Rhelic

Oh I can believe this, imho Win2000 BSOD on me a few times back in the day, but far less than my experiences with 95 or 98. Of course I also believe you have great drivers on your ME box and so-so drivers on your other setups. As I stated in a previous post, BSODs are often the result of your drivers not playing nicely with your system (and being triggered by something you or an app did). Despite your experience with WinME, 2000 and newer are far more stable than the 9x kernel can ever be because of memory protection and such. I can say from my experience it took well over a year of heavy usage before I ever got a BSOD on XP. I've found XP to be MS's most stable OS to date (ignoring DOS).

Celeron has always had a bad rap, the truth is, it's a good CPU, actually it's a great cpu for the price. A 2.4ghz Celeron is NOT going to be any slower than a true P4 2.4ghz on 98/2000/XP. You might be able to measure a difference in games, and definitely there's a difference if you tried to use high end apps (maybe Photoshop, SQL server, etc). Celeron has gotten a bad rap when only it's VERY FIRST iteration, the Celeron 300 was the only crappy one, and that was way back in 1998 iirc and was phased out after only 3-4 months. (Kind of like IBM, they make 1 bad batch of HDs and people think all their drives suck.) IF XP seemed slow and you had 256ram, something else is at play, and it's definitely not the celeron, why don't you try to make sure all of your drivers (in XP) are the newest revisions.

IT's called AutoPlay settings, just go change them. You find them by right clicking on your CD drive in My Computer, choosing Properties and clicking the Autoplay tab. Things are easy to configure in XP, while they may be different from 98 and 2000, the ywere changed to become easier to find (for new users). This is the reason behind most changes made in the Windows UI. Also, there are a ton of mini XP tweaks right here on MSFN at http://www.msfn.org/articles.php?action=cat&acid=26 Here's a guide that explains every service and if you should or shouldn't disable it (and what are the consequences). http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/winxp_servi...ervices-3.shtml

Perhaps you should give DosBox a try, that might give you more memory than a DOS boot or a dos window.

XP is by no means a slow OS, in fact in many ways it's faster than 2000, especially when properly tweaked (extra services removed). Things like the themes do not slow down my XP1700 (266mhz DDR) 512ram, nor does it slow down my 2ghz work box or any of my testing machines, even this old P3 junker runs XP fine. But I can't even imagine what you're doing wrong. Some quick notes: 512ram is not enough when you use user switching (2 ppl logged in at the same time), a virus scanner, IE, IM and a major app (ex: Photoshop) all at the same time. I just recently added another 256 ram chip and it's over twice as fast as before (my wife runs IE, IM, Office 2003.. I run IE, IM, Trillian, Shareaza and I have a service based virus scanner that eats a ton of ram but it's the best on the market) and all of that running at the same murdered 512 easily. But imho with only 1 user on at a time, 512 is enough.

Summary: if I had to choose between ME and 2003, I guess I'd go with 2003 but unless you have a VERY specific reason to run a server OS, just get ahold of XP. Rant: You're the first person I've ever heard said that they actually like WinME. I haven't had much experience with it but I've heard lots of bad reviews. Of course if you hang around here too long you'll believe 98 is the best thing since sliced bread and 2000 & XP are junk. That's a hard choice, unless you're a developer there is absolutely no reason to run a server OS as your workstation. I have done it in the past, but that's so I could run server apps on my computer for developing (Sharepoint & SQL Server). Windows 2003 can be made into a decent workstation OS if you disable all the extra services and convert the focus from background apps (the default) to foreground apps (aka workstation mode). The caveat of running 2003 is that some driver packages do OS checks and they are often writtin by dumb programmers that say "make sure OS is 2000 or XP" instead of saying "make sure OS is not 95, 98, 98SE or ME". Hence some apps and drivers won't install on 2003 even though they are compatible. Thankfully since XP Microsoft added compatibility mode so you can lie to the .EXE and fake the OS version. I've had to do that a couple times when I had a 2003 workstation.

