nostaglic98

I encountered similar issues on W98 when still using a Netgear USB wireless networking adapter. If this was connected during boot, the system would hang. Netgear's software to connect you to wireless networks caused all manner of bizarre behaviour with Windows Explorer too (even if the program was closed) and I ultimately found a means to get the system an ethernet-based connection.

Was using W2K myself up to the beginning of 2018. Predominantly for (some) research and typing, light internet browsing (I still frequent some forums that are friendly to the antiquated browsers). Was useful for the work aspect, as, with the system incapable of handling the modern web (2.4GHz P4 Northwood, 512mb RAM etc), there was no use trying to meander around the internet in a cloud of distraction. There was something wrong with the system, as under W98, W2K or even XP, it's performance was never particularly good. Even a faster 2.8GHz Celeron did not help. So for this, I'd happily rate it 9 or even 10 out of 10. I appreciated the extended kernel, but trying to get that working amidst of a myriad of conflicting unofficial update packages is not something I'd have any great interest in now. Personally, I'm of the opinion that if you can get away with period-correct software on W2K, use that. And use a newer system for those data-sensitive tasks you might have to do (internet banking, for example).

... Despite the "Cries of terror" from certain individuals who maintain XP *will* compromise every last bit of private information.

Ah yes, I remember several of these requests from when I hosted my own site from home. A lot of that is basically bots seeking out vulnerable parts of a PHP server, or even IIS (which explains requests for .asp documents). The other three that are requesting a directory seem to be random and aren't necessarily explainable. That "w00t" request comes in various shapes and sizes, although I can't recall specifically if that was targeting anything. Basically, with Apache, I would block these not with robots.txt, but with the .htaccess file instead, particularly the Baidu search engine bots, which would not be sensible and request files that exist, but keep looking for directories on the server that DIDN'T exist. My attitude was "fair enough if you want to index my site, but FFS, INDEX WHAT IS THERE! Don't go looking for 403's and that sort of thing!"

I wish... The PHP boards I've been on do include a "legacy" theme. Don't understand why the IPB folks find that so difficult to do.

The software they give you for your modem is more often-than-not bloatware that only adds another program to the system tray at boot and does absolutely nothing to help. My suggestion is to use some sort of "sacrificial" Windows installation if some software installation is required, otherwise, use the web configuration interface via "http://192.168.0.1" or whatever your user-guide tells you. The other suggestion is to get a proper router that accepts the connection from your modem and can then send it out via A/B/G/N wireless or ethernet, the modem is then put into a "bridged" mode where it simply passes on data to the router, whose WAN port assumes the IP address of the modem. All this is in very, very simplistic terms, but it gives you an idea.

I found the same thing too... This makes me wonder how long it will be until a concerted effort is made to lift these legacy-OS sub-forums to another platform. FWIW, PHPBB's "subsilver2" theme that I use on another site works exceedingly well even on IE6 on my Windows 2000 system. NoScript is a very big part of my browsing these days, especially on a laptop where battery life is important (even though this 2011 MBP spends it's life hooked to mains...), and on my main system. The modern web is just too infested with folks wishing to bombard you with BS, attack your computer or slow it to a crawl for no particular reason.

Personally, I have given up on Firefox these days given the insistence on "rapid releases" and the "Asstrails" user interface. Until recently, Chrome seemed like the appropriate choice, with Pale Moon as an alternative on my Windows 7 system. With the "impending doom" of Chrome on OS X Snow Leopard I switched over to Sea-Monkey, which is essentially Firefox and found it to be far more agreeable than other browsers. And its seemingly more stable, too.

Drivers were a bit of an effort, although the system is based around in i440BX/ZX chipset (on either an Acer or AOpen motherboard), ESS sound solution and Number-Nine (Really S3) graphics. I seem to have found the correct drivers, although haven't yet gotten around to reinstalling Windows. I gave up on archived drivers from IBM quite quickly, and initially thought Intel had pulled the 440 Chipset INFs - although it turns out they call it a "400-series chipset" these days. Fingers crossed this all works. I haven't found a source for the original IBM software, and was initially going to use a Direct-Cable-Connection to accomplish a transfer. Then I realised the system was probably still victim to a trojan infestation of some sort (judging by entries in MSCONFIG) and thus elected against doing that.

