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What to do if you're still running Windows 98, Me

thechronicleherald.ca — When Microsoft issues their last patch July 11, Windows 98 and Me will be complete. How can you keep running them safely without security updates from Microsoft?

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 3, 2006

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  • doolittle, on 10/12/2007, -8/+44no kidding, I ran XP on a 333mhz / 128mb laptop and it was extremely painful. The article recommends XP for 233mhz / 64mb? Unbelieveable... Bury this!!!
  • aplardi, on 10/12/2007, -4/+32"Use Firewall and Firefox"

    Wow. best read ever >_>
  • camiller, on 10/12/2007, -2/+25My daughter's machine is still Windows 98. But really, how much OS does it take to run "Barbie: The Prince and the Pauper" anyway. My machines are WinXP and Slackware but my needs are a little more high end.
  • jack334, on 10/12/2007, -13/+35"What to do if you're still running Windows 98, Me and you read Digg.com"
    an Oxymoron if I ever saw one ;)
  • xst4t1kx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21I put 2K on a P2-233 laptop with 64MB of RAM, completely stripped the OS down to run only essentials and it was still slow as hell. Bumped the memory up to 128MB and it was sort of bearable. XP on the same setup = are you out of your mind?
  • littleidiot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20i'm going out on a limb here, but i think most people still running 98 don't even know what linux is, otherwise they would have moved on to something else by now. ;)
  • Rice, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19TinyXP

    Google it.
  • Moskie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18I got XP SP2 running on a hamster wheel and a glass of V8. It plays CounterStrike at ~20 FPS.
  • pabster, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20$300 price tag?

    You can get a copy of Home for less than $100.

    Pro for under $200.

    I'd say you are exaggerating...
  • tds5016, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19No, open source is for freedom, not some sick ploy to alieviate piracy .

    Richard Stallman: "free as in speech, not as in beer"

    Please, before you say something like this again, or about the end goals of opensource do some research about what those goals are.
  • ElectroOverlord, on 10/12/2007, -8/+20What are your choices? If your computer has a 233 MHz processor or better, at least 64 MB of RAM or memory and 1,800 MB of free hard-drive space, you should think about upgrading to Windows XP.


    BWHAHAHAHAH
  • theblooms, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12The Pasta Presses at work (Obviously I work in a pasta plant) each have their own PC running 98. It would cost the company about $300,000 to upgrade to xp. Not the cost for xp of course, that would only be a couple thousand, but the cost to upgrade the software that actually run the presses. That software is about $30,000 a copy. So our solution is to keep those PC's off the network.

    They still crash about once a week, but it does what we need it to. And when they do crash, it doesn't take the plant down, because of the mechanical control redundancy.

    So, for many businesses, 98 still makes sense.
  • theblooms, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12@ElectroOverlord
    That's what I was thinking, too. DON'T follow this piece of "advice." The rest of the article was solid, though. Hell xp kind of creeps on my ThinkPad T20 with a PIII 700 with only 256 megs.
  • samdu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11How can you run 98 safely without further patches from MS? Unplug it from the Internet.
  • pabster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Come on guys, I see plenty of machines still running Windows 95.

    While it is unfathomable someone (let alone a business) could still be running 98 or ME, believe me, they do. And more than you think.
  • kevinmotel, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12actually i just got a computer running windows 98 from a neighbor with the express intent of installing linux on it. it will be my first venture into installing a linux distro
  • pabster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Er, no. OEM can be sold with a token piece of hardware, like a $10 thumb drive. And many vendors don't even enforce the hardware requirements.
  • drag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Exactly..

    There is no point in writing new exploits for Windows 9x..

    The old ones still work very well.
  • theblooms, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8@mdshort
    You, sir, are an idiot. There are TONS of Socket7 boards that used SDRam, all the way up to PC133. I have two or three in my attic. Ever hear of the VIA Apollo MVP3? Or the ALi Aladdin V? How about the SiS 540? Most of those even had (GASP!) AGP slots.
  • adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9pffftt...I've had server 2003 running on a old 233 mhz system running 512 mb's of ram for a few years now, thing runs pretty smooth.
  • jack334, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10please teach me how to be a retard!
  • drag, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Nothing wrong with Windows 98 or Windows ME?
    What is RIGHT with them?

    I mean if your grandma or something is stuck with them, then that's one thing.. But if anybody with decent computer sense almost certainly is running something else that makes more sense.

    Use Debian Linux or OpenBSD or Ubuntu or FreeBSD or W2k or anything.. Especially with Windows ME.. that thing is a disaster! Windows 9x are buggy, crash happy things with fragile fat32 file systems that are very prone to data corruption and fragmentation. Every single time I try to use Win98 or WinME for anything remotely demanding I always, ALWAYS, ended up with loosing data over a long period of time and having to reboot periodicly. They simply are not reliable operating systems.

    I couldn't stand using those things 5 years ago, how can anybody who has a choice stand using them now?

    If you want to play dos games there is dosbox.

