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Why run 98?

colemancb

By colemancb
in Windows 9x/ME

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Jlo555

Jlo555

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hmm, I've always had my MaxFileCache set at 512mb, never anything lower. In effect, whenever I put in over 1gb of ddr400, I got the "out of memory" message upon bootup. I didn't realize how big of a deal the maxfilecache really was.

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Link21

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I'll only run Windows 98 because of DOS support. Other than that I would use a newer version of Windows. It did have a good user interface back then, but I cannot use Windows 98 anymore, it would crash, freeze and burn on me, which is a pain.

Exactly!! Windows 2000/XP/2003 kick the living day lights out of Windows 98/ME any day. You can't even compare how Windows 98/ME to Windows 2000/XP/2003 because Windows 2000/XP/2003 are far superior in just about every way shape and form!! It was a far bigger upgrade and change from Windows 98/ME to Windows 2000/XP than it ever was from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. Thus you can't even compare how Windows 98/ME were back in their heyday to how Windows XP is now!! WIndows 2000/XP are by far better now than Windows 98/ME ever were for their time!!

Unfortunately, the Windows 98SE obsessers and lovers who lived in this fantasy world where they blidnly believed that Windows 98SE was by far better than any version of Windows every created has caused hardware and software manufacturers to support them for way too long which has only hurt performancer and stability the last 5 years. :(:(:( It is called the tremednous differences in the core OS kernel that make Windows 2000/XP far superior to Windows 98/ME in every way shape and form. Windows 98SE obsessers and lovers never relaized how different they were under the hood and blindly continued with their fantasy belief that Windows 98SE was the best version of Windows egver released. In reality, Windows 95/98/ME were by far the worst core 32-bit operating systems ever made!!

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bristols

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It is called the tremednous differences in the core OS kernel that make Windows 2000/XP far superior to Windows 98/ME in every way shape and form. Windows 98SE obsessers and lovers never relaized how different they were under the hood and blindly continued with their fantasy belief that Windows 98SE was the best version of Windows egver released. In reality, Windows 95/98/ME were by far the worst core 32-bit operating systems ever made!!

What a lot of bluster and balderdash. :D

But I will try to reply and ignore the overblown and indignant language.

Have you tried Windows 98 or 98 SE with their respective Unofficial Service Packs (courtesy of Gape and Petr and other MSFN members)? Or 98 SE with MDGx's 98SE2ME modifications? Or Maximus-Decim's Native USB Drivers? With respect, unless you have any experience of Windows 98 SE with these update and modification packs installed, then to many of the users of the 9x forums your kind of opinion (which differs not in the slightest from current Microsoft propaganda, frankly :( ) is irrelevant. Because it is simply out-of-date. I do (try to) say that with respect. If you have Windows 98 but especially 98 SE, please try these packs out, and hopefully your opinion will benefit from less obsolete experience.

Unfortunately, the Windows 98SE obsessers and lovers who lived in this fantasy world where they blidnly believed that Windows 98SE was by far better than any version of Windows every created has caused hardware and software manufacturers to support them for way too long which has only hurt performancer and stability the last 5 years.

Well, I often hear this. But I have never heard nor read any clear evidence for this. It may be true, but I remain to be convinced. It seems to me that blaming the task of supporting Windows 9x as the cause of all software/hardware problems benefits everyone except 9x users, who are a convenient scapegoat. Please supply us with clear evidence that supporting 9x has directly caused in any way hardware or software to break or be inferior for the users of other Windows systems. If you have any.

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Link21

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With respect, unless you have any experience of Windows 98 SE with these update and modification packs installed, then to many of the users of the 9x forums your kind of opinion (which differs not in the slightest from current Microsoft propaganda, frankly sad.gif ) is irrelevant. Because it is simply out-of-date. I do (try to) say that with respect. If you have Windows 98 but especially 98 SE, please try these packs out, and hopefully your opinion will benefit from less obsolete experience.

I am NOT at all spouting off the same proganda as Microsoft!! I am merely stating facts. I am sick of it for all those people that try to point out that games only supporting Windows 2000/XP is only a nod to Microsoft. That is completely wrong. If games started to support only XP and not 2000, now that is a nod to Microsoft. Windows 2000 is still a quality OS, so people running Windows 2000 would have every right to complain about games not supporting. But in no WAY would peiople running Windows 98/ME have the right to complain about games, software, and hardware not supporting them because those opertaing systems originate from an ancient heritage and nobody should be using them for any kind of modern computing the last 4 years. WIndows 9X/ME are dead. They should have died years ago.