Picked up an IBM Aptiva system recently, and will have to do a clean-installation to clear out the remnants of some sort of infestation (Windows as a whole is being temperamental, and there are torrenting applications installed). I've used Autopatcher successfully in the past, but how does this (now-discontinued) packaged stack up against the more recent "Un-Official Service Packs" developed for Windows 98?

That is REALLY interesting. Last year, I began working on a guide on the Un-Official Updates, plus how to get Windows up-to-date before installing them. Having checked just now on the page, I see that my SP4 and Update Rollup 1 links are dead. (If anyone would like a link to my page - they are most welcome to PM me. The site is presently mirrored on someone elses home-grade internet connection, and I would prefer not to capitalise on this). I wonder what this means for the Windows Update service? Can it still be trusted to provide a complete set of patches after an installation of Windows 2000, or not? (I did an install on my system with it last year, after updating the WuA and nothing else. Having installing Update Rollup 1, Gurgelmyer's SP5 I had about 127 updates). Look, for the record - I too am more than happy to test out SP5.2. My Windows 2000 machine is still used in a home production setting, as its just so much quicker and easier than diddling with my Macbook or Windows 7. I have a couple of hardware platforms this might work on, too. Not to mention the ability to test in VirtualBox or VPC2007. My suggestion would be for anyone and everyone to get what they need/want STAT before more of M$'s archive is lost to the winds of time.

I completely agree. A lot of modern software, websites and such are all style, and no substance. The few that are left with a simplistic interface that works with nearly any browser are becoming increasingly fewer and farther between.

On a somewhat-related note, am noticing under Sea Monkey (version 2.40) on OS X Snow Leopard that the board keeps announcing that it uses cookies to me. I suppose this is related to the fact that I have No-Script installed and running most of the time for browsing.

For me, I might consider it a mixture of all of the above. Growing up Windows 98 was still king. Loved using that OS on hardware of the time. My first computer was something like an AMD K6 on a tiny HD with a pathetic amount of memory. Actually ended up with a system like this in 2007 for a short while. Interesting to tinker with This was followed by an AcerPower Pizza-Box style machine with a P2. Big leap forward, and eventually went on to run Windows ME, 2000 and finally XP on it (<- this was back when XP Gold/SP1 was king and XP worked great on P2 systems). During the 2004/2005 period, I was excited to see XP finding its way onto more and more machines. Eventually, it was so ubiquitous having on older OS or computer became a necessity, a dream I've realised since 2010 in varying means. These days, Windows 2000 is where its at a lot of the time for me (Same with OS X Snow Leopard on my late-2011 MBP 13"). I'm familiar with it, its reasonably fast and its solid as a rock. Can't get much better than that, in all honesty. Vista and 7 I can and (in the latter case) certainly do work well with, but again, too ubiquitous in the business world nowadays. Windows 8 and 10? These are completely and utterly unmitigated disasters from Microsoft. This is what happens when Windows is made "free," when Microsoft tries dumbing down their OS to iOS levels of stupidity and functionality, when Microsoft ignores the requests of Power-Users for a lightweight, adept OS that doesn't pack in stupid amounts of unnecessary bloat. When the day finally comes that I can no longer use Windows 2000/7 or Snow Leopard, then I am abandoning what is fast becoming "The Wreck of 'Ol 97" and headed over to the *nix pastures. Despite all its shortcomings, there is at least a flavour for every taste-bud and none of the troubles that plague Windoze these days.

Maybe new links, but the old ones I put in myself are still quoted above.

It did its stupid, one-line preview of the post. Done that for *every one* of the MSFN posts I've tried linking. Its rather frustrating. People can go and look for themselves. They don't need the forum to do it for them.

Thanks for posting, and your tip seems to be working (for now, at least!) The issues have been noted for about 2yrs now, although I hadn't felt compelled to write until now. Perhaps that feature was there before and I didn't notice?

