Jlo555

Meh, I'll try Bochs I guess in a couple days. I don't know why VMware was never released for any non-NT or non-Linux systems. Might have something to do with the virtual networking stuff; I think that's why Hamachi (virtual private networking app) wouldn't work on 98se. But maybe the VMware programmers are just lazy...

In my experience, yeah, it will degrade the performance. I did this several times with a maxtor 60gig and another maxtor 120gig. The 60gig doesn't really work that well, (just really slow) and the 120gig still runs pretty well. I think that when the program is erasing the disk it pushes the whole hard drive to its limits and possibly wears out the motor somehow, because it keeps the program keeps going for at least 12 hours (for a tripple pass, 60gb.) The bigger the drive, the longer it takes in my experience, but it works. When I installed windows on the drive after the erase, windows detected it as a new hard drive in setup or said that I erased it.

I'm glad to see win98 usage is decreasing at a slower rate than it used to be. As for winME, the stats for that aren't even worth showing. The Counter shows winMe usage in 2005 even lower than win3.1 usage! I think WinMe peaked at about 12% in like 2002 or something. By the looks of the graph, win98 has some weird correlation. Between January and April 2005, the usage went back up slightly. I've never seen that before in OS stats.

DiskEraser. It's proven to be very effective, though I think I did it too many times on my maxtor 60gig, because it doesn't really work that well anymore. As for the program, it runs pretty well, just boot from the floppy, and choose if you want single pass, tripple pass, or like 8 pass, or manual configuration (0-99 passes.) It takes a very long time, though. If you do over 3 passes, it'll most likely take over 20 hours + data verification. I don't remember what company produced the application, but you could probably just google it.

I got so many horror stories I don't even know where to begin! 1. I was first exposed to XP in 2002 with a Dell laptop. My horror story was seeing the new Luna UI. That, in itself was my first horror story. 2. A reoccuring problem that was never fixed was when XP first boots up, I open up My Computer to see a searching flash light for about 5 minutes. I think it has something to do with the network connections looking for IP addresses, but all my NIC's have static IP's. 3. Norton AntiVirus 2002/2003 on ANY XP machine. That's beyond a nightmare. (Though, that one's more of a NAV horror story.) 4. System Restore never worked right, except when my DVD-ROM drive mysteriously disappeared from device manager. 5. ACTIVATION FAILED is the most annoying message I've ever gotten out of XP... from a legal copy. 6. Automatic Updates still running even after I've disabled it. 7. Windows reminding me that I need to reboot for the updates to be installed...every 20 minutes. 8. My Network Places. I don't want XP searching for shared network folders automatically, that's MY job. Also, in win2k, the my network places folder has "entire network" and "computers near me" located right in the folder. In XP's network places, I gotta search around for the goddamn computers/networks. 9. Networking an XP computer to a computer running any other OS. That's always a nightmare. 10. WMP/IE/WinMessenger/MSN Explorer integrated into the OS. I gotta go through with XP Lite to clear out all the sh!t that gets installed. I got more of em but my fingers hurt from typing and I can't think of anymore right now. That's my top 10!

Alright, I've been able to use VMware on windows 2000/XP and it works pretty well. The problem is that it ONLY runs on NT4.0/2000/XP and NOT 98SE. So, does anyone know of a program that does most of the same things as vmware (or better) like provide the OS emulator with sound, network, usb etc AND runs on windows 98SE?

ahh, sweet, thanks for putting windows 98 back in the game (literally.)

I've occassionally thought about Neptune, but wasn't that the OS with only 2 builds. As I recall it was cancelled completely before it made it to beta. There are 2 things in XP that make me constantly turn back to 98 and 2000 over and over again: 1) activation...XP's been annoying me for about 3 days to activate the OS, but I'm too lazy to do it right now. 2) GUI...Don't criticize me for saying that I hate an OS because of the GUI, but I really do. I know I can change it, but I hate the "XP feeling" that I get everytime I use the OS, which doesn't seem to go away if I change the theme or w/e.

