Updating Win98FE

[win95guy]

Hi guys,

I just installed Windows 98FE and i was wondering what things i can/need to do to it so it is as up-to-date as possible?

I did find this which is a guide for both FE and SE but i wanted to ask the best 9x community out there also

http://www.hpcfactor.com/support/patching/win98/

Can you guys give me some tips, ideas, pointers and such please? It's on one of my old boxes that don't have a CDROM drive so i had to use FE via floppy install, no SE for me! I'll do everything via my broadband.

Thanks!

Regards, Win95Guy

[win95guy]

Please? It's been years since i've used 98 and i was an ammeter computer user back then so i don't have much knowledge of the advanced stuff to do with 9X... but i'm setting up my first PC again to use from time to time just so i can remember the old days... and it is a 98 box

[Atmosphere XG]

Maybe you can explain what you are trying to acomplish using Windows 98 FE. I used Windows 98 FE for 9 years beforing going to Windows 2000. The majority of the 98 users are on Second Edition which offers different characteristics than Windows 98 FE. Personally, I never fancied Windows 98 SE which is why I went from 98 FE to Windows 2000 on my old AMD K6.

You are pretty much on your own when using 98 FE which I found out throughout numerous websites years go. I am willing to help you if you find yourself in some kind of dilema. However, a lot of perks that works with 98 SE will not work on 98 FE.

Windows 98 FE is more similiar to Windows 95 than, Windows 98 SE.

[Sysdll]

This forums fearless leader has a an excellent site for all things 9x. I couldn't compute without it.

http://www.mdgx.com/

[win95guy]

I know this is a pretty stupid reason to pick FE over SE but i just like installation via Floppy... reminds me of a more simple time, i sort of miss the old days. I too will be using a K6 cpu. Mine is a K6-3 500mhz with 128mb ram and a 128mb pci video card. I think i'll have a few 20gb hard drives in it and probably a cd burner because a dvd drive wouldn't get much use in it... and i don't think FE supported DVD drives anyway?

I'll be sure to checkout that site sysdll

Regards, Win95Guy

[herbalist]

No CD drive? You can save yourself a lot of time and grief if you download your updates and software with another PC, and save them to a hard drive. After you get the basic OS installed, put the 2nd hard drive in as a slave and install the updates.

You'll want to get copies of the latest drivers for your sound card, display drivers, modem drivers, etc. If you're using them, you'll need drivers for the network card, USB card or updated USB drivers. Check the site of the PCs vendor for more updates specific to that hardware. My FE unit is an old HP. They had several updates just for the model I use.

You can either install individual MS updates or pick up the unofficial service pack for FE from MDGX. If you're going to install individual updates, you'll want to include VBRun 6 and a VC redistributable.

One of the fist apps you'll want is an unzipping program like 7zip or WinZip. 98 has nothing built in that handles zip files. If you can use a 2nd hard drive to transfer updates, add this to it, along with whatever alternate browser you'll be using. FYI, SeaMonkey is excellent on FE.

It would help to know what you'll be using this FE box for. Will you be sharing files over a network? General purpose single PC? Will you be using Internet Explorer? Wireless? Will you be adding a CD or CDRW later? What other external hardware will you be using? Ext hard drive? USB modem? WebCam? Printer, Scanner, etc? There are numerous tweaks and changes that can be made to FE, depending on what you will and will not be doing with it.

I know this is a pretty stupid reason to pick FE over SE but i just like installation via Floppy... reminds me of a more simple time, i sort of miss the old days.

Before I installed the CDRW, I did everything on this FE box with floppies. Did data backups on spanned sets, many of which used 50 or more floppies. I'd hate to guess how many hundreds of floppies I have laying around. They were such a headache. One bad floppy caused problems for the whole spanned set, and it was soooooo slow! Wore out 2 floppy drives. IMO, the CDRW is well worth installing. FE burns CDs just fine.

Rick

[Atmosphere XG]

I know this is a pretty stupid reason to pick FE over SE but i just like installation via Floppy... reminds me of a more simple time, i sort of miss the old days. I too will be using a K6 cpu. Mine is a K6-3 500mhz with 128mb ram and a 128mb pci video card. I think i'll have a few 20gb hard drives in it and probably a cd burner because a dvd drive wouldn't get much use in it... and i don't think FE supported DVD drives anyway?

I'll be sure to checkout that site sysdll

Regards, Win95Guy

It would be wise to buy a CD Burner. When I purchased my AMD K6 in 1998, it offered a CD ROM Drive only. A year later I decided to purchase a CDRW and, everything I downloaded on my huge 10 GB hard drive was recorded on CDRs. Ten years later, I have a lot of old programs stored on CDR Discs that were geared for a computer of that speed (400 MHZ 64 MB RAM) which is beneficial when using such an old computer in 2008. I knew I was going to have this computer for a long time and technology would surpass it. So, I prepared my self for such a transition.

You see, most of the programs designed today are aimed for 1 GHZ and above CPUs. So, trying to run something as simple as a browser can really slow things down.

As for DVD, Windows 98 FE will support it. Your AMD K6 will not handle video (Playing DVDs) but, for all means of storage it will not be a problem. Mine came with USB support as well in addition to a killer 10 Mbps Ethernet connection. Of course, I upgraded to an 100 Mbps Ethernet card and it worked perfectly. You may need to download a free program in order to burn your work for bundled DVD software today will only go as far back as Windows 2000. However the Drive will work in your AMD K6 using Windows 98 FE.

In my final days of Windows 98 FE, I had 1 DVDRW Drive, 3 internal Hard Drives (120 GB) and, 768 MB of RAM on my AMD K6. I even upgraded the Processor from 400 to 500 MHZ and had to change the clock speed so it could recognize the higher processor. As you can see, I pretty much took full advantage of the AMD K6 Motherboard.

The only thing I never explored was the video card. Partly because I never had a slot to install a secondary Video Card. So, I used the internal 4 MB card. I'm not a huge video person and, by you using an AMD K6 with such a low memory and, slow Processor I would imagine you are not either.

Speaking of Memory, buy some. Ebay has tons of PC 100 going for next to nothing. That will benefit you in the long run.

I learned a lot from Windows 98 FE and, helped me fix many computers that were running Windows XP and, Vista. Sorry to say that XP and above offers so much protection from user error, first time computer users that experienced XP and above are less computer savy than 2000 and below users.

Have fun!

Edited July 24, 2008 by Atmosphere XG

[togermano]

My gateway celeron 400mhz 64mb of ram handled playing of dvds fine

[heh heh]

My gateway celeron 400mhz 64mb of ram handled playing of dvds fine

I had a 400 celly and a amd k-2 and the celly was a much better cpu for multimedia chores.