Windows 95 or Windows 98 SE?

[eidenk]

It boots twice as fast as win98 because it avoids this real DOS bootstrap on start.

It's got solid got native USB mass storage drivers.

Supports nearly 2GB of RAM without a shareware patch versus 1GB on 98.

It has a registry that is much more resilient to extreme bloat than the 98 one.

It looks exactly the same as Win2K.

As for the new useless features which are essentially System Restore and System File Protection, they are easy to remove and it is debatable whether they are actually useless or not. I personally removed them BTW as well as a few other things such as WIA and UNPNP.

And BTW as well, I am unable to crash it on request.

[JustinStacey.x]

[cluberti]

Well Windows Me is the OS I am rather hapilly using since years now. What is so wrong with it ?

I have never really understood why people diss it that much.

Because for some of us, it was the most unstable abortion of an OS imagineable, even with inbox drivers. I remember going back to 98 before I moved to 2000 because it was that bad. I had it on OEM hardware, whitebox hardware, and even hardware "designed for Windows ME" (a Compaq I'd rather forget). I like to think of Windows ME as the testbed for features later found in Windows XP.

[herbalist]

I've only seen a couple of ME systems that behaved well. Most of the ones I've worked on ended up with either 98 or 2K on them. I've seen a WinME unit go from very well behaved to completely unstable when the AV updated, but that same AV update worked just fine on another WinME unit. On another one, I installed a firewall (Kerio 2.1.5), rebooted it, and had no keyboard when it restarted.

Eidenk, either you've been fortunate with your copy or you know some trick that makes WinME behave that most of us don't know about.

[G8YMW]

My own thoughts about WinME is that hiding the DOS was a major mistake because I firmly believe (Contrary to what MS say) get the DOS right and the Windows will behave. Hiding DOS takes control away from me which is why I prefer Win98 to XP (Alright on THIS machine I have to use XP) and I will NEVER use NTFS. I still have Win98 but 640*480 in 16 colours is painful but at least if XP throws a wobbly at least I can use DOS/Win98 to sort things out besides XP's defragger is SSSLLLOOOOWWWW

[jaclaz]

It seems to me like the right place/time to let drop casually a link :

http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html

....and see what happens....

B)

jaclaz

[herbalist]

I still have Win98 but 640*480 in 16 colours is painful

Both 95 and 98 do much better than that when you install a display driver. Check the vendors site. If the vendor doesn't offer one, try a universal driver. This one has worked well for many people.

Rick

[JustinStacey.x]

It seems to me like the right place/time to let drop casually a link :

http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html

....and see what happens....

B)

jaclaz

LOL. That's why when I reccommend Windows 98 I also mention 98liting. The IE has to go to make it a half-decent OS.

Nathan Lineback is cool and all but his anti-IE site is a little excessive. I get the idea that he's a guy in his 30s, 40s, 50s, and I wouldn't even expect a child to behave like he does, 'specially towards Bill Gates. I mean, I didn't even behave like that when I was 12.

Edited May 23, 2009 by JustinStacey

[BenoitRen]

The shell does NOT need to be changed to get rid of IE.

I Googled this, and while you can remove Internet Explorer itself, you can't remove the web crap without switching the shell.

But since you won't show me any proof of what you say

Please don't selectively read my posts. I asked you what proof you needed. What would convince you, save for me filming the install process with a video camera?

on a 486, Windows 98 will be slower than Windows 95, but on a PIII 1000, 98 will perform some tasks a hair faster

This doesn't make any sense, because Windows 98 is not optimised for anything newer than a 486 CPU. A higher clock speed will not suddenly make Win98 faster than Win95.

By advocating Windows 95C for this computer instead of Windows 98 you're essentially advocating a low end Mercedes with a slower engine and less features than the higher end Mercedes, while forgetting to explain to the customer that she won't be able to go as fast, listen to CDs or have heated seats.

Yet you're advocating Win98 only if it's stripped to what Win95 was. Except for the better USB support, of course.

[JustinStacey.x]

And the better underpinnings.

You're also still wrong about the shell thing.

[recalling from memory here] 98lite:

"Micro" removes the Windows 98 shell completely and replaces it with 95s.

"Sleek" removes the web integration from the shell while still leaving it as Win98s shell. I *think* quicklaunch is still there, but the web view and other junk is not.

Both of the above can be done and IE can be left untouched. Or, it can be removed.

Edited May 23, 2009 by JustinStacey

[submix8c]

Flame-fest comment (at the risk of being flamed myself...) -

IMHO, there is no real reason to pit Win95B/C (main difference IE? and USB!) against Win98/SE (SE being the preferred) or WinME (hardware makes a world of difference).

Both 95 and 98 can be "stripped" (essentially) of IE and by putting the latest Shell from 95 into 98, the 98 should (I believe) be totally bereft of the IE, if it's your preference.

