Joining the Club

[patchouli]

Hello everyone, and happy holidays.

You could probably tell from my post count that I am new here. I want to join the shrinking(?) number of users who use Windows 98 still today because I find that modern Windows is going in the wrong direction.

I think something that changed a lot in recent years with Windows is that Microsoft has started to go overboard with adding features and trying to make everything too easy for casual users. The problem is, at least for me, that I no longer feel I am in "control" of my OS. Windows 7 is so huge and there are so many functions that it is no longer possible to keep on top. In Windows 98, I still felt that I had complete control over my PC. I also feel that at least for my daily work, Windows 98 is totally sufficient. It's extremely light-weight and fast. In Windows 7, even with a SSD, 8GB RAM, and Core i7 CPU, it's feeling a bit sluggish and overweight.

(Bonus for me: I am learning Japanese full-time at Japanese language school, but I find that I am lazy with kanji because Windows 7 IME support is so good. It could help in my studies to use a old IME where it depends on user's knowledge! Kind of like doing math in your head instead of with calculator...)

Anyway, enough rambling. I read a lot of the posts here, but because there is so much information and threads, I am super confused. I want to run Windows 98 SE on a ThinkPad R32. Thankfully, drivers are no problem. IBM driver support for older models is legendary. There is a driver for all hardware. The specs are 512 MB RAM, 60GB HDD, 1.4GHz CPU, ATI graphics card, some AC97 sound. Windows 98 SE should feel very at home on this system. Even the battery is still at good capacity and there is a hibernate partition maker utility!

But can someone confirm this:

- For updates: I am totally covered if I just install "U98SESP3 - Unofficial Windows 98SE Service Pack Updates", right?

- For IE6 updates: Once IE6SP1 is installed, I just install "MDIE6CU 3.4" to be fully patched right? (I intend to use Opera later)

I later intend to install 98SE2ME and KernelEx to improve stability get recent programs running. Any other suggestions?

For basic toolkit:

- There is no more free, small AV that supports Win 9x right? I am more than happy to use common sense as an alternative!

- Is there a full disk encryption for Win 9x like TrueCrypt (password before disk is unlocked and Windows boots)?

- What is a good personal firewall for Win 9x? I remember there was one called something like "Sibase? Personal Firewall" many years ago, but I can't find it. Any suggestions?

Software I intend to run: Forte Agent, Opera, Office XP + Japanese IME, Winamp, IrfanView, Remote Desktop Client, PPTP VPN, and maybe OpenVPN.

I am very willing to make sacrifices, and very thankful for tips and suggestions. I tried to search older threads (e.g. for encryption) but most of the results had links to software that didn't do what I want, or it no longer existed, etc.

Thank you for your help and sorry for this long post.

[dencorso]

Welcome to the fold!

Most of what you're asking is answered here somewhere and the Search utility is very good when you get the feeling of how to use it. You're mostly right about being covered if you use the packs you named. But you should, by all means add RP9, even if you're not interested in skining, just because it really helps with the resource bottlneck. And Opera 10.10, just to have a decently up-to-date browser to get around the web. IE6SP1 is too limiting, nowadays.

BTW, I understand your first language is English and you're studying Japanese in Japan, or you're the native speaker of Japanese with the best grasp of English I've ever met.

No matter which of the two above alternatives is the correct one, you're studying Japanese writing, so can ask for your help, too? Over in the 2k forum, we're looking for someone willing to translate major sections of the Japanese-only BlackWingCat blog into English. It's precious. Would you have time and interest in helping with this project?

[mrsk565]

Hey there,

I see your a fellow Ibm fan, I have an r31. It is setup alittle different though, Intel 32mb 830m graphics, 512bm ram, 1.6ghz cpu.

So first thing I'd do is get win98se. If you have it then id install it, I dont think I could put up with just win98. I've heard bad things but who knows. Did you have win7 on that laptop cause on mine I had no driver support or speed at all really when trying win7. Win98se Is great, I use to hate it cuzz of the errors and all. But after I found a better way to format my hdd, and found this place Iv had no problems. Its great, I have SP beta 3-4. and RP9.7, KernelEX, I think this is all I need. After these, anything else I add seems to get too bloated and cuzz problems so I just stick to those for now until something else really good comes out. I have firefox 3.5, flash 11.1, opera 10, epsxe, zsnes, pj64, vlc player for videos of any type, visual c++2005, java 1.6, directx 9.0a. I think thats it for now, gaming is great. I will never go back to XP after playing games on SE.

[Fredledingue]

Yes. First of all don't think of installing anything other but w98SE, so that you can get all the upddates.

There are service packs for w98FE but it's old and doesn't come close since w98se itself is already a major improvement.

"- For updates: I am totally covered if I just install "U98SESP3 - Unofficial Windows 98SE Service Pack Updates", right?"

Totaly covered would be an overstatement, but much better off than wihtout any update. The U98SESP3 brings almost if not all the technical improvements available for w98se.

Also make sure to know how to Installing W98 on Large Hard Disk Drives, over 137 Gb and More than 1Gb of Ram

More on it here and here

"- For IE6 updates: Once IE6SP1 is installed, I just install "MDIE6CU 3.4" to be fully patched right? (I intend to use Opera later)."

Patched to the extent that you use IE6. There are issues with more and more websites with the w98se+IE6 setup. Most websites will display normaly and fast. But heavily scripted, interractive websites may be slow, unresponsive or not working.

For such website use an alternative: Opera, FF, K-meleon etc.

For "normal" websites disable Javascript as often as you can.

Unless your datas are realy sensitive, like lot of money depends on it, you don't need any antivirus, encryption or firewall at all.

Most of us live without that bloat happily. But some of us will be glad to tell you what they use for data protection.

About KernelEX see first if you realy need it.

Not everybody need it but many find it useful.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

[mrsk565]

Unless your datas are realy sensitive, like lot of money depends on it, you don't need any antivirus, encryption or firewall at all.

Most of us live without that bloat happily.

Yeah most of us here know the tricks and settings to prevent any type of attack. I used to use tinyxp and didnt need one either, I think after so many years being on the internet and learning computers has taught me which places are good and which are bad. I stay away from any strange words or websites and I do just fine

Edited January 4, 2012 by mrsk565

[jds]

For basic toolkit:

- There is no more free, small AV that supports Win 9x right? I am more than happy to use common sense as an alternative!

- Is there a full disk encryption for Win 9x like TrueCrypt (password before disk is unlocked and Windows boots)?

- What is a good personal firewall for Win 9x? I remember there was one called something like "Sibase? Personal Firewall" many years ago, but I can't find it. Any suggestions?

Well, for full anti-virus protection, Avast 4.8 is still supported, despite long-standing warnings from Avast that they will be discontinuing it.

You can find the last freeware/home edition at : http://www.filehippo.com/download_avast_antivirus/6635/

I have also read that you can install the professional/business trial edition, apply for a freeware/home registration key, then if you enter this, your installation converts to the freeware/home edition. You can find the download link here : http://www.avast.com/download-software#tab2

If you want to manually download the virus definitions, see here : http://www.avast.com/download-update

As for a firewall, I did try the Sygate Personal Firewall (the last supposedly "good" version) and it was completely unstable. I also tried Kerio 4.X and again, it was completely unstable (lovely interface, though). Finally, I tried ZoneAlarm 5.5.094 and that worked great! However, if you use the "site blocking" feature in ZoneAlarm 5.5.094, it starts to become less stable, but you can use the %windir%\hosts file instead to block a few sites.

Joe.