Windows 98/ME support for hardware and software

[Link21]

A topic that made it off the front page. And now, three more votes to the worst possible poll answer!! Probably intentionally doing it to tick Windows 9X basher off. That is sad.

[wizardofwindows]

ya baby hey link 21 for someone who hates 98 you sure devote alot of time trying to sway people into using it lol maybe u should try pogo games a much better way to save your breathe.its getting old. enjoy your day.

[Link21]

Why do you keep referring to me hating Windows 98? It is anything Windows 9X based that I hate including Windows 98.

If you don't like XP and the activation crap, use Windows 2000. At least that is a quality OS and doesn't contain the stupid Bill Gates communist activation!! But using anything Windows 9X based is hitting the bottom of the barrel. It is technically a POS compared to other real 32-bit operating systems.

[Fredledingue]

Bad luck for you, Link21: EVERYTHING in windows2000/XP is based on w98 (except the kernel and the file system).

What struck me most when I tried XP for the first time, was the similarities with w98. "But......, it's the same!" I recall saying.

Then I discovered that in XP there were more annoying stuffs added, more hd waste, more slowlyness, more security gaps etc etc etc

What do you want? they sacrificed everything on the altar of "stability"...

But I agree that to the extent that 98 looks like XP, it's a "bad" OS.

[Fredledingue]

So, what's the point of unicode then? You could still write program for Windows 9X without unicode and you could type any character that universally existed in a word processing program? Will anything written for Windows not using unicode work on Windows 9X?

There is no language so far that use unicode and if one did, it wouldn't change anything because exe files are compiled in binary. And as I said before binary language is the same for every computer available on the market (there might be some non binary system in some lab or museum, I don't know).

What you get is always a pack of 000101010011100 that goes through a processor and output another pack of 001110101001011. And this process is the same in XP and w98.

XP is slower because the packs of binary datas going through the processor all the time is bigger than those on w98. That's why also small softwares often run faster than large ones (when they are properly written).

A program that run on XP and not on w98, does so because it calls other softwares elements (dll, ocx etc) that are not installed on w98. Some of these elements are easily installable on w98, others are not because they are themselves calling others elements that would need to be replaced and so on.

But theoricaly, if you install everything from XP on w98, all XP-only softwares should work. Unless they realy need a NTSF to work which is still possible by partitioning the HD... At least in the limit of my knowledge.

[Link21]

So really then, there isn't much of a difference in W98 and XP besides the memory management handling and NTFS file system?

Someone I know that claims they are very expertise in knowledge about the way Windows NT and Windows 9X were made (they were an OS/2 WARP administrator for a bank my friend works for), claims they are so different that you cannot even compare them. They said that Windows 2000 is as different from Windows ME as OS/2 WARP is from Windows ME. They said that all programs written for Windows 98 that also say they are XP compatible are really all written for Windows 9X, but have been tested on Windows 2000 or XP? He says that any program written strictly for Windows NT will not stand a chance to run on Windows 9X? Is that more a thing of the past before the same API sets were introduced to both Windows 98SE/ME and Windows NT/2000/XP??

Isn't really the only difference between Windows 9X and NT is that they both use the same WIN32 software API designed to run the same coded programs, but the same API is written differently to run on two different OS kernels, but runs the same applications?

I guess what that tech friend of mine told me still bugs me to this day and concerns me about the differences in both operating systems and a reduction in performance and stability?

[Link21]

I can't believe it. It is almost the year 2006. Who now thinks that Windows 98/ME should still be supported?

I mean, there is no question that by now with Vista approaching and all, that Windows 98/ME are by far dead and obsolete!! I think they should have been 3 or more years ago.

Come on, lets see some more votes that say NO support for POS Windows 98/ME.

It should be an all NT, Unix, and Linux OS world by now!!

[alsiladka]

its time to grow up guyz. software vendors may keep support for them but why the hell should hardware pros? if you are taking new hardware , they wil support the new os's . why do you want 98 and me then?

[Link21]

its time to grow up guyz. software vendors may keep support for them but why the hell should hardware pros? if you are taking new hardware , they wil support the new os's . why do you want 98 and me then?

Exactly!! I totally agree!!

Bad luck for you, Link21: EVERYTHING in windows2000/XP is based on w98 (except the kernel and the file system).

The kernel is the OS. Everything else runs on top of the kernel. And the kernel is completely different in Windows 98/ME than it is in Windows 2000/XP.

[LLXX]

ME support? Don't really care. Usually comes with 98SE support though.

98SE support? Definite Yes.

It's called Backward Compatibility. It's the reason why I can put a 5.25" floppy manufactured in 1981 in my mid-2005 machine and read/write to it. It's the reason why I can still use a 20-year-old dot-matrix printer (still works amazingly well after all these years...) to print out something I created in MS Office XP. New should always be compatible with the old.

I've used every Microsoft OS from DOS 3.20 to XP (might try Vista soon). The earlier Windows were bad: 95 was not very stable, 98 was better but still not that good, but 98se is as good as it gets. ME got worse, 2000 was alright but bloated. XP wasn't much better than 2000; if anything, it was a step backwards. Why newer OS require more computing resources and take up more space is very strange. The OS shouldn't be what's taking up so much requirements of your system, it should be the apps that do that. The OS should be just a small "supervisor" in the background, providing services to your apps.

The 98se system is definitely *not* unstable. The base kernal is excellent and I've had uptimes of nearly 9 months so far on my 98se fileserver (total resources free is still at 87%!). It's the apps that you run that are causing the problem. All the NT series OS hide this fact that your apps are leaking memory so it appears that your system is very stable, but seriously, the problem is with your apps and not the OS. Take DOS for an example. It is extremely easy to crash but what causes those crash? You, running badly designed apps. Don't blame the OS for instability. It's all those badly designed programs you're running.

