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I suspect it was reading the whole FAT table using slow USB 1.1 protocol. Or something like that. When my Windows 98 computer with USB 1.1 worked, it always froze when I accessed USB drive the first time after boot, and USB drive light blinked meaning that the read operation was performed. The time of the freezing depended on the size of the drive. 4 GB usb flash stick froze my computer for less than a minute, 16 Gb flash stick froze it for about 3.5 minutes, and 320 GB USB HDD - for about 10 minutes or more. I didn't overcome this problem. What is the size of your drive?

Since there are no developers supporting KernelEx now, though there were some unsuccessful tries, I doubt that a new KernelEx version will ever be released. However you may take a look on Kext http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/157173-kext-diy-kernelex-extensions/

I'd say more. When I tried to visit http://www.stopforumspam.com/ from my work computer (Windows 7), I also got this page 403. The reason was "RBN". I don't know what it means, but they seem to block a large number of genuine visitors, not just spammers.

I had been running KernelEx for 3 years, and have a problem with it only once - freezes on reboot with USB flash drive inserted. I had not reinstalled my 98 OS for these three years until the computer broke, though I had installed and tested very much software. KernelEx is a very cool thing.

While programs compiled in VS 2008 can run on Windows 98 (and I'm not sure that KernelEx is required, just the special version of MS VC runtime), this is about native apps, not .NET ones. I've heard something about patched .NET Framework 3 running with KernelEx on this forum, but I'm not sure about this. As for me, I always avoided .NET Framework on my Windows 98 machine.

Well, I had some fun from running the apps on Windows 98 that were not intended to run on it. Many developers didn't write Windows 9x in their requirements even if the application actually supported them even 5 years ago. And KernelEx allows to run even tha apps, that never supported Windows 9x. On the other hand, it happened several times when I downloaded an app from OldApps.com or from other such site - the site stated that the app supports Windows 9x, but in fact that wasn't true.

Hm, this summer I have successfully made a post here with the Dillo browser, which is very-very minimalistic.

I did it in the followind way - created a folder with Windows 98 dlls on my Windows 7, put the application DLLs and exes there, and used Total Commander FileInfo plugin with the applications' DLLs and Exes (it is better than Dependency Walker since it shows if the required DLL is delay loaded, which means that it probably isn't so necessary). In this way, fileinfo searched for import APIs in this folder with Win98 dlls instead of the system one. Then I've searched for missing imports in KernelEx source and old offline MSDN to know whether it is possible to get on Windows 98. Additionally you will need the upx plugin for FileInfo to uncompress app exes on the fly or the UPX itself to uncompress upx-compressed exes manually, because after upx compression they show much less imports than they have. This is not 100% correct way, since kernel32.dll imports cannot be tested (it still uses the current OS one), and sometimes even if all imports can be found, the app still won't work on real Windows 98, however in most cases this worked for me.

Probably I have it, but since my 98 PC with USB is dead, should dig it out. Don't know where I have put it. If I find it, I'll upload it few hours later. Edit: Uploaded it here https://mega.co.nz/#!MAdUhSbQ!LPeVGGOAbvLDKhrHLF5vnwA-Z4w0XZP93v6ncCp7juU

I'm not sure about it. AFAIK, there were official MS VC 2008 redistributables that could be installed on Windows 98 without KernelEx. With KernelEx it was possible to run some exes compiled with VS 2010. However all this is about unmanaged C++ applications.

As for the stop button. Try customizing your toolbar. Right-click it and select Customize from the shortcut (popup) menu. You will see the Stop button right after the Refresh button. Drag it so that it was BEFORE the Refresh button. Then click the Finish button in the dialog box (or OK - I use russian language and don't remember how this button is named in English). That's how it works in newer Firefox versions - if the Stop button goes right after the Refresh button (when customizing the toolbar), you will have a single Stop/Refresh button. If they go in some other order, you will have two separate buttons. I don't like it too. As for dial-up in general - I think, nothing can be better than Opera for dial-up because of its Turbo traffic compression functionality and ability to easily enable/disable images, plugins, etc. I prefer Firefox on faster connections, but on dial-up it loaded pages much more slowly than Opera. I used Opera on dial-up in most cases.

I would try digging the Opera user profile. Probably it's somewhere there.

Probably QtWeb would be suitable? At least it worked for me. However I cannot try the latest version.