Performance suffers because Windows 98/ME are completely different from Windows 2000/XP, and it is probably a pain for developers to have to write software using the same files and installation programs that is compatible with two comppletely different OS cores. I mean imagine how things would be if developers had to write software that was compatible with all of Linux, MAC OS X, and Windows 2000/XP using the same files and installation programs. Performance would certainly suffer. SO why do you see developers that write software fro MAC OS X, Linux, and Windows NT/2000/XP release a separate version of the same titled software for each separate platform

I know someone who is a highly skilled progarmmer and OS engineer. He told me that all programs written that say they are compatible with Windows 98/ME and WIndows 2000/XP are really just properly written Windows 98/ME OS based programs that work on Windows XP because Windows XP is compatible with properly written Windows 98/ME programs. So another words, if that is reallyt true, most of the programs written the last few years aren't even native NT based programs?? That is really sad if that's the case. So for the past few years, everyone of us who is running Windows 2000/XP are runnibng most of our prograns on it through so called backwards compatibility because Windows 2000/XP can support Windows 9X programs and we aren't even using many programs natively written for a Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 based platform?

That would be like say if all Linux distros started integrating WINE and Cedega into them and developers writing native applications ofr Windows and stating on the box they are compatible with Windows/Linux, and only being compatible with Linux because they were tested on Linux through WINE and Cedega. But in reality, the applications wouldn't be native Linux applications.

I have been bothered about continued support of Windows 98/ME by that very thought. I don't think all of it is completely true, although some of it is probably true, but still, focus on supporting one based OS heritage from the same company. Why should applications and drivers be written that are compatible with two distinctly differnet opertaing systems that originated from a different heritage?? There is no doubt that performance has already suffered because because of that. There may be no proof because you know what, it has already been happening the last 5 years, and today, it probably doesn't really matter. If you could go back in time and everything was written again from scratch to only support a native NT based OS, you would see proof. It is sad that inferior Windows 98/ME hav been supported way too long!! :(:(:( What is even more sad, is if it weren't for Microsoft's anti-competive practices that gave them control in the market place, the whole home computing world would have been using a 32-bit OS far superior than what we had the last 10 years. That would have been OS/2 WARP which was far superior to Windows 9X and even better than Windows NT. But it never stood a chance because Of Microsoft's superior control they gained over the market place using anti-competitive practices. Knowing that, I have been very irritated by continued support of Windows 9X for the last four years to this day.

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LLXX

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Performance suffers because Windows 98/ME are completely different from Windows 2000/XP
They are completely different, that is true, but the performance of the 9x series OS is in fact much better than the NT series. Just take a look at the underlying architecture, and most importantly, how system calls are handled. In 9x, the VMM32 subsystem runs at ring0, and what most would consider the kernel, i.e. kernel32.dll, gdi32.dll, etc. run in usermode (ring3) and applications programs call directly into the loaded DLLs of the kernel. In contrast, NT systems run their kernel at ring0 and instead of simply calling into the kernel like any other DLL, many NT system calls go through two priviledge level transitions - down into ring0 to enter the kernel code, and back to ring3 usermode to go back to the application program (KiServiceDispatcher does this, if I remember correctly...)

Because of this additional overhead incurred by system calls, NT systems do not have any performance advantages over 9x - only certain security advantages.

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Link21

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Did any of you have this problem with Windows 98 SE/ME? When you install a certain program, the whole computer just stutters and lags? For example, the mouse movement is slow and laggy. It never happened with the first edition of Windows 98 though.

Whenever I installed a lot of programs and loaded a lot of clutter at startup on Windows 98/ME, the system would sh*t on itself real easily and performance degraded faster. Laggy performance on the desktop was very common. The only time Windows 98/ME could even be half stable was with only a few programs installed on very little loaded at startup. WHat crap those operating systems were.

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Link21

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They are completely different, that is true, but the performance of the 9x series OS is in fact much better than the NT series. Just take a look at the underlying architecture, and most importantly, how system calls are handled. In 9x, the VMM32 subsystem runs at ring0, and what most would consider the kernel, i.e. kernel32.dll, gdi32.dll, etc. run in usermode (ring3) and applications programs call directly into the loaded DLLs of the kernel. In contrast, NT systems run their kernel at ring0 and instead of simply calling into the kernel like any other DLL, many NT system calls go through two priviledge level transitions - down into ring0 to enter the kernel code, and back to ring3 usermode to go back to the application program (KiServiceDispatcher does this, if I remember correctly...)

