatted drive. If you insist on using that drive, Win 98 will have to use fdisk and then completely format the drive to FAT32. Everything will be wiped off the disk, including your Win2K bootloader. Obviously you don't want that! You will have to use a third party tool to shrink the 2K partition and free up some space on the drive. Win98 can't see or understand 2K's bootloader. If you are installing it on the same drive as 2K (with a free partition to install to) it can install itself in that partition but will wipe 2K's bootloader off the drive and install its own. Then you will not be able to get into 2K. To correct that, you must start the 2K installation from the CD and choose the 'repair' option. That will reinstall the 2K boot loader. Assuming the two OS'es are on the same physical drive, Win2K should see that and create a dual boot system. I don't know for certain if 2K will be able to do that if you have 98 and 2K installed on two physically seperate drives. It probably will, but I can't say for certain since I've never tried it. Everything I've ever read and experienced says that Win98 must see itself as being installed on and then running on Drive C. While a different OS is running it may assign the Win98 drive as a different letter, but when you boot 98, it will be C again. Drive letters will be reassigned between operating systems if necessary. If you install 2K on a FAT32 partition then 98 should be able to see it. However, Microsoft's tools will not allow you to make a FAT32 partition larger than 32 gb (you will have to use third party tools for that.) Also Win 98, without special third party patches, cannot use IDE hard drives bigger than 137gb.

Yes, I already found the three that won't run on Win 98! The Intel Active Monitor was even more bizarre. It claimed I had a non-Intel MB, it actually has an Intel 865 and ICH5 chipsets. Another one ran on 9X but claimed my CPU was not supported! SpeedFan installed but reported bizarre voltages and temps (-52c, -2c and 29c, my CPU temp at the time was about 41c; voltages were bizarrely off too..-12v. was -16 volts -5 volts was -6.85 volts!. The BIOS reports that they're OK, although doesn't give the actual voltages). Thanks Digerati Prime for posting these links, I'll keep trying.

I've been using Motherboard Monitor for about five years and have just put together a new computer with a newer (2007) Motherboard and MBM won't run on it (development of MBM stopped in 2004). The motherboard is a Gigabyte 8I865GME-775-RH running a Pentium Cedar Mill 3.6 ghz. CPU. I don't need all the many options in MBM, just something that will read the case and CPU temps and will show them in the system tray (like MBM did.) I also need it to work with Windows 98. Two programs I've tried so far don't work: 'Core Temp' won't work on Pentium 4 or D. 'CPU ID Hardware Monitor' will not work on 98/ME (although one can e-mail the developers and they can e-mail a 98/ME version that does not rely on unicode.) Any suggestions?

Actually, that's only the first half of the instructions. What you need is to copy all the .cab files in the \Win98 folder of the CD to an empty directory of your choice. For example, It could be C:\CABS or C:\windows\CABS. You just need to copy the .cab files from this directory of the install CD, not any of the other files. Now, you need to inform the computer that you've changed the path where it thinks the setup files are. This was your CD drive where you originally installed Windows from. To change this, you need to go into the Registry. Go to start, run and in the box type 'regedit'. The Registry editor opens up. Now go to HKey_Local_Machine\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\setup In the setup file, you will find an entry titled Souce Path. Click on that and a window will open up. In the bottom field called 'Value data' you will see the current path that your Windows is using to find the setup files. It should be showing the path to your CD drive, which is where Windows is currently looking. Change that path to the one above where you put the .cab files from the Windows CD. (For example: C:\Windows\CABS) Don't change anything in the other field (Value name). When the new path is correct, close the Registry editor and your computer should now be able to find the setup files in the new directory. Once you try it, you'll wonder how you ever put up with the old way.

"I still dream of a 4 GHz single core (take it in a heartbeat over dual 2 GHz) running Win9x." I dreamed too, of having a fast single core to run Win 98. Sometime in Fall 2007, I bought a new Gigabyte 8I865GME-775-RH motherboard with the intent of building a fast Win 98 computer. I knew this would be one of the last MB's available new that would still run 98 with no chipset or other hardware incompatibilities so I grabbed it up from Newegg while it was still around. Just last week I finally got a 3.6ghz Pentium Cedar Mill (661) CPU. I'm just waiting on a second stick of RAM so I can run the RAM in dual-channel mode, then I'll see how fast Win 98 can run in the outer reaches of the stratosphere!

What are 'Nero 6 Lite' and 'DirectX lite'? Where can I get them?