Summary: imho, with new hardware, forget 98, dump 2000 and stick with XP First, Windows 2000 server needs more ram than XP home or Pro, I don't see why you'd like 2000 over XP if you are concerned about speed. Also your post mentions you originally got 128meg ram (which isn't really enough for 2000 or XP) so blame your speed problems on your ram, not your OS. I sure hope you didn't install your new ram AND install 2000 at the same time, because despite the myth everyone believes, a tuned XP box uses less ram than 2000, I've mentioned & proved this in the past. I'm not going to re-earth this subject. Anyways, I highly recommend you DO NOT downgrade to 98, even with all the add-ons. #1 NTFS is a transactional based FS, this means files can't get corrupt, file table virus cannot damage NTFS, errors can be fixed on the fly. FAT can't do any of this and that's why you had to run scandisk on 95 & 98 all the time. #2 Virtually all software written lately requires 2000 or newer, some examples I've noticed just lately: - QuickTime 7 (came out 2 weeks ago, unlike QT6 it's nag free, only QT6 works on 98) - Acrobat 7 (uses less ram and cpu than Acrobat 6, yet again, only Acrobat 6 works on 98) iow Acrobat 7 is the first time Acrobat wasn't bloat ware - Virtually anything written by MS (Office 2003) requires 2000 or newer #3 All the slick security features added to IE (via XP SP2 and the upcoming IE7) won't work on 98, heck, they don't work on 2000 either #4 98 might not support your hardware (audio card, motherboard, etc) #5 If you want to play legacy games you're better off with XP & DosBox than trying to get them to work in 98's DOS #6 XP is virtually crash proof, the NT5 kernel (2000 and newer) offers memory protection that prevents "leaky" apps from requiring you to reboot and prevents one app's memory space from infecting other apps. While I will agree a tight 98 setup with good hardware and good drivers can be VERY stable, an equally tight XP setup with good hardware and good drivers is MORE STABLE THAN 98. I'd like to point out, BSOD crashes are often caused by poor drivers & hardware, don't blame the OS, it just so happens the NT5 kernel added extra protection. #7 Network support in 98 is just so-so, this will really rear it's ugly head when we see ultra-broadband, as XP & 2000 will outperform 98 when you start exceeding the 3mbit limits DSL & Cable currently have. (Ok I'm really splitting hairs here). #8 While MS has only abandoned 98 somewhat (Gape's SP2 offers current updates) it won't be long before 98 is truly abandoned as one day MS will stop patching the old 9x libraries and SP2 will one day grind to a halt. (Ok I'm splitting hairs again, we have a few more years left) #9 Newer video drivers (ex: NVIDIA) are 2000+ only. Newer drivers are more efficient (even for older NVIDIA cards) so you'll get better game performance on XP than 98 for today's 3d games. If you've got 192megs of ram (128 + 64) or more, stick with XP, dump 2000, and ONLY run 98 because your hardware limits you to it. Only true zealots run 98 on a brand new system.

IIRC, WinModems are 100% driver based, Microsoft has no "support" to remove. And even if they did, trust me, they wouldn't break support. Backwards compatibility has been the crutch of Windows since Win95 and hasn't stopped yet and won't stop anytime soon. WinXP tooks huge steps to have backwards compatibility, Windows Vista improves on backward compatibility, and Windows 2010 will continue to support legacy apps. Oneday we might not even need DosBox, who knows.

Short Answer: Well let me say athe obvious and I hope you are using the latest (last) WinModem driver available. If that doesn't work spend the $20 to get a new modem but DO NOT blame your problems on the fact it's a WinModem. Long Answer: I have to disagree with the myth, there's nothing wrong with WinModems. They only got a bad rep because back when they were invented and people still had 486's, a WinModem could easily eat 5%-12% of your CPU. Of course a P1 is upto 7x faster than a 486 on the same MHZ so even on the slowest Pentium this was no longer an issue. I've used the USR WinModem extensively back in the day and can vouch they are perefctly fine, in fact WinModems were a good thing for the industry because it made modems cheaper because many of the parts inside a WinModem could be done in software. Mass producing software is almost free, mass producing hardware costs $. The only negative aspect for a WinModem is that they only work in the OSs that have a drivers for (ex: Windows only) but that's been true for pretty much all modems in the first place, although at least in Linux you could have tried to use a generic driver on a normal hardware modem.

I don't see how the icons could be a problem. If there were any bugs they would have been reported (hundreds, if not thousands of computers run this patch) here. Also as an admin, you have a moral duty (and your job) to update machines to a state of sane security and I think we can all agree, a 98SE machine without SP2 is not a secure or possible stable box. Changes in icons and the start bar pale to what would happen if your network crumbles, end machines are hacked and company data is stolen.... all automagically by a new TCP/IP virus. If I was an admin of the network where I work, I would notify management, prove the patch works with all company apps, then mass deploy. I'm just saying the ability to remove any non Microsoft/non 98SE stuff would just be nice from a purist perspective.

I think you've been awake too long, here's my take on it all. Please take note there's no sugar coating in this post, this is rough love. Gape's work of getting all the hard to find updates for Win98 together in 1 big SP is awesome, we have a way to make 98 a more stable & secure platform than it ever was. I hope he continues his work until it's physically impossible to apply any more 1st party updates to 98. Also I appluad everybody else that does 3rd party work to fix major faults in 98 such as support for large HDs, USB support, etc etc. What you are doing is re-inventing the wheel by bastardizing the Win98 install and repackaging it. IMHO, this is out of the scope of this forum. While I admit a Win98SE install with integrated SP2.x would be nice, I think re-inventing the 98 install is just going too far. But hey, if you can pull it off, good luck, I think this is 100x more complicated than you realize.