I have installed and used all of the 9x/ME series on multiple configurations and indeed there is a performance gain oldie-computer vs newer-computer, the exception being 386/486 (386 best with 95) provided sufficient RAM is present. ME will not work well (if at all) on 386/486 regardless, however is just fine on "newer" hardware (not too new, unless "tweaked") provided the correct drivers are found. BSOD's were rare in any case, usually the fault of drivers or over-loading/overheating (something). Yes, a patch is available for the "above 350mhz" problem. Yes, more RAM helps beaucoup.

Bottom line (again, IMHO), all of them are good depending on what hardware you put them on and what purpose you use them (e.g. gaming). To each their own. Or should I provide an inventory of this cluttered room and the heck I'm going through sorting what hardware to put with which MoBo and which OS should be installed? Been there, done that, still at it. Heck, I may put Win2K on one or two (shy of RAM for XP, except maybe one); great OpSys as well.

Hey, notice my OpSys says "none"; why do you think that is (currently running "nunya")? One person's trash is another's treasure, right?

Peace, my friends! (besides, I believe the OP may have already decided...)

edit - and I never really noticed a big difference between 95 & 98 on any given pc (except the oldies). It's the size of the module in question and the RAM it uses (especially running services/processes) that's the rub.

Edited May 23, 2009 by submix8c

[jaclaz]

Hey, notice my OpSys says "none"; why do you think that is (currently running "nunya")? One person's trash is another's treasure, right?

AFAIK "nunya" runs better on FAT32 than on NTFS.

And while we are at it, of course Mickey Mouse outclasses Dracula, and there is simply no race between Godzilla and King Kong.

jaclaz

[submix8c]

Hey, jaclaz, how'd ya get into my "nunya"????

(nope, current running system -usual one- is NTFS... 'nuff said!)

Edited May 23, 2009 by submix8c

[eidenk]

I've only seen a couple of ME systems that behaved well. Most of the ones I've worked on ended up with either 98 or 2K on them. I've seen a WinME unit go from very well behaved to completely unstable when the AV updated, but that same AV update worked just fine on another WinME unit. On another one, I installed a firewall (Kerio 2.1.5), rebooted it, and had no keyboard when it restarted.

Eidenk, either you've been fortunate with your copy or you know some trick that makes WinME behave that most of us don't know about.

Well I dunno, I certainly removed lots of stuff from it and updated other stuff.

I have removed System Restore, System File Protection, WIA, WMI, Webcheck, Protected Storage, UNPNP, Netbios (not sure if I forget anything else I have removed). I feel it is essential to update certain files such as msvcrt.dll and the ole automation runtime for stability. Every time I reinstalled ME (on different hardware) I could not launch control panel without crashing explorer for example before those updates were installed.

Other than that I think my system is pretty much what some would consider as bloatware.

I never upgraded IE to version 6 because of bad experiences I've had with it on 98SE but this might have been early unstable IE 6.

I have noticed recently that installing old commercial program from the 1998/2000 era often leads to system instability because of the apparently buggy (and generally quite useless) shell extensions they install along with the programs. Lately I installed Lotus Smart Suite Millenium and Corel Ventura 8 (which I bought for £1 each .). In the days following that I noticed an outburst of odd crashes, apps which were behaving well were now sometimes crashing on exit in Kernel32, hanging subsequently in memory without being possible to kill them with a process manager, etc... First I blamed that on RP9 I had installed at around the same time because it made sense to me that it could have a bug on exiting programs as it is supposed to have some code running that cleans up resources when program exits. But no the problems were all down to those shell extensions it seem, as those problems don't occur anymore since I removed them. Dunno if this is ME specific.

I found out as well since some time that the Sun Java BHO (any version I can recall) for IE was a bugger on my system so that if I upgrade Java I immediately remove this BHO afterwards not to suffer from slowness in opening folders in explorer. It turns out this BHO also hooks into explorer and each time I open a folder it parses a large number of its own keys in the registry, considerably slowing down explorer. Dunno if this is ME specific or not either.

That's all I can think of right now.

Something else I forgot to mention is that ME seems more stable and recovers better than 98SE when going into a very low resources situation.

[eidenk]

My own thoughts about WinME is that hiding the DOS was a major mistake because I firmly believe (Contrary to what MS say) get the DOS right and the Windows will behave. Hiding DOS takes control away from me which is why I prefer Win98 to XP (Alright on THIS machine I have to use XP) and I will NEVER use NTFS. I still have Win98 but 640*480 in 16 colours is painful but at least if XP throws a wobbly at least I can use DOS/Win98 to sort things out besides XP's defragger is SSSLLLOOOOWWWW

95 and 98 have in fact two different operating systems, DOS ans Windows. ME has just one, Windows. I would not think that the absence of real DOS in ME affects its stabilty negatively.

You seem to have the belief that Windows of the 9x series run on top of DOS which is erroneous.

95 and 98 allow you to boot into either operating system and switch from one to another. ME does not as there is no real DOS in ME.