Does Microsoft offer paid / private support for win-98?

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

I have a fuzzy impression that if you want it bad enough, that you can still buy win-98 licenses or win-98 support from Microsoft. Maybe I'm wrong about that. If I'm right - does anyone know if Microsoft prepares special updates or patches for those who pay for such support? Might there be a list somewhere of exactly what files or patches have been provided under such a program over the past 3.5 years?

[cluberti]

No, all possibility of acquiring extended support ended globally on July 11, 2006, and license distribution ended in January of 2004 (don't remember the date, but it's not really necessary anymore ).

[Fredledingue]

You can still hire private developers to create updates if you want and share them with us.

There are a lot of companies in India or in Russia who will be glad to do it.

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

I guess I was thinking of some of the content on this page: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy

And specifically the details mentioned in points 11, 12, 13, 15, possibly 16.

References are made to:

- Essential and Premier support agreements

- Mainstream and extended support phases

- Extended hotfix support

- paid hotfix support

Microsoft makes a distinction between "Business and Development software" and "Consumer, Hardware, and Multimedia products". What would Win-98 be classified as?

A reference is made to this page: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/retired

From which a reference is made to "Microsoft Gold Certified Partners for Support Services" by way of this link:

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=http%3a...pport%2fpartner

Which is a dead link.

There is also a reference to this page: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeselect

which requires you to select a product and then a country. Strange that it offers the choice of "Windows 98 Standard Edition" - what exactly is that? Was there a non-standard edition?

I'm wondering if any sort of useful fix or hotpatch for win-98 was ever made available to anyone under any program (paid, unpaid etc) after the end of extended support (July 2006).

[cluberti]

Windows 98 is a consumer product (NT was the business product line). Win98 and WinME actually had their support extended from the usual 5 and done to 2004 and 2006, respectively, but after that everything's done. You cannot get Win9x on a Premier support agreement (again, it's not considered business software), which you would have to do to get an Extended Support and Extended Hotfix Support agreement written up for it (and you'd have to pay back to 2004 or 2006 and every subsequent year for both agreements to get it current, that's also required). It's basically made fiscally unfeasible to try and keep those products alive - one, it means Microsoft doesn't have to pay someone (or some group) to keep updating the code for products that most people don't use anymore, and two it means that those who do want to pay for it make sure Microsoft is making some money off of it to offset the costs of building, testing, and maintaining said code (and probably at a small profit too, after a few years past end of support).

[herbalist]

Strange that it offers the choice of "Windows 98 Standard Edition" - what exactly is that? Was there a non-standard edition?

98 standard edition is also known as 98FE to distinguish it from 98 second edition (98SE).

[Fredledingue]

M$'s legalese and overlapping user agreements is such a mess that I wonder if any high level officer at the company have any idea of what's in there.

Let alone understand what's written.