Yea, if I was an admin over a company's network, I wouldn't think twice to mass deploy Gape's SP2, assuming I could disable all the 3rd party stuff. But if I was running Win98SE personally, I do like the new icons and some of the 3rd party apps (just the ones that fix hardware limitations, ex: HD size) and I also like adopting the Win2000 (or XP) style start bar. (Although on second thought, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, if I was to deploy SP2, I should allow the icons and Win2000 style for end users.) Honestly, I'm a tried & true XP user, I can't stand the older OSes but I won't deny there are many Win98 computers (we have hundreds dere) and they really need the updates MS has created and refused to give out to the public. And I know many of the users here swear by Win98 SE, I don't agree with them but I agree to disagree. OS wars are for script kiddies.

Note: as silly as this sounds, I didn't realize I had two accounts on this board, as I post from different computers. Rhelic = TravisOwens Well since you keep replying to my jokes, this post is worthy of something more serious. I've been preaching on here for awhile about keeping SP2 pure and free of 3rd party (junkware?) as I feel the best thing Gape can offer is a true Win98SE SP and not another fly by night "this makes 98 cooler" package. While I haven't mentioned it in the past, if you really want to be a purist I fully agree that installing new icons is going beyond the purpose of a true SP. If I had it my way Win98SE SP2 would install ONLY Microsoft updates, and leave all the bells & whistles optional. Although it would be best IMHO if the pack detected specific items and recomended them such as if the HD is over a certain size, to recomend the user installs the 3rd party fixes to Defrag (or was that Scandisk?). In summary, I feel the best part about SP2 is that it's a SP that MS should have released in the 1st place and Gape is picking up their slack. I applaud his work even though I probably nit pick him to death sometimes. I agree with your point about the icons and feel the problem lies that the pack shouldn't force non security/patch updates to your PC.

I'm just being a jerk (as I sometimes do) but... I've actually never heard of anybody who didn't think each new set of Windows icons weren't better than previous ones. I'd take 2000 icons over 98's anyday, and I'd take XP's (heck, Vista's) icons over 2000 anyday. On that note, I can send you some Win 3.11 icons and you can use those to replace your 98 icons

Companies have had around 10 months to test, and actually 2-3 additional months longer considering that SP2 was available in beta before that for testing.99% of the time when SP2 "breaks" something, it's purely because of the firewall. The firewall can be disabled during enterprise deployement, but keeping it enabled and passing the proper configuration for the enterprise is a more secure setup. The only security that works is a layered approach, not the "everything is filtered on the internet proxy and everything inside the network is safe" scenario. Every machine on a network should have a firewall, in fact, to have a truely secure scenario, they MUST have one. But now we digress off topic.

I've emailed suggestion via the forums "email user" form, I don't want to go anymore off subject than this thread already has. I've been designing websites for 9yrs but mostly I develop Intranets (applications), so I don't really have anything publically accessible.

Oh I have a MSDN account, I have Vista beta 1 (aka Longhorn) and IE7 beta 1 but I don't have a spare XP machine to install either one of these and steal the .DLLMicrosoft has been changing their install packages so you can't just extract/steal files from the discs anymore. So I was hoping somebody here might already have IE7 installed and could share the requested DLLs.

Disclaimer: I'm not 100% sure on any of this and please correct me if I'm not but... There's no way to adopt NT5 based drivers (2000,XP,2003,Vista) for use in 9x (95,98,ME). IIRC things are VERY different under the hood (aren't 9x drivers 16bit and NT5 drivers 32bit?) Plus, I believe 98 uses lots of generic drivers for motherboard chipsets and cpus, I don't think 98 uses specific drivers.

For home use, I fully agree, assuming one has taken the 4 suggestions I've listed above. Let's be fair now, I mean 2000/XP is more virus proof than Win9x/ME (thanks to both file permissions, running as a power user and NTFS in general).Win98's FAT32 protected users from the horrible FAT table corruption of DOS's and Win95's FAT16. I believe it was the first attempt from MS to cripple viruses an a mass scale and it worked REALLY well. A virus on Win98 virus can cause far more damage that a virus on XP, especially if your XP account is NOT running as admin. Now I'm going to cross my fingers and hope the trolls don't turn this into another 98 vs XP thread.

