The catalyst for revisiting Windows 98 came after experiencing Windows XP re-activation issues following hardware changes. Mostly to keep an old Windows install around to play favourite games, plus it's still a fun system to utilize. Finally completed Road Rash - lol. For retro use, Windows 98 is pretty good, although most users may now have trouble finding a printer to work on this system, if that is desired. I have three printers at home, only one has Windows 98 drivers, all work with Windows XP. Printer manufacturers appear to have made these old printer cartridges hard to find and/or very expensive to encourage the never ending upgrade cycle. Finding an old Windows 98 friendly scanner shouldn't be an issue.
I recently set up two Windows 98 systems. Nostalgic, the same user experience i remember. The installer actually takes quite a while compared to a lean Linux OS, but otherwise works well. Reasonably simple and lean OS, easy to set up and manage. NO ACTIVATION REQUIRED! Occasionally a little flaky but nothing that can't be fixed with some tweaking or a reboot. Once setup, no more updates required.
As i still use Windows 98 era hardware on a daily basis (800 MHz systems, BIOS dates 1999-2001, RAM 384-512 MB), my interest was setting up and running this retro OS on bare metal. To wonderful surprise, finding hardware drivers was quite simple with a little searching. I ended up hoarding quite a few graphic, audio and network drivers, including Windows 98 'driver packs'. Anyone needing drivers, it may be best to search the manufacturer's sites first, as many are still archived and available, otherwise these resources should help:
* https://driverscollection.com/
* http://www.network-drivers.com/
* http://www.driverguide.com/
I spent way too much time downloading Windows 98 updates, 108 in total, including 2To4DigitDateConversionTool.exe, many 'Q' updates, several 'KB' updates, unicows and a DirectX9 patch. Unfortunately, most were obtained from non-Microsoft sources, as updates are no longer available from Microsoft servers and a roll-up pack was never released. I did not want to use one of the unofficial update packs and purposely avoided updates related to undesired (for me) software, including Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Dial Up Networking, Macromedia Flash Player, MDAC, Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Virtual Machine. From recent testing, both Internet Explorer 5 and 6 are essentially non-functional with modern browsing and Windows Media Player 9 no longer provides online multimedia browsing. I just wanted to keep my install relatively default and 'official'.
Feel free to contact me if you can't find a desired update. In hindsight, unsure this effort was worthwhile as Windows 98 is now essentially a retro hobby OS. If a system is experiencing a specific issue, such as shutdown hang, applying a few specific updates may be warranted.
Edit 1: Thread started in 2017 but going strong for now. Note this thread pertains to running vanilla Windows 98 SE. Please do not post misleading information that may not work in a vanilla Windows 98 SE installation, such as kernel mods, DLL swaps from other OS, custom re-compiles, higher software versions that may not run in vanilla Windows 98, etc. Thank-you and enjoy.
Edit 2 & 3: Updated title.