Well...there's always....mine. My Creative SB Audigy2 ZS is awesome. I get great sound out of this thing, along with my 7.1 surround sound system. The only bad thing is that the Creative Mixer, (which you don't *have* to install) takes up a ton of system resources under win98se. I don't know about the card's support for DOS 7, all I know in the way of OS support is that it supports 98/98SE/Me/2000/XP. EDIT: You mean you keep a single OS installed for a whole week? How long do you keep your OS's installed? I know I'm a hypocrite for saying this, but I've been using XP a lot on my primary desktop, I'll admit it. It's not that I'm abandoning 98se, I keep trying it over and over again, and keep having really weird driver/IRQ conflicts and overall a bunch of annoying sh!t that's been driving me away from keeping 98se on this computer. My parents' computer however, hasn't even been rebooted since the clean install I did 2 weeks ago, and the other desktop in my house hasn't crashed one single time or came up with any errors. Ahh, my luck.

Abit NF7-S v2 MB Athlon XP 3000+ 333FSB nVidia GeForce4 MX4000 128MB AGP 100GB Maxtor SATA Sony DVD-ROM/LG DVD-RAM-DL-RW/Emprex DVD-RW/3.5" Floppy Creative SB Audigy2 ZS I tend to change OS's quite frequently though. One week I'm using 98SE, the next week im back on 2000. IDK, I guess I'm bored too much...

To be honest, I have no idea what us win98 users will do once all support for hardware is cut off. It is inaccurate to state that there's no chipset driver support for windows 98 anymore, because I just bought an Abit motherboard, which all the drivers for Win98/Me/2000/XP (that includes Win98 Gold as well.) Also, most of the new drivers for chipsets for older OS's, even win2k, suck, and for win98, the drivers REALLY suck. IMO, most of the "support" is already gone. The only reliable support for win98/Me is THIS forum, really.

Hahaha, I love that. Jason just completely ignored the post about not talking about bypassing activation and stuff. lol I find it sort of ironic that a lot people think Win2k is the best gaming OS, when MS originally designed it ONLY for business purposes. For me Win2k used to be the best OS for gaming, but I've run into a lot of problems with it ever since I changed a bunch of my hardware. I would go with 98SE, if it was still 2002, but game developers and MS have conveniantly tried to push 98SE out of the picture. For once, I'm going with XP on this one, because for me, gaming is the only thing that XP has ever been the least bit good at. I have no comment on win2k3 because I've never used it, though I have heard it is a lot better than XP.

Search the web for the latest drivers. I know from experience that video drivers on windows 98 can be at blame for low resolutions and color depth. I also know that for some reason on win98, if the OS detects that you have only a "default monitor" and nothing else, that CAN limit your resolution (though IDK about color depth.) This happened to me when win98 wouldn't recognize the monitor type. The highest resolution it would go was 640x480. So, I decided to trick the OS, by changing the monitor type in display settings to a Dell M770, which is on my other computer, and it worked. This may sound sort of irrelevent, but it may help.

If he calls the DOS kernel a POS again, I'm ignoring his posts also.

Nah, that thread turned into a 98 vs. XP war. This one's just windows 98 usage in 2005, with no "un4given1" flamin the windows 98 users. I'm not really worried about viruses or hacks with windows 98, mainly because neither of those things have ever affected me. On my XP computer, I used to find myself paranoid to the point where I'd hunt down NAV 2003 and BlackIce (both of which sucked). I got hacked and recieved viruses up the a**. <<In spite of the comment, I DON'T want this to turn into an XP vs. 98 war!

I would love to see directx 10 support for windows 98se, but I'm not the least big optimistic about it. I know I'm sounding very negative, but, come on, does anyone really think that Microsoft is going to want to continue supporting dx on win98. I remember reading an article about microsoft's two worst fears which are pirates and older versions of their software. They are fully capable of attacking one of those fears.

I may never have used bluetooth, but I can tell you that 98se definately is compatible with USB 2.0. You just have to manually install most of the drivers. I think you should certainly try it out. But beware of the driver support on your computer. That's where you might run into problems if you find your motherboard drivers or video card drivers only run on 2000/XP. It's happened to me before...

