Would win98 run in nowadays fast CPUs?

[Daddy60]

Hi! I was just wandering... how would win98SE run in latest-tech machines (talk about dual core CPUs)? I mean will it run at all? I always liked win98SE rather than XP or Vista, but never tried it on anything faster than a P3 500mhz...
If it wouldnt work at all... then which would be the fastest hardware on which you could use Win98SE?

Thx in advance...

 

[Doomulation]

I reckon it wouldn't work very well at all.
Wasn't designed for dual core and lots of ram.
But why do you want it anyway? It's buggy and prone to crashes all the time. Not to mention it lacks security. Unstable OS.

 

[Toasty]

Would it run? Yes. Would it be able to use both cores? I doubt it. Those are just guesses though, since I've had neither the opportunity nor the desire to try it.

 

[WhiteX]

I reckon it wouldn't work very well at all.
Wasn't designed for dual core and lots of ram.
But why do you want it anyway? It's buggy and prone to crashes all the time. Not to mention it lacks security. Unstable OS.

I works just lije it would work on a Duron 1000 with 512 MB, nothing more, it sure installs a lot faster though, and i say of experience because there´s a lot of clients that still want win98 to run for compatibility issues with fiscal printers and other commercial automation hardware.

 

[Doomulation]

I works just lije it would work on a Duron 1000 with 512 MB, nothing more, it sure installs a lot faster though...

To my knowledge, using 98 a long time ago on good hardware BSOD when trying to use a modem, and maybe even otherwise. Totally unusable, if I remember correctly...

...and i say of experience because there´s a lot of clients that still want win98 to run for compatibility issues with fiscal printers and other commercial automation hardware.

I would are say they have to get their act together and get them compatible for XP.

 

[WhiteX]

To my knowledge, using 98 a long time ago on good hardware BSOD when trying to use a modem, and maybe even otherwise. Totally unusable, if I remember correctly...

It is unstable but it runs with hardware that XP will see as faulty, many times we go 98 because XP would not even install. (on older and faulty machines that is)

On new hardware, we use it mostly as a "sales point" as we call it here, the cashier machine, because most hardware is still bound to serial ports and a lot of software is still DOS based, thus using serial ports on "user level" i guess this is the name of ti and we just can´t work with that.

I would are say they have to get their act together and get them compatible for XP.

Well, the hardware is regulated by the government and the software plays a huge part on compatibility, if the client has a long time winning solution and it is DOS based, we have a hard time convincing him to change, on the other hand most of the soft companies already leaped into XP age years ago using DLL´s to reach the hardware and making all machines XP capable.

The problem is that when a clients PC dies, and they die, the dude will never, ever, change his software or update his printer to acomodate the fact that his hardware runs better on XP, he will have us do backflips to have his new hardware acomodate his older soft, printer, code bar scanner and so on.

In short, WE got HIS act together.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Hi! I was just wandering... how would win98SE run in latest-tech machines (talk about dual core CPUs)? I mean will it run at all? I always liked win98SE rather than XP or Vista, but never tried it on anything faster than a P3 500mhz...
If it wouldnt work at all... then which would be the fastest hardware on which you could use Win98SE?

Thx in advance...

With all sorts of unofficial tweaks and fixes over at msfn.org, Windows 98 SE with 98 Lite worked like a charm on an Intel 845E chipset socket 478 motherboard with a Northwood.

 

[Knuckles]

well first, most of the latest hardware don't have any drivers for 98. Some stuff are unsupported by Win9X technology.

I actually installed Win98 on a recent PC at school, I ended up with no Network (undetected at all) and half the drivers missing. I couldn't install Nforce4 drivers (no win98 drivers from nv, starts from Win2K), I didn't have drivers for my MP3 players so I couldn't get any drivers in the PC. so half my devices were drivers less. Most drivers CDs today that comes with new hardware only got Win2000, XP, 2003 and Vista drivers on them. You need to manually go download the drivers from the net.... problem is most of the time network isn't even working...

Another thing is the Win98 setup will often freeze in install. It froze at least 5 times on me, 1st time on the PnP detection, and the others at the end.

Win9x doesn't support dual core/CPUs, so you won't get the full power of your CPU, it's also limited in hard drive size, I think really high size HDs wouldn't be fully detected.

I wouldn't suggest you to install 98 on a system that is of the PCI-E class or higher. I think the Win98 "limit" would be the first Athlon 64 serie (even without 64bits support) , and the Socket 478 Intel series.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

well first, most of the latest hardware don't have any drivers for 98. Some stuff are unsupported by Win9X technology.

I actually installed Win98 on a recent PC at school, I ended up with no Network (undetected at all) and half the drivers missing. I couldn't install Nforce4 drivers (no win98 drivers from nv, starts from Win2K), I didn't have drivers for my MP3 players so I couldn't get any drivers in the PC. so half my devices were drivers less. Most drivers CDs today that comes with new hardware only got Win2000, XP, 2003 and Vista drivers on them. You need to manually go download the drivers from the net.... problem is most of the time network isn't even working...

Another thing is the Win98 setup will often freeze in install. It froze at least 5 times on me, 1st time on the PnP detection, and the others at the end.

Win9x doesn't support dual core/CPUs, so you won't get the full power of your CPU, it's also limited in hard drive size, I think really high size HDs wouldn't be fully detected.

I wouldn't suggest you to install 98 on a system that is of the PCI-E class or higher. I think the Win98 "limit" would be the first Athlon 64 serie (even without 64bits support) , and the Socket 478 Intel series.

Don't bother using Windows 98 with any nForce! Even nForce chipsets that were supported have performance and stability problems with Windows 98.

Intel's Windows 98 support rocks and the nForce Windows 98 support sucks!

 

[TerraPhantm]

You're much better off running Windows 2000. It doesn't have near the same amount of bloatware as XP or Vista, is nearly as compatible (as long as you have SP4), is far more stable then 98, and is also more secure then 98 can ever be.

 

[Doomulation]

I doubt the bloatware is the problem. Bloatware can be removed.

 

[SuperSonic2K]

if you had said Hyperthreading, then my answer would have been an instant no.

It's been discontinued for almost a year now, but in any case I have never experimented with a dual-core proc under such an old OS, as you would most likely be bottlenecking your system, but your best bet is to try it with Win2K (perhaps the only halfway-decent MS OS in my opinion, along with NT4 and Win95 OSR2). I've actually successfully been able to get an old Athlon XP machine running Win95 and NT4, however, performance is not quite as desirable as with a "newer" OS. And as an analogy, don't bother running a PIII on anything older than 98 if it's optimal performance you're looking for.

Think of it this way: Windows 95 (OSR2) has a suboptimal AGP implementation, do you seriously think that a PCI-E graphics card would function flawlessly under 98?

Even then, nowadays, because it's been discontinued, you would also have to be extremely cautious on what kind of hardware you add to your machine, or even what you're currently using (that is, if you really wanted to run 98), because of driver support.

And on top of that, if you have a very large HDD, the FAT32 partition limitation will easily rape you. And in the end, I prefer the stability of NTFS/HPFS/Ext2 over FAT32.

Oh yeah, also Windows 3.11 boots up in a flash on my old Athlon XP machine, however, being stuck at 640x480x16 colors (since the built-in SVGA driver isn't fully VESA compliant) isn't very satisfying.