It would be good if we could have a different banner in the start up menu, one that said "98SE2ME" with a color scheme that matched the splash screen. Right now, if I install option 3, it changes to the generic Windows ME banner, otherwise it stays with the generic Windows 98 banner. Also, what version of Windows is supposed to be shown on the desktop (if we have that option set in Tweak UI)? Previously, I had installed Gape's SPSE 2.1a along with a version of 98SE2ME from about December of 2007. The version shown on the desktop was the Windows ME version (4.90xxxx). When I reinstalled Win98 and used SPSE 3.0 b3 along with the latest 98SE2ME (Aug. 2008) the version shown was Win 98 (4.10.2222).

Win 98 has to be installed in the first primary partition (C:) and the partition has to be marked active. It has to be "C". Try installing it to "D" and you get an error message.

I have read official warnings on Ebay there are many USB flash drives being sold that are fake 2gb. drives. They do not have 2gb at all, but are old 128mb/256mb drives that have been modified some way to look like 2gb drives. They will report as 2gb drives but are NOT 2gb. models. They cannot hold any more data than the 128/256mb that they are. If you try to fit more than that small amount you wil start having errors. When you re-format, the true size of the drive appears. From what I read you will soon start having read/write errors even if you don't try to fit more than 128/256mb on the drive. A reformat will show the true size of the drive. I don't know if the same warning applies to MP4 players but if you bought it over the Internet or through Ebay it might be the same situation. It is a big scam.

I agree, it's always a good idea to remove Outlook "Distress" along with IE and use Firefox, Thunderbird, Sea Monkey, Opera, etc. instead. With Firefox I use noscript and only allow java/scripts on my trusted sites. Some things such as Silverlight (google the terms "Silverlight" and "evil") I have blocked completely. Since Firefox has no Active-X the security threats associated with that are gone. I also remove Windows Media Player and MS Java, replacing them with Media Player Classic and Sun Java. Ripping out all this MS software makes a Windows box much safer.

I see that Newegg still offers (as of Sept. 7, 2008) a Foxconn 661GX7MJ-H motherboard, currently $19.99 that should run Windows 98. It has AGP 4X/8X, DDR400 Memory slots, IDE (no SATA), a SIS chipset and takes various Pentium 4, Celeron D and Pentium D CPU's. It does not accept most kinds of Dual-Core CPU (except for Pentium D Smithfield 805) which would be wasted on Win98 anyway. (There are lots of reviews of the MB where people have not checked the CPU list, tried to use a dual-core CPU and then complained that the motherboard was DOA! doh!) I went to the Foxconn website and as of Sept. 7, 2008 there are still Win98 drivers listed for this MB. I realize it's an older design MB that Newegg is clearing out, but it should work fine with Win98!

Problem solved. Since I was confident that I did not have any spyware or viri on my computer, I allowed the two requests to go through, then checked the logs of my Linksys router. There was an outgoing request from my computer to the website "stats.microsoft.com" I had never seen that in the logs before. So I added the site to my hosts file and no more phoning home! While searching on the net for info on stats. microsoft.com, I found someone's list of over 100 MS sites to add to a hosts file and block this sort of unwelcome communicating to MS. Since I am running W2K and do check for critical updates once a month (on "update Tuesday") I did have to take three sites out of this list to permit Windows update to still work, which it still does. In XP SP2, adding the sites to the hosts file won't work as MS has hidden rules in the dnsapi.dll file to overide any manual settings in the hosts file for all MS sites.

S and C was accessing 255.255.255.255:DHCP and GHC for W32 services was accessing 68.87.85.98:DNS. I know the first IP number is for Internal Routing with Windows and is really not a security threat. The second IP number goes to Comcast and I believe was the same IP number that my system used to try to access. It seems odd that these two requests should suddenly start happening again immediately after I updated Win2K. I'm confident that neither one of these is a security threat. But they are an annoyance .