Wild Weasel.... Executive Summary Win98SE (even with SP2) will never be "secure" in the eyes of business, but is secure enough for home use. To secure your box take the following 4 steps: 1. Apply WinSE98 SP2.x 2. If using BroadBand, get a Router that does NAT (iow has DHCP) 3. Install a good virus scanner with SpyWare detection AND removal 4. Use FireFox instead of IE Technical Explanation The main reason 9x will never be secure in a business scenario is because there is no permissions or ownership on file on a Win9x box. So if 2 people can login to the same box, there's no easy way for you to protect me from reading/rewriting your files. The file system with this kind of security is NTFS, used in NT3,NT4,Win2000,WinXP,Win2003,etc). DOS, Windows 95/98/ME all used a file system known as FAT. Both FAT and NTFS have had improvements over time, but FAT will never support proper file permissions and ownership. There are tons of other reasons why the 9x kernel (core) is not reliable or secure because of weak memory protection, instability (one sloppy app can crash the whole machine) and 98's inability to clean up memory properly, but that's a whole other rant in itself. I'd also like to point out, an out of the box Win98SE installation with all public Windows Updates applied is NOT secure, IMHO you have to apply this Win98SE SP2 in order before I'd begin to call the box secure for home use. Obviously you should still run a decent virus scanner (Panda Antivirus is the best but the best comes with a catch, 30+megs of ram) and if your virus scanner doesn't protect from AND remove spyware (many AV apps can't do either) then you need some spyware protection. If you don't want to buy a AV, then Avast Free Antivirus is good (for being free). Finally you should use some kind of DHCP router (aka NAT). You can get a LinkSys router for $20-$40 and it will give you all the protection you need. Please note most people confuse a firewall with a DHCP router, which is all you need as it protects you from outsiders. Please note a DHCP router does not protect you from naughty programs on your PC going out onto the Internet but this is why you need a good AntiVirus program. Since we're talking about 98 where new updates/fixes won't be coming out directly from Microsoft, you're better off using FireFox as you are very unlikely to get SpyWare. While IE6 on XP SP2 stopped most spyware and IE7 will put an end to spyware (as it's made today), neither of these versions of IE will work on 98, so FireFox is the only secure route you have now.

It never crossed my mind that DLLs could be stolen from XP SP2 and/or 2003 SP1. This list is sublime, a shame the webpage is a mess. I would love to find out if putting this DLL on a Win98 (or 2000 or XP) box would resolve the PNG issues (most noteably alpha channels) in PNGs in IE6 (and 5.x).Anybody tried it yet? Anybody care to email me the DLL, I'm daring? Travis Owens @ hotmail . com (remove spaces)

Oh I highly doubt anybody will be able to "steal" the tab feature out of IE7 and interject it into IE6. This is because MS had to recreate all of IE's controls (back button, forward, etc) in order to work in a per tab enviroment, and I'm sure all of this is mashed into the main .EXE. What I was hoping to see are maybe some CSS and HTML rendering improvements (aren't these stored in various DLLs?) make their way into IE6. And of course the new security features of IE7, such as the new ability to run IE7 in a "non administrator" mode even though you are admin, isn't even possible on XP, much less 2000 or 98. As this feature inherits from the OS itself. Perhaps I should have called this thread IE 6 1/10th as the more I think about it, very, if any, IE7 updates can be snuck into IE6.

Fortunetly Gape has done an awesome job of keeping the Win98SE SP as Microsoft native as possible. Since he hasn't tried to bastartize it, it plays very well in Microfsoft's eyes. I've been posting now and then shooting down any comments where people try to taint the SP with suggestions of 3rd party add-ins, app replacements or hacks. Although a couple 3rd party solutions aren't a bad idea such as the one that fixes defragging on larger drives. Anyways, Gape has done such a good job of keeping the Win98 SP so pure, in my eyes I see it as a true Windows service pack (all the DLLs, EXEs were written by Microsoft) it just so happens Gape bundled them all together in an installer. The fact that Gape had to bundle it, vs Microsoft doing it is only a technicality. Obviously the installed is gone once it's job is done. So as I said above, as far as I'm concerned, when Win98SE SP is applied, the system is still 100% pure Microsoft fixes. If it was up to me, I'd deploy across an entire company. Actually I work at a non-for-profit that has almost a hundred Win98 boxes deployed with no plans for an upgrade and I have been trying to stand on a soap box to get the SP applied to end users but since I don't work in the networking, helpdesk or PC deployement groups... it's been a very difficult process. If I ever do succede I'll share the story on the forum here to prove to the world this is a solid SP that can be trusted.

I haven't dived into the details of IE and I'm sure others have more insight on this subject. Now, obviously IE7 will not work in 98 (heck it's not even going to work in Win2000) but I was wondering if IE is modulized well enough that parts of IE7 could be "borrowed" and a frankenstein IE 6 1/2 could be created for Win98. Although I'm guessing there are more Firefox/Opera fanatics out there in the Win98SE SP2 world than IE people so perhaps I won't get many people biting on this dream.

Did you try installing the "Maximus Decim Native USB" ver.2.2 you can find more about it at: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=43605