Interesting. The question is whether all that will be fully realised in time, or not, or whether its just "senselessly verbose" as you put it. Turns out using the "old way" of doing things still seems to work (i.e. the world "quote=" encased within '[ ]' followed by [ slash quote]) My other gripe, of course, was using all these glitzy symbols that aren't really easy to use, to imbed images, attach URLs or whatever.

IIRC, Realtek cards and "Linux" (or *nix, or Linux+GNU etc, whatever floats your boat) do not play nice and never have. Personally found with W98 and a Netgear WG111v1 USB Wireless dongle that the wireless utility would cause epically dysfunctionality (<- apparently that isn't a word?) with Explorer, to the point of strange fonts, odd behaviour and system hanging. The other issue was W98 wouldn't boot with the device connected, and would sometimes epically screw itself over for 2-3 reboots. The solution was to boot with it disconnected and once the Wireless network was all setup, ensure that the Netgear utility was disabled from opening at startup and only using it when necessary. This helped a great deal. This issue and my hardware's general sluggishness (plus W98 going nuts when I installed older games or software) meant I was glad to ditch it and go for 2K instead. Period hardware has its benefits when using W98, in my humble opinion. Going too much newer and you open a whole new can of worms.

Based on the links you collect from the HTTP Archive, the site has slowed down by roughly 8 seconds since 2011. Given that this site caters to legacy Windows users (in a significant way with the 9x/ME, plus the NT4/2K/2K3 discussion board), I find it amusing (not in the comical or good sense) that the site design keeps being infested with more and more HTML5, JavaSludge and Flush skullduggery that end up alienating a proportion of users who are here because of the "Legacy" forums. A lot of modern sites seem to have this 'iOS' theme behind them with weird smooth-scroll features, oversized floating menu-bars and very small areas where the actual information you want is displayed. And I dislike it. Why should it be harder for a system from 2005 to say, watch a Flash video now compared to back then? And why does it need so much more CPU power to stream a simple file when it could be downloaded and played back with minimum overhead (i.e. YouTube). Personally, I prefer the older PHPBB "Subsilver" and "Prosilver" themes. They're lightweight, fast-loading and work fine with older browsers. They do everything you need in a far less "bling" interface. They're straight-shooting and NO BS! You don't need a Degree majoring in Arts to figure out what all the little symbols and pictures mean to use them. Perhaps I am missing something, but it would be nice if the option was available on this board to revert to an older interface (like on the PHPBB setups) that doesn't carry so much (completely un-necessary) emotional baggage with it. I'm here to read posts, not admire the graphics! Bit of a rant, but I understand the premise behind "Death to Bullsh*t." I'm here to read, not to share random forum posts on Twitter, Farcebook, Google-Minus and so on, and so forth and such things. Again, I'm here to read, not look at 2016 "Abstract Forum Design" competitors.

Consistently having this issue with the forum for a long time now. Going to a thread where I've previously posted, I click on the link and find the thread doesn't jump straight to a new post. The option to manually jump to a new post seldom-appears, at the very best. Most of the time, I have to manually scroll my way through and figure out where I was last time, and where the discussion started since my last visit and/or post. Clearly the feature is there and does work for say "non-donating members" as it has worked a time or two. My usual browser is Chrome, OS X 10.6.8, sometimes seems to be a Mac-only issue, but I've noticed it on PC too. Cannot comment on other browsers, as I tend to avoid them - Chrome is the most efficient (particularly with Flush and JavaSludge...). Firefox and SeaMonkey seem to work more consistently - but i'm not keeping them open (with the resultant memory footprint) just to check MSFN. Anyone else note the problem?

Microsoft unfortunately discontinued the Windows Update website for Windows 98 several years back. Trying to visit now in 2016 will simply send you on a redirect loop. That said, when it was working, I only ever say about 16 updates available for download for a clean-installation I did... So it probably wasn't complete for a very long time. My suggestion for obtaining Windows 9x updates without so much of the un-official customisation time has brought would be to use one of the utilities here:http://www.mdgx.com/spx/ In my experience, it seemed as though the "auto patcher" suite tended to work best in my situation, although it requires many reboots which may be a pain on slower systems. That said, it worked great and did improve the installation on my system. In the 9X development forum, you should also see some information on newer, supported projects such as the UnOfficial Service Pack (USP?) and so on.