I'm running Win2K on a standalone system at home (not networked). It's connected to the Internet via a Linksys BEFSX41 router/hardware firewall and cable modem. I am running an old version of Zone Alarm (2.6x), but it's mainly to monitor something trying to 'get out', the router is blocking everything that used to trigger ZA. After the latest MS security updates (Aug 12, 2008) Zone Alarm suddenly starts popping up with two requests to access the Internet after I boot up. The names of the two services are not much help (Generic Host Services for Win 32 Services and Services and Controller App). I am very cautious abut security. I have been on the Internet for 10-1/2 years and in all that time I have never had an infection from any kind of a virus, worm or malware. I run W2K with lots of unnecessary services disabled. I have been using Zone Alarm ever since v 2.0 (1999 or 2000). I run Firefox Browser with no script, locked up tight and only trusted sites get to use Java, cookies, etc. I run a hosts file to block lots of ads, dangerous sites, etc. I have Ad-Aware, Spybot and AVG (although I have never had any of them flag anything.) I am very careful not to have automatic update enabled on ANYTHING (not just Windows but every other piece of software as well.). I have both Outlook "Distress" and MS Windows media player (along with other junk) uninstalled from my system via Win2K lite. (I use an old 3x version of Eudora for e-mail and Real Player Alternative/Quick Time Alternative.) The only time I have ever had this happen before was when I had reinstalled W2K three or four years ago. I had to use the setup CD provided by my ISP (Comcast) to get connected to the Internet. I would sometimes get the same two requests when booting (which I always denied). I figured it was some crap-phone home thing that Comcast had on its software. After a few months, it seemed to ask less and less and finally seemed to stop. I had to reinstall Windows last year and pleasantly discovered that I did not have to use the Comcast setup disc after setting up the router. After this point, I never got the two requests to phone home. That seemed to confirm to me that it was something of Comcast's. I just downloaded the MS security updates last week. After I rebooted, there were these two services trying to get out again. I normally keep these two services as 'prompt' under Zone Alarm. They only time they ever come up is when I connect to the Windows update site. While the update is running, the request comes up for both of these services and I allow it, as Windows update fails if I deny them. They NEVER come up at any other time and that is why I keep them on 'prompt' as normally nothing should be asking to connect to the Internet via these. Of course, I will keep denying them. They only come up once when booting and I hope they will eventually stop asking, just as happened before. Of course, Ad-Aware/Spybot/AVG come up with nothing as always. Has anybody else experienced this?

According to the following website: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp usage of Windows 98 as an OS has gone up (in the period from Oct. 2007 to Dec 2007) from 0.9% to 1.3%. That's an increase of nearly 50%! Does this mean we can say (at least somewhere in the world, among some subset of users) that Windows 98 usage has increased by nearly 50%?

I still use Win98SE (actually 98SE2ME) on my secondary computer (Tyan S2495 with Athlon XP3000 CPU, 756 meg. RAM). My main computer has Win2K on it. I do a lot of transferring VHS to DVD and the 4 gb. file size limitation of Win 9x would be a problem. I still like to use Win 98, just to resist the attitude pushed on us of 'you must have' the latest and greatest OS.

I've read several places on the Internet that you can fit a Micro ATX motherboard in a 'standard' ATX case (you just can't go the opposite route). Can anyone here confirm if that is true or not? If so, then a Micro ATX motherboard would work for you.

I too, am glad for the "resistance call" that this site provides. I do use W2K on my primary computer (Asus P4P800E Deluxe with 3.4 g. Prescott CPU) instead of 98 because I sometimes process video and have to get past the 4g. file size limitation. I deliberately have 98SE (with 98SE2ME upgrade) installed on my secondary computer (Tyan S2495MB with Athlon XP3000 CPU) just because I like it, part of me enjoys resisting the M$ constant push toward newer and newer OS'es. With IE, OE and M$ java removed among with other M$ bloat and replaced with Firefox, Sun Java and an old version of Eudora (3x) I feel ready for a few more years of W98. To prepare myself for the inevitable day when all W2K support is gone and I may have to use something else on the 'net, I am now dual booting with Linux and am slowly starting to get used to that OS.

Microsoft has never released any version of DOS or Windows into "the public domain". EVER. Not DOS 3.3 or even 1.0. What makes anyone think they're going to do that for Win 98? A silly rumor. Mdgx is right, just try putting free copies of any version of DOS or Windows up on a website for download and see how M$ reacts. The only time they ever give anything away for free is to destroy another company or a competing software (like they started giving IE away free in the mid 90's to kill Netscape.)

My main computer (Pentium P4 3.4 ghz) uses Win 2K, although in the last couple of weeks I have installed Xandros 4.1 (dual boot) and am taking my first baby steps in Linux. I'm typing this on my secondary computer (about 4 years old) with a Tyan S2495MB and an Athlon XP3000. It is running Win 98SE2ME. Both of these computers I built from scratch, which is really the way to go. After seeing the direction MS is heading with Vista, I knew I just had to start learning Linux. With support for W2K ending in 2010, I need to start planning new options, and XP and Vista are not it. I might have never gone over to W2K except I started doing a lot of video work and was limited by the 4gb. file size of W98. I have lots of other MS operating systems all the way down to DOS 1.1 with the IBM manual and slipcover case (and the original IBM 5150 to run it on.)