You are very narrow minded if you think that all that windows 9x can run is "legacy applications" and crap like that. The DOS kernel continued to have the same problems with crashes and freezes all the way through windows Me, but it became more developed and usable as time went on. With your logic, the DOS kernel should've died after windows 3.1, or better yet, windows should've ran on NT only. All you think win98/95/whatever is capable of is small-coded apps like solitare or word 97. I don't believe that one bit, and there are tons of other users out there that don't believe that either. Of course, I do play games like solitare and use word 97 sometimes, I can also play GTA: San Andreas and Doom 3 under windows 98 perfectly. (Bear in mind, both those games were only designed for win2000/XP because of narrow minded individuals like yourself.) With your way of thinking, Windows 98 is nothing more than DOS+Windows 3.1 with a revised GUI.

We are not talking about windows 3.1 here; that os is irrelevent in the discussion, because that OS is primairly 16-bit code and could barely run any new programs after 1996. The step from win3.1 to 95 is most likely gonna be like the switch from XP to Vista; some new, innovative things will run, but MS will try to faze out all old OS's quickly. If it wasn't for Microsoft, directx 9 would run on windows 95. I'm sure it would've ran perfectly on win95. Just like you said that if the OS is good enough, it should still recieve support regardless of age. We (obviously not you) feel that it is still a worthwhile OS and should still recieve support.

Just don't try playing any old DOS games on win2k. Oh and if you backup your savegames for any game you have on a CD or w/e, make sure that when you copy it back to your computer that you uncheck the "read only" attribute for each savegame file. I found this out the hard way with Max Payne. Though, it applies to all files for some reason in win2k, and maybe 98se. Believe me, if you try to save a game to a read only savegame file, you'll have problems...

Nah, I think it was right on target. It was the last breath of the 1990's (the good ol' days.) As for windows XP, I think that was way ahead of its time. I think windows 2000 should've been moved to windows 2002 or something, and Windows Me should've never existed, or MS should've developed it more for another year.

Wow, an NT 4.0 supporter. I didn't know anyone still used that OS (except for servers of course.) My OS list has been revised: 1. Windows 98SE 2. Windows 2000 Professional 3. Windows XP Professional (with all the bloat and sh*t cut out of it.) 4. Windows 95 OSR 2.0 5. Windows NT 4.0 (only used it once, seemed pretty stable, never used it again though cause no games would run on it.) I've noticed that I tend to like the operating systems with the year in their name a lot more than ones such as Windows XP or Me. IDK why, I just do.

My biggest nightmare with win98 has always been adding new hardware on a non-clean install. No matter what hardware it is (though it's usually network cards), I always get the biggest headaches adding new hardware when "things" just don't go the way they should. Oh, and a new one added to the list is the "Windows Protection Error." Everytime I've seen that, I know that my win98se install is essentially screwed. I don't really care about the BSOD, I'm used to seeing that in win98; it's sort of become a "standard" occurance over the past 10 years ever since windows 95. Though when it comes to the NT OS's, the BSOD is my worst fear, because then I know something is seriously wrong with the OS.

Meh, I have nforce2, so that's no big deal for me. Although, I can see a problem slowly emerging when I buy a new videocard soon. Most of the OS support for both ATI and nVidia has veered away from win98 and moved to the *shutters* NT OS's. The problem for me is that I don't play that many small games. The games that I do play are pretty hardcore when it comes to graphics and cpu requirements.

It is virtually inevitable that windows 98 usage will go down as the months and years pass. I do find the statistics to be "good" considering the history with past OS's. According to www.thecounter.com, windows 98 usage on the internet is currently at 9%, as apposed to september 2004, where it was at 19%. (Windows Me makes up approximately 0%, along with win3.x.) I noticed that the numbers for win98 usage are decreasing slower than other OS's such as win95. By September 2002, windows 95 usage had declined to 3% (I was one of those 3% .) That was 7 years after the release of win95. It is now 7 years after the first release of win98, and the results for september 2005 state 9% of internet users are using win98 (both FE and SE.) I just found this to be somewhat interesting that 7 years after the release of a piece of software, there are still 9% of all computer users using it as their primary OS.