BenoitRen

Saturday, I finally received the PC I had asked a friend of mine to assemble. Yesterday I ran it for an hour with Puppy Linux. Today he brought me the drivers, so I could start installing Windows 98SE. I started by partitioning my hard drive with GParted on Puppy Linux. I try to run Setup, but it always complains that it can't read the last cluster of C:. It insists on performing a surface scan. I quit Scandisk, and it informs me that Setup cannot continue. Great. Next time I let it, and after a half hour, it tells me that it has encountered a problem, and asks me if he should fix it. I tell it to not do this, and it aborts. After searching on the Internet for a solution to my problem, it came to my mind that I should have partitioned with FDISK, as that's native. I did so, and then couldn't find the FORMAT utility. I boot Setup anyway, and it offers to format my partitions. Sure, go ahead! After that, Scandisk runs and doesn't perform a surface scan, and setup continues smoothly. Next I installed the necessary drivers, and at the same time configure the system to my liking. While it automatically installs Client for Microsoft Networks when you install the network card, it doesn't automatically enable file and printer sharing, which is good. Then it was time to install my graphics card... My graphics card is an Asus/ATI Radeon 9250. I had made sure that the graphics card would be one that would work with Windows 98SE, but yet the box says Windows 2000/XP. I try to install the drivers, but the wizard fails when trying to 'configure' (aka install) .NET Framework 1.1. So I read the readme, and looked around on the CD. The .inf file seems to state that this driver should even work with Windows 95... Anyway, starting the setup of .NET Framework directly, I get an error that states that I need at least IE 5.01. Terrific. I already didn't want the .NET Framework, and then it turns out it's tied to IE. **** you, Microsoft. That's where I stopped for the day. Tomorrow I'll install the unofficial Service Pack before continuing.

Bulls***. You're talking as if Firefox is vulnerable to those exploits. It isn't. The only thing you can encounter while surfing those sites is a download prompt for a file because it's an attachment to a page. Just don't download it. Not true. I've run Windows 95 for years without an AV or anti-spyware software, and I'm still malware-free. Ever since I've started using a secure browser, that is. Back when I used IE5, I'd get adware. Of course, when I used Kazaa years back, I did use an AV, because you can't trust the files you get from there. Similarly, I'm still malware-free on WinXP Service Pack 2, though I do use a software firewall on it. Indeed!

The name of that file is quite misleading...

Never had problems surfing without one, unless I was using IE or a P2P client.

I installed Foxit Reader a couple days ago even though I had downloaded the installer longer ago. Seemed to be faster, so I kept it and threw away Acrobat Reader 5.0.5. Now I've reinstalled it. Why? Foxit Reader doesn't print the PDF I'm viewing. It makes my printer just go through pages without printing anything on them. Great... Also, the first time the Print dialog window had everything greyed out, and it assumes I'm using a resolution of 800x600 or bigger.

Media Player Classic, obviously.

Win98 SE will always be faster than XP...

Well, yeah. Resources = power, basically.

Yes, I'm banned from that place. It's not related to that, though. The head administrator is a dick and doesn't like me. I didn't give in to the bullying, and got banned.

I installed USB yesterday evening on my system (finally got a new adaptor for the scanner and finally found the right drivers), and I got a prompt in the process for usbd.sys, but after that everything went smoothly. It's normal, anyway, that even though you just pointed to a folder with your drivers, that when it wants to install them, that it doesn't find them, as it always first looks in the path of your Win95 setup files.

It's normal if you have NetBIOS or NetBEUI installed, otherwise it isn't, I think. It's unchecked on mine, and not disabled.

Yes, that's true, sadly. It will also add Netware. When you add the network card at installation, you can immediately remove all that from Network Setup, but if a network card is detected at Windows boot, you don't have control. If you don't insert the CD, though, it won't get fully installed, hehe.

Where did that come from? Is that your personal (flawed) opinion, or something?

SeaMonkey switched to the toolkit back-end on the trunk recently. That's extra incentive for me to get back to work. Just one more exam to go, and I'm free for two months!

I thought that Win95 wasn't going to connect to the Internet? It will only open TCP ports when it needs to, so you don't really need a firewall, at least when it comes to closing ports. Anyway, I believe the good old Kerio 2.1.5 firewall will work on it. I'm not familiar with the Win2K boot disc, so I'm not sure what you want to do. Some batch wizardry could solve part of it, I guess. Slipstreaming the USB updates could work. I have no idea what registry entries the updates need, though. Remember that it also installs a different, USB-able kernel. And yeah, I remember something about a PCI USB yellow mark. Not sure what to say about that.

That's about it, really. No IE, no NetBIOS, and the latest patches. Perfect.

Didn't the nVidia drivers that were recently discovered offer support for some PCI Express cards? It is foolish to get a new Windows version before at least SP1. Not to mention that XP SP2 is more mature, will still be supported for five years, and is less demanding. Unless there's a retarded version check on the installer, installing the drivers will probably work fine on Win98 SE.

You don't need anti-virus software if you have BRAIN.EXE.

WINOLDAP is usually present if you have a DOS box open.

I use Acrobat Reader 5 for the few times I have to view a PDF. Not too bad.

Doesn't mean anything, the Internet has screenshots.

To illustrate my point: I can already see everyone laughing: "Hah, he has a 9x user bar, but uses Vista graphics for it! What a contradiction, hahaha! I bet he secretly wants to be running Vista.".

Win9x is not DOS-based! That's Vista eye candy! EVIL! EVIL!

Not having IE and its posse installed helps a lot. Aside from that, I don't install a lot of applications. I prefer those that don't need installing and registry access anyway.

I'll clarify awergh's post. Those APIs aren't present in Windows 98's USER32.DLL. They are in Win2K's and WinXP's.