Win98se runs great on the latest hardware, even better than XP. With all the development in the USP forum it is even more enhanced. It can actually considered to be forward compatible as well as being backward compatible. E.g. my hardware:

4.17GHz P4 HT

256M DDR400 (tested to be working with 2Gb DDR533)

2x 120Gb HDD

There is absolutely no reason to drop 98se support. If anything, developing drivers for XP+ is more involved and expensive since those drivers should have to go through authentication and be digitally signed by Microsoft and certified etc.

Most of us are just being forced to use XP because it comes with every new PC, or because Microsoft is so clever with their advertising that we submit to their commands. But look beyond the marketing claims, and you'll see what XP really is.

While others e.g. Win 3.11/95/ME died out in only a few years, 98se still continues to be used by many. Expect the lifetimes of XP and Vista to be less than 98se. I estimate that by 2010 XP will have faded away, Vista will be nearing its end and Microsoft will have some even bloatier and uglier OS out by then, but 98se will probably still be in use by many

I still boot into MS-DOS 7.10 to do small tasks that I can do in DOS without waiting for Windows 98 to load, and I still load Windows by running WIN at the console prompt.

The poll results certainly show agreement to this!

[Link21]

Windows NT/2000/XP is way better than 9X will ever be.

Linux is awesome and far better than anything MS ever designed. Windows 9X and 16-bit legacy DOS was a disgrace to the whole computing world. At least the NT code base was respectable, but still can't touch Linux. But the NT based Windows OS blows the legacy ancient 9X DOS kernel out of the water.

Operating systems based on far inferior technology like Windows 9X should have died a long time ago!! It ought to be a Linux, Unix, Windows NT, and all other quality operating systems based world by now.

How could anyone want to run Windows 98SE? It isn't even a true 32-bit OS? It is a 16-bit OS with 32-bit extensions. I thought we left 16-bit computing on modern hardware a long time ago.

[Link21]

Here is real proof that why Windows 98/ME should have been trashed all together a long time ago.

There is an intrinsic limit on how well Windows 98/ME run period.

http://www.apptools.com/rants/resources.php

Windows 2000/XP don't have that limit. The results of this poll really show the ignorance of the Windows 98SE obeseers and lovers who lived in this fantasy world and blindly believed that Windows 98SE was by the best version of Windows ever made. It is flat out rubish as demonstarted at link to the webpage I posted above.

I want to see a lot more votes for poll choice number 4. It is 2006. I find it embarassing for software and hardware released as far back as 2003 that it would say on the box that it was compatible with Windows 98/ME/2000/XP. It all should have said compatible with Windows 2000/XP only. How bad does it get when software is listed as being compatible with two completely different OS architectures branded together as one operating system. That falsely advertises that Windows 98/ME are based on the same platform as Windows 2000/XP when they are not. It is embarassing to see such software in a modern era support two completely different operating systems made by the same company (aka Microsoft) using the same files and installer, and thus relying on backwards compatibility in 2000/XP that run 98/ME applications. That is sad.

[wizardofwindows]

your sad link go whine to microsoft not us and im glad that alot of stuff is crossed platform.P.S get a new hobbie.

[Link21]

your sad link go whine to microsoft not us and im glad that alot of stuff is crossed platform.P.S get a new hobbie.

Cross platform using the same friggin files and installer! Answer this for me. What would be better. If applications were written natively to support Linux and thus had their own version of the same program written natively to run on Linux. Or if the applications were native WIndows applications and just said they support Linux because Linux can run Windows applications through WINE and Cedega? Of course the performance would be much better if the application was written natively to run on Linux.

Same thing with MAC OS 9 and below and MAC OS X. Performance will certainly be much better if applications are written natively to run on MAC OS X, rather than just written natively for MAC OS 9, and be compatible with MAC OS X only because MAC OS X has a simulator to run MAC OS 9 and below programs.

Windows 98/ME are based on a different OS heritage than Windows 2000/XP. Thus it proabbly makes it so much harder to write drivers and programs supporting both.

When Windows 98 came out, it was probably very easy for developers to still write drivers and programs that are compatible with Windows 95 as well because Windows 98 was based on Windows 95. Windows 2000/XP are no where near based on Windows 98/ME. So write applications for the native OS heritage made by the same company Since the release of Windows 2000 to present and especially since Windows XP to present, the intention was for the whole MS OS world to migrate to a completely different OS kernel being the NT based platform. It wasn't the nearly the same thing as the transition from Windows 95 to Windows 98 or even from Windows 98 to ME. It probably won't be much of a transition from Windows XP to Vista either because they are both based on the NT platform.

If all applications until recently have really been just native Windows 98/ME, but only run on 2000/XP because 2000/XP provide emulation for properly written Windows 98/ME applications, that is just sad. SO another words, almost every application written that is compatible with the NT based OS isn't even native to the NT based OS, but only realying on the backwards compatibility in 2K/XP that emulate Windows 9X. That is really sad if that is truly the case for all applications written the last 4 years.

That very thought has really bothered me to this day. WHy should all 2K/XP users suffer the fate of having to rely on emulation for their software to run. Emulation hurts performance and performance would be much better if applications were written for the native OS heritage instead of emulated on a completely different OS provding emulation for a completely different OS.

Edited January 9, 2006 by Link21

[Jeremy]

Support for Windows 98 was discontinued as of January 1st, 2006. WinME is no longer supported and I believe Windows 2000 will no longer be supported by mid-2006.