Win98 - now with more worms

[BCinSC]

A friend of my Mom's who approaching retirement age has an Inspiron 7500 (circa 1999) that came with Win98. With a few minor repairs, it's been kept going all these years and is decent enough for her needs (AOL - gag). I was out of town last weekend and her system crashed hard, supposedly needing OS reload, so she called someone else who took her computer and insists on loading XP because 98 "has worms". I wonder if there some medicine for that? XP is so much more vulernable than 98 these days - many virii don't even bother (think Blaster et al).

Anyway, I wouldn't run XP on a P2/400 w/128MB RAM and since there aren't drivers from Dell to support it, could be a nightmare. Not to mention the unnecessary expense.

Do I tell her I'll set it straight or let it ride and let this clown install XP?

 

[Lithan]

98 sucks next to XP, and actually IS more vulnerable (largely due to Microsoft not bothing to patch it's security flaws anymore). But I agree that her machine is too damn weak to run XP and likely will have driver problems. Try and get your hands on a copy of win2k. It's a happy medium. Worst case, get 98se, still buggy as hell and (I believe) no longer patched, but worlds above origional win98.

 

[BCinSC]

Sorry, meant 98SE. Don't know anyone who would run base 98. I personally love 2000, but that still taxes a low end system and drivers still a concern - apparently Dell never released any for it (checking that again). Either way, the cost for a legitimate copy of 2000 or XP is enough expense to simply say get new lappy.

 

[spyordie007]

XP is so much more vulernable than 98 these days

Nope.
unpatched xp is safer than unpatched 98se
patched xp is way safter than patched 98se

Just because there were some big exploits under XP doesnt mean it's less secure than 98.

I wouldn't run XP on a P2/400 w/128MB RAM

It would definetly be slow; however if the RAM can be increased it could be usable.

since there aren't drivers from Dell to support it

Dell uses Intel chipsets and other common hardware; odds are the XP install would include all the drivers that it (dell purchased hardware) needs.

Either way, the cost for a legitimate copy of 2000 or XP is enough expense to simply say get new lappy

Probably. Between the cost for more RAM as well as the OS perhaps she should be looking for something new(er). Perhaps a new desktop?

 

[jose]

Explain to her about how old her computer is and that it's not worth fixing.

She can get a complete Dell system w/ monitor for $299 right now. Also that's w/ a free color printer. This will serve her better..

Regards,
Jose

 

[BCinSC]

It's funny - I popped the drive out to connect to my workstation and it has to be the loudest thing I've ever heard - even louder than 36Z15 drive I had in some servers. Drive and data seem intact. No viruses or adware. Guess I'll run HDD Regenerator against it and see if that brings it back.

 

[xgsound]

FYI there is a rollup of win98se updates at http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html

I suppose you know that it is getting hard to run AOL on the slower machines because of all the "auto updates", any ISP with a connectoid would be more efficient.

Win2000 would be a bigger problem for drivers than XP , but both would require 256 MB to run much at all. With 256 MB you might find XP servicable if a change is required.

I have found the biggest problem on sub 600Mhz machines to win2000/xp to be; 1. 256 MB min 2.disk speed and capacity 3. for 2000 - drivers, xp includes some I can't find even for Win98se

With the updates above I am running win98se with a USB 2.0 card and card reader, scanner, and photo printer. (scanner is an old HP not supported in win2000 or xp.

Jim

 

[BCinSC]

My personal Toshiba Tecra 8000 P2/300/128MB/6GB seems acceptable with Win2K. Run it that way since Win2K was released. Even ran Server 2003 Eval on it no problem, but 2000 seemed to be it's sweet spot.

 

[BCinSC]

So Win98 is hosed with a plethora of missing DLLs like COMCTL32 and SVRAPI. No viruses found. Thoughts?

 

[BCinSC]

Well, I've given up on repairing that Win98 install and will be reloading OS. Turns out system is a P3/650 with 512MB RAM (I had assumed she bought the cheapest back then, when in fact she bought the best). Should I consider XP now? It's got a beautiful, large, flawless LCD.

 

[spherrod]

I've always found 128MB fine for Windows 2000

 

[timswim78]

I may be mistaken, but can't you reinstall Win98 over top of itself and preserve all of your installed programs and files? I seem to remember doing this a few years ago. It's comparable to a repair install in XP.

After that, patch it up and you should be good to go for a while.

Then, she'll finally decide to buy a new machine.