    If you have old machines it's very easy to configure Linux to run on a 200mhz machine with 64 megs of RAM. You just can't use a full on KDE or Gnome desktop and expect good results.
  • doolittle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@mdshort

    actually I had a P233mmx on a tyan board that had 6x simm slots and 2x dimm slots and used EDO or SDRAM. I am trying to recall PII boards that had simms but can't - like the venerable BH6 and celeron 300a @ 450 (those were the days) since it is mounted on my office wall, it has 3x dimm slots.
  • ujjwal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Those of you who feel that nobody uses Windows 9x should come to India. It is almost as popular as windows XP here, especially in offices and companies which started shifting large parts of their work to computers somewhere around 1999/2000. I used Windows 98 SE for a long time until I switched to arch linux.

    I don't blame microsoft at all for discontinuing support. After all, it is impractical for them to allocate resources to such a low benefit area. But at the same time it is impractical for smaller organisations/home users to constantly upgrade hardware/software just to be able to safely use the internet. The only decent solution I can think of is to switch to Linux, but so far there are no mature and user-friendly distributions which could work well on old hardware. XUbuntu is interesting of course, and it could possibly be a future solution. Untill then, well, its just going to be : Use for a week ; Holler for help ; Get OS reinstalled ; Repeat.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4People are going to be struggling to run Vista on 3GHz, 512MB RAM and a 64MB graphics card, and I wonder why people even go along with it.

    Windows 98 is not a very good OS at all, but when my main PC just up and died I didn't have enough cash to buy a new rig; so I bought the cheapest thing I could get to do me for a while. A 300MHz PII, 192 MB RAM with Windows 98. I stripped down the OS to make it fast and stable, and I could open MS Word 2002, _without a splash_, from cold. The machine was *****-fast. It was also very quick for gaming.
  • SuckMyDigg, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8If you're running ME stay away from me. I want no part of your mental breakdown that is going to result in numerous deaths. In all honesty I though no one would be running that. It didn't work 6 - 7 years ago and it doesn't work now.
  • sagiil, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Yep, I have an old AMD K6-2 that still runs Windows 98. I tried to use Win XP and Linux on it, but I can't get the good performance as in Win98. I use it for old DOS games mostly, so it doesn't really matter for me that MS stopping their support.
  • aplardi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Actually, those copies are NOT legal. Myself working for a PC Vendor I know, and you can call up Microsoft and ask them yourselves, tehy are ONLY legal if you are buying them WITH PC Components and ONLY if they will be used on the PC youre building.

    They are NOT legal to buy, and put on your laptop that you already own and did not build yourself.

    Funny how ignorance can get dugg so fast.
  • Agret, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5No, nobody is writing new exploits since there are so many unpatched holes. Microsoft have admitted it's impossible to fix the OS and are dropping support for it. Get a real OS if you are stuck with 98/ME. As someone else posted google for TinyXP
  • srg13, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I still have a machine running XP that has a Celeron 400MHz processor... Firefox takes about a minute to load on it, and the startup times are so bad that I have to go and do something else while I let it start up. I'm currently downloading Suse 10 (OSS version) for it, and I hope it runs OK with KDE, but if not, I'll settle for XFCE.
  • dobesov, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What exactly is wrong with a peice of technology if it gets the job done? Tell me, if soemone doesnt have a problem witn win98, what makes Linux or WinXP better than it? Is having a million confusing options about things that someone desnt use better?
  • Sacky, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7What to do if your still on 98/ME.......get a new OS, like Linux or XP, there really isn't any reason to stay on these ancient OS's, i mean i see computers that get collected at hard rubbish days capable of running XP
  • rocjoe71, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What to do with an old Win98 box?

    Well, load Linux on it sure, but stop before loading on KDE or GNOME. Instead load up Samba, plug in all the spare HDDs you can fit into the box and you've got yourself an average file server, even if the MHz is low and slow.

    ...Could also double as a little web server to help you browse your file collection.

    Mostly I'm saying why use yesterday's hardware to do today's computing? Chances are buying a new PC today will cost half as much as what you paid for a new 98 box, back in the day.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This should really be common knowledge to most folks, but unfortunately it's not. People like to trash 98, but my father has been running a single PC in his dental laboratory on 98 since it came out. He only uses it for his lab management program and to print out stuff. It's never been connected to the Internet since he bought it, and it runs exactly the same today as the day he bought it. He's never had any hardware failures, and he's never had an OS or program crash either. It runs as solid as any Linux box I've ever used.
  • generalleoff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I used to work with a women that bought a Dell with Windows ME and it always screwed up and I always had to fix it. I eventually convinced her that going with Windows 98 SE instead was an "upgrade" and that Dell ran a lot smoother :)
  • pompom246, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Incidentally, at this exact moment, I'm trying to figure out what to do with my really old laptop w/ a P1 233 MHz and 64MB of RAM. I've been trying to install xubuntu onto it, but I think there's an error in the disc image I downloaded. Hope that will work soon, I kind of want to fool around with it, being a n00b to Linux.

