I had MDAC 2.8 working fine on my 10-year-old 700 MHz laptop under Win98SE since 2003. Then, after having seen MDAC 2.8 SP1 listed by galahs as the last version for Win98, I got the idea of upgrading.

Immediately after the installation of MDAC v2.8 SP1 the fan of the old laptop started to blow and the bottom of the laptop, where the CPU is located, started to get really hot. CPUIdle, however, didn't indicate a much higher CPU usage than before. The fan kept on blowing maybe for an hour, even after rebooting or booting briefly into WinXP. I was not running any data base software.

The system under Win98SE, however, and perhaps eMule also, seemed to have become a little crisper under SP1.

MDAC cannot be uninstalled, so I had to restore \Windows\ and \Program Files\ from backup in order to revert from MDAC 2.8 SP1 back to MDAC 2.8. After having restored MDAC 2.8 the laptop worked as usual, no heating up or noisy fan.

MDAC 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7 had CPU usage issues:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320700

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320698

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320696

which were apparently fixed with v2.8.

Could it be that the CPU usage issue came back with MDAC 2.8 SP1?

Edited August 24, 201016 yr by Multibooter

I can't confirm your problem for Win ME ( Version MDAC 2.81 ( 26.04.2005 / 28.1.1117.6 ) installed) . I use ME for many years on different machines (P3 Tualatin/ P4 Northwood & Prescott )

Edited August 26, 201016 yr by schwups

I can't confirm your problem ... on different machines (P3 Tualatin/ P4 Northwood & Prescott )

Hi schwups,

I suspect that the slow CPU of my 10-year-old laptop (700MHz, 256k L2 cache) is the cause of the heating up of the CPU. The Tualatin has 1.0-1.4 GHz, the Northwood 1.6-2.2 GHz and the Prescott 2.2-3.8 GHz. Another contributing cause may have been the current high room temperature (28-31 degrees centigrade), which may have brought the issue to my attention because of the fan making noise.

mdgx lists on his indispensable website the latest versions and updates under Win98SE and other operating systems, but I assume that his testing has been on a fast machine, not on a slow-coach like my old Inspiron laptop.

In the excellent "Last Versions of Software for Windows 98SE" galahs does not indicate whether there are issues with slow CPUs. Some software may have a last version for slow machines, and another last version for fast machines.

Older and newer versions of software may differ in their minimum CPU requirement. Software and updates which have problems under Win98 with a slow CPU (e.g. <1 GHz) should be marked as such.

MS Java VM is another example of a software where the last version has a CPU issue. MS Java Virtual Machine v5.0.3167 comes with the original Win98SE and does not cause the CPU on my old laptop to heat up. Immediately after updating to v5.0.3810 (or builds 3805 and 3809), however, the fan in my old laptop starts to blow and Resource Meter displays a substantial decrease in free resources.

System updates with issues under Win98SE on slower machines (<1 GHz):

MS Java Virtual Machine v5.0.3805 to v5.0.3810 (Ok version: v5.0.3167)

MS MDAC 2.8 SP1 [displayed by Component Checker as "MDAC 2.8 SP1 ON WINDOWS XP SP2"] (Ok version: MS MDAC 2.8, displayed as "MDAC 2.8 RTM")

Edited August 27, 201016 yr by Multibooter