I just set up a box for my cousin's mom as she needs it for work (Athlon XP 2400+, 256MB SDRAM, TNT2 M64, 60GB HDD) and needed to go to a site and download some stuff. The site had a lot of ads, and i was using IE6 since i just barely finished installing WinMe. Mind you, with this processor WinMe boots in 20 seconds.

I started my download and left the room. When i was back to check on it i saw a couple notepad windows open and the message "NWUH.EXE has caused an error in USER.EXE. NWUH.EXE will be closed." I googled the name and turned up nothing, so i went to see where the file was located. It was in System, and checking the startup entries it sure looked like a virus, and it was a virus.

Score one for Windows Me: The virus crashed and i could delete it easily.

I proceeded to inspect the System folder for any other signs of infection, then thought about hitting the magic 3-key combo to see what's running. And what did i notice... Bpk. I know this program, it is a powerful keylogger. So someone was trying to steal the passwords from this computer!!! Luckily i hadn't inputted any. This keylogger is supposed to be invisible to the task manager, and it is invisible on XP indeed. I killed the program, restarted Explorer and deleted the rest of its files. Job done.

Score two for Windows Me: "Invisible" viruses appear in the Close Program box.

PS. Now i've installed Maxthon, and my cousin's mom has no problem with it as it's very similar to IE. And the bottom line: Win9x rocks, but IE6 sux. If you're still using IE, please reconsider your choice.

Didn't you think just for a second that this isn't due to 9x's superiority? It's obsolete and that's why even viruses don't work on it...

I don't hate 9x (I am even running a project for it) but this just proves how things have advanced and how obsolete it is. Don't get too happy...

Here's an Me story for you Th3_uN1Qu3!

A friend had an old PC about a year ago that came with Me ( not Me myself) and they had just moved on to
XP, and he wanted to keep it--so he gave it to me to fix --(Me myself).
When I fired it up, it must have taken forty minutes just to open up into the final installed stuff running, before it could be used. If I tried to open a program, it would take up to five minutes to get there, if at all. It only had IE, and it would not quite run, or if it did (cant quite remember) it would not connect.

The PC had that Macafee version AOL offered for free, and no firewall at all.
I installed the latest versions of AVG, and Spybot search and destroy from my "important program collection CD".

AVG found up to about fifteen trojans, and about fourteen viruses!
Spybot search and destroy found, and try to imagine this,---over four hundred pieces of maleware, dialers, and Pups, whatever they are!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But this is what is the thing that stands out: The PC still worked--horribly, but sufficiently enough---to clean it all out and fix it!!! That says something about the 9x system. I do remember having to click box after box that would open up; and doing a hell of a lot of stuff in safe mode, for well up to three days.

It seems that their little hobby of downloading Gambling type stuff, and all kinds of Casino this and that stuff--had made their PC a cesspool for tons of critters.
I hate to see what will happen to his XP if he continues with such nonsense!
I told him he had gotten off easy, and XP will not shrug things off like Me did.

It has proven to be quite stable and fun to use now, and is very smooth going.

Of course i know it's because it's an old platform no one bothers to develop on anymore. But the hard work of the members of this forum have made some important new programs run on 9x, which is a big achievement. The important stuff keeps running, the viruses keep away. And since that computer will only be used for internet and accounting software, it doesn't need XP. The machine should've had another 128MB of RAM but those vanished since last time i came here, and XP doesn't feel good in just 256MB so i decided to throw Me on it. The unofficial service pack and KernelEx keep it updated, while Uberskin and XP Icon Raider make it look just like XP. The perfect work platform.

Here's another amazing piece of software: CPUIdle. I had a pretty crappy cooler for that Athlon and i also wanted to keep the system relatively quiet. With the CPU fan running on 7v idle temps hovered at around 55C, and under load they got to almost 70C which was a bit worrying. I remembered CPUIdle and installed it, set Athlon Options to Advanced Cooling Mode and watched the temps drop. I had a bit of a shock when after a few minutes the CPU temp was at 35C, that's the case temp and only 6C over ambient!!!