 

[BCinSC]

Tried the reinstall over and it failed with kernel error. Registry is hosed. Scandisk complained of directory problems. General consensus among tech friends is that it's doomed by software choices:

Win98 - buggy and often compared to a virus
AOL - a plague on the computing world
Norton SystemWorks - Symantec products notoriously blow up systems

 

[xgsound]

A P3 650 with 512 MB ought to run XP well with classic view and visuals set to performace.

What have you got to lose at this point? Even if the XP install doesn't work, you were going to wipe the drive anyway. Use at least sp1a slipstream disk for many added drivers.

Several friends use XP on 500 to 800 Mhz machines with 256MB or more and most are actually quick for the more common uses.

I would suggest using Memtest for a few passes before the XP install just to be sure the memory still works well.

Jim

 

[Peter007]

For comparison I have a Toshiba 7200 Protege Laptop with
PII-366mhz and only 192mb of RAM.

I find XP much faster than W2K on this laptop (with THEME service turn off).
Futhermore, XP has less issue with Hiberantion & Standby. (W2K hang on standby sometimes)
Plus the CLEAR-TYPE feature maks XP a superior choice.

CAVEAT is that XP-are BLOATED Out-of-the-BOX

I've used nlite to cut down my XP install to the bone

try nlite, you won't regret it

 

[BCinSC]

When you use nlite, do you have slipstreamed SP2, or can you run SP2 after and does it load bloat?

 

[BCinSC]

For the interim, I reloaded Dell OEM Win98SE. Got everthing all set and on the 8th or 9th reboot, it froze. Upon restart, Scandisk came up with errors and said to run it from within Windows (great, if Windows starts...). It did and drive contents are scrambled again. Bad drive? Bad RAM? Dunno. Swapping drive and running Memtest.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

98SE is a really great OS actually. I dualbooted ever since XP came out until about Summer 2004. Well, I was like half and half between the OSes until fall 2002 or so when I just made the full switch over to XP. I still booted 98SE once in a while, and its a good OS.

I mean if oyu're worried about spyware, just get a friggn popup blocker (popupcop recommended) + googlebar and then you're set. You block like everything. I don't see how at this point anyone would use Firefox over IE when you're popup/spyware free.

The only problem is BSOD, and it doesn't come that often. If you take care of your system, Win 98 shouldn't die like that either. You can't leave it on 24/7, and you gotta reboot at least once or twice a day, but it's not a POS system like Win ME. I personaly hate Win ME, and if you were to go back to any old OS, go with 98SE (we're excluding NT based).

And unless you have 256 mb RAM, don't get XP. My mom ran a 650 MHz on Win 98. She got spyware and stuff all over and yelled at me for like an hr saying it was my fault. I was so pissed I nearly threw her computer out, but instead I stayed up to 3 AM installing XP for her. Today, it's bug free, but it runs slow as hell. 128 mb of ram is just not going to cut it. Win 2k would've been a better choice, but XP just makes drivers so much easier. I hate messing with slow computers and it just pisses me off.

 

[beverage]

I've run XP on a Celeron 400MHz and 128 MB RAM...worked much better with 256, but i think for the usage stated here, the P2 will be able to handle it.

 

[ummagumma]

fwiw I'm using w2k on a PII 400 & 256 megs ram with no problems....have been using it for 4 years or so. before that it was dual booted with NT4/w98


I'd think w2k would run faster than XP, and surely have all the drivers she'd need?

 

[ND40oz]

It should handle xp just fine with a memory upgrade. I ran 2k3 as an AD/File/Print server with a single pII 350 with 256 megs of ram. It still runs 2k3 now but has since been upgraded to a dual P3 600 config with 512 megs.

 

[Raduque]

I ran Windows 2000 on a P166 laptop with 64mb ram. XP was unbearably slow, but Win2k was usable. My dad's old computer ran XP Pro and it was a Celeron 366 with 256mb ram, it did what he wanted it to. I just upgraded him to some spare parts I had lying around, and now he runs XP Pro on a P3 667 with 512mb ram. The bottleneck on that rig, is his pair of 6gb HDs.

 

[Appledrop]

most of you havent even bothered to read the thread properly - its a 512mb system, and therefore XP would run beautifully fine on it.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Azzy64
most of you havent even bothered to read the thread properly - its a 512mb system, and therefore XP would run beautifully fine on it.

:thumbsup:

The phpBB2/MySQL/Geeklog server I set up at work is an old dual P3-500 with 512Mb RAM and it runs XP perfectly, never a complaint.

It does, however, have a 10krpm 18Gb SCSI drive

 

[aka1nas]

I've got XP running before somewhat tolerably on a K6-2 300Mhz with 512Mb of RAM. Definately need to turn down all the graphics and themes and turn off system restore and any of the tasks that might suck up background CPU cycles- you can't spare any.