Windows 98 se wanted

In message , Alex Harrington writes

This person seems to have been repeatedly spamming a number of newsgroups asking the same question.

wotfer when u can buy xp fo £50ish???

Could be a question of hardware or software compatability - until my PC undergoes a major overhaul, I'm stuck with Windows 98 SE (yuck!) as XP flatly refuses to install. :o(

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*** *** Updating regularly throughout 2004 Rich Mackin (rich-at-richmackin.co.uk)

Oddly, last time I checked, you could still buy 98SE - at a higher price than XP Home!

"Rich Mackin" wrote

Try W2K - more stable than W98SE and not so fussy as XP.

John.

I gave Win2K a bash but it couldn't get to grips with me having 384Mb RAM - the installer died a blue screen death unless I downgraded to 256Mb. Now I'm up to 512Mb I might give it another try, if I can find the CD.

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*** *** Updating regularly throughout 2004 Rich Mackin (rich-at-richmackin.co.uk)

"Rich Mackin" wrote

Now that's ironical, because I was told that W98 was never designed to handle more than 256MB of RAM. Mine would, but it slowed the machines reaction time down significantly, so I compromised with 256, which is what I'm running now with W2K.

I've also heard it suggested that if you're running more than one bank of SDRAM that both (or all) should be the same size, so that 2 x 64, 2 x 128 or

2 x 256 is acceptable, but odd combinations are to be avoided.

John.

XP has been (touchwood) fine with 768Mb for me - I'd upgrade it to 1Gb, but there's little point with the MoBo being somewhat out of date. It's going to be quite an expensive upgrade when I finally get round to it I think (Or Football Manager 2005 appears ;-) )

as a matter of interest i tried installing win2k on to an old tandon amd k6 machine. it apparently installed fine but some pci devices weren't recognised (mc said new hardware but wouldn't install even when i fed it drivers) and usb didn't work, again said new device but wouldn't say what it was.

ms win2000 hcl doesn't mention tandons so i'll take it back to win 98 and see what happens.

i don't think that's a ms issue rather hardware, always buy good matching memory

Win98SE maximum memory is 512MB - if you have more in your PC, then you have to change some file settings so that Win98SE thinks it only has 512MB! Win2000 and WinXP will use whatever you can throw at them.

Ian J.

The RAM limit for Win98 is 512Mb. Windows 2000 needs a minimum of 128Mb, XP an ideal minimum of 256Mb. ( I run a PIII/866 & P4 2.8 with 512Mb RAM for XP)

To get Win2k working more reliably on older PCs, disable ACPI in the BIOS.

Alan

Yet another reason to load up Linux :))

Ken.

I gave 2K another bash tonight, using an old spare hard drive to test it - it seems happy with 512Mb RAM (2 x 256) but there's a catch.... the installer copies the files, loads up the various hive files, then throws up a stop error on "saving configuration" The error gives no useful information, just a few 0x00000000s :-|

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*** *** Updating regularly throughout 2004 Rich Mackin (rich-at-richmackin.co.uk)

Possibilities: Memory - corruption to the modules Overly aggressive timings on the motherboard Hard drive having corrupt clusters ISA/PCI cards installed that are not on the HCL (hardware compatibility list). There maybe drivers for them in W2K, but they won't be guaranteed to work.

Ian J.

Unfortunately, tho Linux is more geek friendly and allows a great deal of customisation - way beyond anything MS produces, it is a b****er when it comes to power users. Geeks learn all about it, basic users only enough to do the simplest of things. Power users want to be able to adjust the OS in a straightforward way, not via tonnes of command line entries.

When Linux gets a unified, fully working GUI that can be used to adjust everything in the OS, I'll consider it again.

Ian J.

As far as I can determine, the memory seems to be fine.

I did a test install once before and it worked okay, and I generally leave board settings well alone.

HDD was fully tested with no troubles.

The PCI cards could be an issue - I once did a test install before installing a network card and it worked okay then - I'll give it a try later on with that card removed. Thanks for the tip!

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*** *** Updating regularly throughout 2004 Rich Mackin (rich-at-richmackin.co.uk)

If the NIC isn't recognised properly by W2K, that can cause trouble. This can happen particularly with no-name brand cards where W2K tries to guess the make and installs the wrong driver at installation of the OS.

Ian J.

The pre-installer did warn me that the network card was unsupported, though the driver floppy has W2K drivers - I should be ok removing the NIC, installing 2K, then refitting the NIC and installing appropriate drivers?

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*** *** Updating regularly throughout 2004 Rich Mackin (rich-at-richmackin.co.uk)