Because of this additional overhead incurred by system calls, NT systems do not have any performance advantages over 9x - only certain security advantages.

The bottom line is, why did Microsoft decide to build all future Windows operating systems based on NT rather than 9X? If performance was really better with 9X, Microsoft wouldn't have decided that the NT platform was by far better for future versions of their product. They did so for a reason. The fact is, ever since the release of Windows 2000 almost 6 years ago, Microsoft and all software developers have been providing two support paths for two completely different operating systems. When one core was intended to completely replace the other for all Microsoft based operating systems, developers should focus on supporting one native based OS platform made by the same company. The bottom line is, the future is NT based opertaing systems and has been that way for a while. SO why should developers be constrained to support two completely different OS platforms made by the same entity (Microsoft) when one OS core has been intended to replace the other for well over 4 years by now??

If Windows 2000/XP were based on the same OS family heritage as Windows 2000/XP. But the fact is, they are not. And knowing that has really bothered me with continued support for WIndows 9X the last 4 years. I mean, do you see software written for the MAC that is compatible with MAC OS 9 and MAC OS X using the same files, but relying on the MAC OS 9 backwards compatibility simulator built into OS X in order to say it supports MAC OS X when in fact the application is truly a native MAC OS 9 program?? I am bothered by a similar thing happening with Windows 98/ME and Windows 2000/XP for the past 4 years or longer. Windows 98 is to Windows ME as Windows 2000 is to Windows XP. MAC OS 8 is to MAC OS 9 as MAC OS X 10.2 is to MAC OS X 10.3.

ANd WIndows 9X may have been faster on slow hardware back in the day, but with today's hardware and lots of RAM, Windows 2000/XP are faster or just as fast. Windows XP flies at lightning speed on a system with 256MB of RAM or more with all the clutter stripped out. WIndows 2K is even faster in my experience. The only advanatge Windows 9X had on systems with 256MB of RAM or more is that it used less RAM for the OS to run. But with the amount of RAM in today's system. that is totally irrelevent.

WHy didn't MS just slap the WIndows 95 GUI on the 32-bit Unix, Linux, or OS/2 core and name it Windows 10 years ago. That way, we wouldn't even be having this discussion and performance would have been far superior the last 10 years?

But if they didn't, at least support only one OS core made by the same company, and support the better of the two for today's technology which is the NT core.

That's why you don't load a whole lot of unnecessary stuff at startup.

Another reason to run 98: Unaffected by WMF Exploit! http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=64332

I didn't. But whenever I would even attempt the slighest bit of multi tasking, Windows 9X would sh*t on itself real easily. It didn't matter how stable the hardware and drivers were. Multi tasking was a big no no with Windows 9X.

That's why you don't load a whole lot of unnecessary stuff at startup.

Another reason to run 98: Unaffected by WMF Exploit! http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=64332

Wrong. All versions of Windows from Windows 3.0 are affected.

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/#00000762

Windows 98 isn't any less vulnerable to viruses than Windows 2000/XP. It just isn't targeted by hackers because it is so crumby and and anceint technology that hackers don't want to target it. If hackers actually tried to harm WIndows 98/ME systems, they would and those system would probably get fried.

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wizardofwindows

wizardofwindows

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blah blah blah link21 who cares if they support win 3.1 as long as your os is supported.continuning to support old oses is dictated by comsumer demand if a company believe theirs enough users using it products even on 9x then their support it bottom line.your rant and rave your one man crusade is laughable.after vista is released and 2000 suffers 98se fate will you curse 2000 we shall see.

Edited by timeless
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Link21

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blah blah blah link21 who cares if they support win 3.1 as long as your os is supported.continuning to support old oses is dictated by comsumer demand if a company believe theirs enough users using it products even on 9x then their support it bottom line.your rant and rave your one man crusade is laughable.after vista is released and 2000 suffers 98se fate will you curse 2000 we shall see.

Windows 2000 is a good OS and still based on the NT heritage. Supporting it for a lot longer is fine with me. Vista will be based on NT, so supporting 2000 will be fine.

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