As of at least February 2013, only Skype of versions 3.2 and higher is allowed to connect. Older skype versions force users to update. Probably, the lowest allowed version limit even raised since then. All skype versions 3.x officially support Windows 98 SE, don't know about Windows 95. Probably earlier 4.x versions will also work, but not sure. According to russian Windows 98 SE forum, Skype 3.5.0.229 is considered the best for Windows 98 - the newer versions may cause errors or incompatibilities. I suggest you to try Skype 3.x. If none of 3.2 or higher versions work for you, then it's impossible to connect to Skype on Windows 95. On Windows 98 SE I successfully used Skype 3.5 or 3.6 at least for text messaging this summer. So, Windows 98 users still can use skype (or could - in summer, now my computer with skype is dead and I cannot check it). Old versions of Skype can be downloaded here: http://www.oldversion.com/windows/skype/ By the way - did anybody try Skype 4.x on Windows 98?

For 9x computer it may be enough. However I recently had to replace my 450W PSU when I bought a new HDD. Didn't expect that it would be so demanding. Even after I disconnected two of my original HDDs, the new one was unstable and it stopped working after intensive read/write operations. I even tried more exotic solution and connected it to a rather old separate 200W PSU, but it didn't work stable enough either. After all I had to buy a new 750W PSU. My graphics card is not too powerful, it is from the medium-class segment, however I had issues with powering my HDDs and DVD with my old PSU.

I don't agree. A large number of games that work in DOS (though some of them may work in windows too) was released after 1994. Some of them need tens or even hundreds of megabytes. Some of these games even didn't have the Windows versions. Sorry for replying to a rather old post

May be this depends on the Windows Media Player installed.

Well, that's not true. I remember well Windows 95 on Pentium 90 of my friend, and even NT4 (or may be 95 too, but more likely NT4) on 486 in institute where I studied. Now I still have working Pentium 133 with Windows 98 installed and recently I even visited msfn website using this PC If to talk about nostalgia, I think that we all think it was better some time ago only because we were younger some time ago. PCs are the same - we like our first ones more just because they were the first. I doubt that we would really prefer to have old PCs instead of modern (I prefer to have both ) Edit: oh, and I forgot to mention that I read about Windows XP successfully booted on Pentium Overdrive downclocked to 20 MHz. So, 100 MHz should be enough And there also were Windows 3.x requiring far less resources.

Recently watched this

Then probably you may copy the WinMe setup files to HDD under WinXP, boot in this mode, and navigate and start the setup from the booted DOS.

That's great that there will be another website with Windows 98 information and updates. Currently we only have www.mdgx.com as the main source of such updates, but it is bad that we depend so much on a single website, and it does not have everything (for example, all the MDCU~ packs. May be it would be good if you mirror the Windows 98 related updates and info from there and add what's missing there.

I have resurrected a very old (my very first PC) - K5 100 (133), 16 MB EDO RAM, Trio64V+(86C765). (Re-)Installed Windows 98 SE, IE6SP1, DirectX MDCU and other MD~ update packs, even Revolutions Pack - everything works great! Revolutions Pack almost doesn't add any slowdowns or memory usage at all! I even can browse web on it (and I'm writing this post from it). I can use Dillo (works OK and fast but has very limited CSS support and no scripts, I'm writing this post in it) or Opera 10.10 (need to install an earlier version) - everything works, but terribly slow and uses pagefile all the time. I have a question - Everest and AIDA32 identify my motherboard as Amptron PM-8600A / PCPartner MB-586 VX7 / PCChips M537 and chipset as VIA VT82C580 Apollo VPX (or VP1) Motherboard ID: 02/19/98-VT82C580VP-UMC8-2A5LAH09C-00 Does it supports SDRAM or it supports only EDO? I have a couple of spare SDRAM sticks, and chipset should support it, but I'm not sure that motherboard does, and I don't want to fry it.

Thank you, CharlesF, I missed this link. We've got so used to click a button somewhere in bottom right in the free columns on such sites that I didn't think that this is a link.

Could somebody please upload the new collection somewhere where you are not required to use exe downloader, like from the link above. I don't trust these downloaders.

Well, if talking about formats, there are some newer formats. More and more often I use music in flac, alac, m4a, ac3 formats. There is now a new picture format - webp, that have chances to become common. Though picture and music formats are not a big problem for older systems