All this without slowing down the system at all. Under a medium load temps don't break 50C anymore, it's simply amazing. Of course the full load temp will be the same, but the use of this computer will rarely (if ever) load the CPU fully. And if something bad happens, CPUIdle has this magical option which shuts down the computer if a certain temperature is reached, i set that to 80C. The motherboard's BIOS usually has this option, but this particular mobo doesn't. This is how the old Duron 1300 in it got fried btw.

Nice story cyberformer. Keep that box going, you never know when you'll need it. A deeply infected XP can be ridden of viruses too, however it's so much slower in doing that because viruses can infect the system backups as well and regenerate themselves every reboot, forcing you to eventually reinstall. HijackThis + AdAware 1.06r1 FTW, but still, i miss DOS in XP. You basically had full control over Windows there, and no Windows virus could run under DOS, making cleaning up a simple job. And yea i miss those DOS games i played when i was like 5. *finds DOSBox installed so goes to get some games* DOS FTW.

This thread doesn't convince me how Win9x is better. It convinced me that your practice of security is seriously lacking. Seriously, using IE6 Pre-XP SP2?! That's just asking for trouble. It doesn't matter if the machine was just installed; you could have dropped Opera on it through a USB flash stick.

And instead you gave her Maxthon? You do know that it's just a shell for IE, right? It's almost as worse.

I installed Opera after IE6, but for some reason it worked for 5 minutes then it wouldn't display any page, they would just stay blank. And plain and simple, she does not like Opera, if her daughter (my cousin) who convinced me to use Opera (i was with Firefox 3 years ago) couldn't convince her, it's pretty unlikely that i could do that.

And it's not my machine, so i just set up the basics and left it alone. It may get XP pretty soon, that's none of my business. I bought the needed parts from home to replace the fried ones (i live in Bucharest, the capital city, here in Tulcea you can't find a lot of computer parts, especially if we're talking older ones), got the machine running and installed some usable OS on it. I found out some interesting facts about today's malware and thought i should post them. After i noticed the infection and deleted the files i ran HijackThis and Ad-Aware 1.06r1 to make sure i cleaned out all the stuff - and the scans ended up clean, i didn't miss a thing.

Maxthon is far more than a shell for IE. It's got an ad/popup/layer blocker and you can restrict or disable ActiveX controls easily.

I don't mean to start a flame war, but do you think keeping that old Celeron and saying it's unfair to run Flash is by any means better than what i did today? I have that kind of machines too, but i keep one as a router and the other one for old games.

Btw, what's YOUR practice of security, since you're blaiming mine? Don't tell me you're running Norton on that thing...

I hope she isn´t accounting serious on a machine with access to internet, that would be a time bomb as people never backup their stuff, even if you tell them too. Make sure there is some automated backup that scans for malware before backing up.

Uberskin and XP Icon Raider are really a waste of space, time and speed, leave those things of if it´s a work-machine and not a toybox like my windows Vista based system .

The Duron 1300MHz was one of the hottest chips ever made in the socket 462 line, only the 1400MHz Athlon could beat it .

Hello,

Just to let you know, the latest Mozilla sea monkey browser works on windows 98, I alternate it with opera,
works pretty well.

Then maybe she'd like another web browser. Like Firefox, SeaMonkey, or even K-Meleon.

That doesn't matter. It's still a shell for IE, full of holes and bad web standards support.

There's no trace of IE on this machine, and I use SeaMonkey. No anti-virus, no software firewall, but behind a NAT router. No P2P, no download of attachments, remote content in e-mail is blocked.

She's used to the XP look and feel so i'll leave them installed, besides on a CPU like the Athlon 2400+ it makes no difference if they're installed or not. And nah it's nothing too serious, besides the accounting programs she uses save data in a format that viruses don't infect. I'll do some additional security settings and install an antivirus/antimalware when i get there these days.