Its worth checking your DSL (or cable) connection statistics if your modem provides it, and comparing it against "should be" values offered by either your ISP or other websites from a Google search if you can stomach the wait. If the cables themselves serving your neighbourhood are no good, the lines are over-subscribed or the ISP is not using optimal settings for your connection, then you might not be able to help anything. Some ISPs do offer options to change your "noise protection" settings and the like for DSL, like Telstra-Bigpond here in Australia. To ensure this issue isn't partly because of your network, there are programs that can test transfer rates within your network, or you can try moving large files between machines, time them and figure out what sort of throughput you are getting from Wired->Wireless, vice-versa (etc).

I'm curious about Chrome support on XP as OS X versions 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 are about to loose support. These are OS' that are significantly newer than XP, and while the market shares are so low at this point, a lot of people are both happy with these OS,' (in terms of performance), have a computer that cannot be upgraded further or really and truly think Mac OS X is a piece of **** after 10.8. Or all of the above. I've said it before elsewhere, and will say it again, Apple's hardware and software has seriously gone down the drain the last few years. Not only did Mavericks bring my Macbook to a grinding halt (even on a fresh installation), but subsequent versions turned the UI into a iOS-ised toy that is rapidly loosing advanced functionality. Eventually, I got sick of the "upgrade when we say so" BS, dropped back to Mountain Lion and was happy. For a while. Then I found out how to get Snow Leopard working on seemingly "unsupported" hardware (Late 2011 13" MBP) and have been shocked by the sheer AWESOMENESS of this OS. What other 2009 OS boots in 15secs on nearly stock hardware (I've got 8GB of RAM, factory 5400rpm SATA drive)? Anyway, to get back on topic, I am not surprised a lot of people still haven't upgraded. Realistically, a lot of people are probably very happy with their setup now, and are completely aware of the adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Others may share disdain for the direction Windows is going with a "its a free download, but we're going to charge a subscription fee" model they seem hell-bent on ramming down our throats.* And others still use older, better-quality hardware that just isn't conducive to running a newer OS. * Its true that Microsoft probably gouged "just a little bit" for their software products during the 2000s. That said, Windows XP saw support for 13 years, Vista has gotten 10 years thus far and Windows 7 is set to get about 10-13 years too. I MAINTAIN that "you get what you pay for." In choosing to run what is seemingly a "free" version of Windoze, you are sacrificing your privacy (metadata collection, targeted advertising and outright spying) and eventually putting yourself into a subscription-based model. The other issue is where exactly MS will generate their revenue if the OS itself is free. Money does not grow on trees, y'know! I think this is represented in the fact that 8 and 10 have both really failed to captivate the market as Vista and 7 did; there are a lot of people complaining (still) about both in terms of usability, functionality and stability even now about 2 years after Windows 8's release and about a year after Windows 10 came to fruition. I have personally dealt with Windows 10 a couple of times and have been extremely angered by its almost hypocritical user interface - I had to alter printer settings because W10 decided that OneNote Writer should be the default printer, even though a Canon laser unit had been the default under Windows 7 for several years. Control panel exists in its traditional sense, but someone peanut at Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to switch between that and some "metro-app" version. [/Rant]

Period hardware could be something if you can find it for "curbside discount" or cheaply at the goodwill. It has the benefit of obviously behaving a lot better - although there is also the issue of age these days. Some of that hardware is at or over 20yrs of age now. I'm not sure what works great, although I can't say I was impressed by my system, equipped with an Asus P4P800MX, a P4 Prescott (2.8GHz), 512mb of ram and a nVidia GeForce FX5500. It just seemed sluggish, compared to Windows 2000 or XP. When I used a wireless network connection, the Netgear drivers made Windows Explorer very unstable. Even with a wired connection, the browsing experience was slow and the system just didn't seem to like it very much. Perhaps the motherboard isn't great or working as it should. But Windows 2000 / XP work far better on this system.