    But in a slightly more hairy situation, my grandparents are currently running ME on a
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10I think microsoft have been more than fair, my powerbook had to be upgraded after only one year because itunes and my ipod required 10.blah blah blah
  • pompom246, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5[here's the rest, sorry for the discontinuation] ...sub-1GHz machine that came with 64 MB of RAM, but that we finally upgraded to 192 because it was so painfully slow and buggy. I'm not sure what I should tell them to do, because if you've ever met a pair of computer illiterates, it's them, though not for a lack of their trying, they're just getting to be pretty damn old. I feel bad, because they're stuck on the low end of everything because to upgrade to anything better (new computer, something faster than dial-up), they'd have to pay a significant amount more. 400 bucks isn't a minor expense for them and they only use their computer for some very minor browsing, e-mail and typing up tennis schedules and whatnot. ***** Verizon doesn't offer them DSL, but will give them FiOS (fiber) for a lot more money. It's quite the conundrum for them.

    Any suggestions on something very user-friendly, but cheep as well?
  • NerveBand, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I run at the moment a Windows XP w/ Pentium II (NO 3d ACCELERATION WHATSOEVER) and 128mb of ram. Trust me, it hurts.

    I have used Winodws 98 on this computer previously, and I must say, that for lasting 7 years without a virus or trojan and always going on the internet, that is quite an impressive feat. Then again, all I did back then was PCWorld, Download.com, and Hotmail.

    Now its gmail, digg, and lots and lots of forums.
  • pompom246, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@3-6-0
    Nope, sorry. Dell Latitude CP.
  • adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7"Er, no. OEM can be sold with a token piece of hardware, like a $10 thumb drive. And many vendors don't even enforce the hardware requirements."

    And the average joe is supposed to know that how? The digg crowd knows that we can get it cheaper if we hunt around for a bit. But the average consumer just walks into BB, CC, Office max, Staples,ect.. and picks the box up.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@srg13

    i believe KDE requires a minimum of 128 Megs of RAM to run. You may check that first.
  • nicc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3yes, in fact, yesterday I installed Win2k SP4 as my only Windows machine at home.
    650MHz w/ 384 Ram is not enough to run XP comfortably while it is enough to have a smooth experience under 2000
  • mfratt, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6I sold an old P2-266/128mb Thinkpad to someone who absolutely insisted that it run XP, despite my warnings. Needless to say, it was horrendously slow. I wouldnt run XP on anything less than a.....oh wait, I wouldnt run XP.
  • Reno582, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hell I've tried unbuntu on a 700 celeron with 64 megs of ram and it ran dog ass slow, I'd suggest staying with 98se if their computer illiterate, well if their just using it for internet and email, 98 would work.
  • gsmithEIDW, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well here's another perspective on it - I have a spare old box at home. It was originally a Dell XPS M166s
    with (as you can guess from the name) 166 MHz. It shipped with Windows 95 originally but I have replaced the 166 chip with a 200 mhz chip and then overclocked that to 233 Mhz. I also doubled it's original RAM to 64 MB (the max amount of RAM the mb will take) So its just barely within the minimum spec for XP.
    Also it only has a lowly S3 Virge Graphics card with a miserable 2MB memory.

    But I installed XP Pro on it and with some fairly significant tweaking, its quite usable for everyday basic tasks such as the web and e-mail and office duties. You'd be surprised what you can get out of XP if you're prepared to make a few sacrifices. For starters dumping all the GUI themes and unrequired services saves a lot. You can make further changes to the registry settings to tweak the performance further. You can even help matters in terms of performance by your filesystem choice - FAT32 has a lot less overhead then NTFS in this sort of implementation. But also I've found other simple but clever workarounds such as using multiple disks and creating a stripe set which can be used to install apps on as well as the swap file etc. So you'd be surprised how well XP can run on an old PC if you put in a bit of work. I must try and see if I can get Vista to run on on this... now where'd I put my old voodoo 2! :)
  • astrotrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If your still running WIN98... At least bring it up to SE status (WIN98SE).

    Then you can install the 'one stop shopping' SP1 pack for WIN98SE, and off into the
    sunset you can ride: http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html

    Works great for the WIN98SE systems, installed it on a few clients systems running WIN98SE.
  • Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've installed XP on an old Toshiba laptop (at work) with 128 MB of RAM, and it works quite adequately for word processing and the like. After having installed it on several systems with 64 MB and 128 MB I can say that 128 is the effective minimum.
  • qpid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Like they said earlier, we are talking about upgrading your current pc. If your pc has 98 or me on it then you can upgrade to xp for a retail price of $99, which this time of year will be cheaper due to back to school
  • nickdr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2everyone here seems to agree that anything running win98 is useless, and i have to agree with part of that, but there is one huge portion of the population out there still using win98 that no one has considered, and that is our public schools. schools just arent getting the money they need to upgrade, or it is being diverted to other areas. schools rely on software compatible with win98, and with microsoft dropping support for win98 that software is going to get harder and harder to find.
    true most ITs at school are stupid (my high school insists on using the long dead Netscape browser, refusal to use will earn detentions) and hasnt run windows update in years) but I am hoping not alll schools are this bad.
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