I'll try to convince her to use another browser. And what do you know coincidence. At home i only use Opera, and am behind a FREESCO-based router box i use to share my internet between my computers and mom's. However i do use P2P from time to time, but i only download movies and music (and i know movies don't end in .exe). Same thing, no antivirus and no software firewall, but i do regular scans, mainly with Ad-Aware 1.06r1 and HijackThis. Have been clean for over two years.

To share the internet between my cousin's computer and her mom's i bought a NAT router, so that's settled here too. However i cannot remove IE, as **** Yahoo Messenger is 99% IE. That's why there are so many exploits for it... Anyway, i'll see what i can do.

All right... I been away forever and a day... but I can't let this thread pass me by....


Win9x Pros:

Direct hardware access (people still use 98SE because it is the ONLY OS that supports this. (like DOS)

32bit and 16bit compatibility (try getting XP to play that Win3.1 game)

Viruses and malware can be removed from OUTSIDE the OS. (DOS boot disk?)

Three Finger Salute shows all the newer baddies.

Most newer baddies cannot even drop their payloads properly. (read someone else's comments for an anecdote)

Updates are lacking. Why is this good? Once you plug the **** hole, no one will be there punching another hole.



W2k/XP Core Pros:

Indirect hardware access (malware technically shouldn't be able to bring the machine down through a hardware fault... real world claims otherwise, though)

More robust memory management (seriously, it is good. Rambooster is not needed on XP, I wouldn't use 9x without it though)

A tighter core. (could be wrong, but it seems to me that the w2k core is just 'better')

'Proper' user accounts implementation.





not even mentioning Vista.



Now, I can look at those W2k pros, and I only see ONE that actually matters in the real world.... memory management. the user accounts simply make the techs work harder to pull virii out.






Also, does anyone that is reading this thread know about the ntfs driver for DOS? I have an emergency boot cd that has a DOS NTFS boot option... and it WORKS (for reading at least... don't write though, it'll break!)


I have used this boot cd to boot into DOS on an XP machine to pull a virus out.... it gets complicated pretty quick though.... Then again, that's why I **STILL** use FAT 32 on an 8 gig partition for my OS! Put the reg entries to move all the other system folders to my 250Gigger...


AVG runs on 98??? What version????

Spybot on 98??? The newest one? I've been outta the loop for months on this...

I just want to say something off topic, Th3_uN1Qu3
I also use Maxthon because it can block ads and popups, and I don't have to install any addons. What version did you install, Th3_uN1Qu3? I tried version 2, but I return to Maxthon 1.6.3 because I prefer the button Download Control on the toolbar. And this browser has skins to change, which I like too.

@ DeadDude: The DOS NTFS driver works, however it is slow.



1.6.3 there too, i first got the latest version but the installer was missing the exe.

That's funny I reinstall Maxthon with their last version too and I also had no exe!
I copy pasted the exe from a previous version, yet already a 2.x one, which i had fortunately and it works.

Maybe we should tell them on their forum.

Also the auto-update doesn't work. Official reason: "Because the server is in China they didn't have time to upload the last version for w98 upthere". Or something of that effect.
Ok, but it's about a year now that the autoupdate won;t download the file beyond 80%.

It seems that I did something wrong. But I really don't know what exactly it is. I think I should remove what I posted. And sorry for bothering.

I'll add some more:
- Three Finger Salute stops the execution of all programs. See if you can stop malware on XP before it installs...
- Printing in black and white is far better. "Error diffusion" option is missing in XP.
- You can tell if you have a virus/malware just by looking at the HDD LED.
- It makes you smarter! In Win98 you have to use DOS commands, registry tweaks, drivers, patches, replace files, edit .INI, etc. It makes you THINK.

Great one man. And you know... In Vista you can't do those things even if you NEED TO.