just wondering if you 9x gurus know which is the best way to go with this.Now theres a lots of programs to tweak 98se kup 98setome rp7 sp2.1 etc. many for gui customizing many to add me files to 98se so whats the difference do i add me files and such to 98se or do i just go with me and try the unoffical service packs/P.S i,m not 2 concerned with the true dos issue with me.thx u 4 your replys.

Your computer is perfect for Windows 98. Not sure about ME though...



Windows 98 System Requirements





http://www.tdbennett.com/samples/31235-2/01/01.html

It would run either just fine. But some of the multimedia stuff in ME would be quite slow. Just for stability, I'd try both and see which one runs the best and is most stable.

From personal experience, ME has pretty much always been more stable for me. Some will argue that 98SE is better, but either would be good on that system.

Try both, what have you got to lose?

thxz for info but i was looking for info on pros and cons not try everything see what works .i mean it takes time to install add ie 6 dx9 etc i was hoping for a clear reason why i should go 98se or me.

No one can just tell you what OS to put on your system, mainly because you will get opinions from several different people on what you should put on it.

But I think the best OS to put on that machine would be 98se.

If you can though, try to add more ram to it, that will greatly help in speed.

Unless you have your heart set on Internet Explorer 6, why not use a current Firefox or Opera browser?

I never use Internet Explorer so, I'm still on version 4 Internet Explorer 7 is Microsoft's current browser. You can download a more up to date browser from Firefox or Opera than worrying how long Internet Explorer 6 will install.

You also need to understand that a 200 Mhz computer is going to take time installing programs based on it's processing speed. So, you need to set some time aside.

Direct X relies more on processing speed than what platform you are planning to use. A computer of that size is good for web browsing and emails. But, if you are trying to play videos and up to date games, you'll recieve processing speed issues faster than what operation system you choose.

If time is the biggest issue, then just go after 98SE... you shouldn't have to tinker quite so much to get it 'stable' (restore, anyone?)

What kind of ram does it take? You may get lucky and find some real cheap at your local ma and pop computer shop...

I wouldn't install anything past IE 4 with only 64megs ram.... firefox or opera is your best bet...

if you *need* MS Outlook, you will be forced a new IE... if this is the case, you may want to use ME and deal with killing off the bad parts of the OS manually just to avoid issues later installing IE...

With 64megs though, I would try to stick to 98SE at nearly any cost...

You could always try Jackhammer... it is open-source, and includes *many* software packages out of the box... It is based on 98SE.

Be warned though, it is a BETA!!!

http://jackhammer.sourceforge.net

98SE would be my choice for this.

I'm using WinMe on this Thinkpad 600, ~ 300MHz, typing this in Opera 9.1.

The main problem is not *using* IE, but that some s/w insists on IE6 being present or it refuses to install!
However, after installing said s/w, you can often remove IE6, & the s/w works just fine.
I tried to download IE6 yesterday, but gave up as it would never start the transfer. In the end I found an IE6 on the net, installed it, installed my s/w, removed IE6, then realised I now have a Spanish shell ;-) Ah well, it will improve my language skills :-)



This laptop is an "emergency machine" in the event of power cuts. I was interested to see how it copes with divx, mpeg2 etc., & using an external DVD (internal is cd only) it just copes with playing DVD's at full screen :-)

So, be interesting to see if the 266MHz can manage it!

HTH

Look up the program PROtab. It creates registry keys that make it appear as if IE is installed, fooling applications that check that. I used it to register version 9.99 of IE on here.

That does indeed work, thank you :-)

But warning, Comodo Personal Firewall probably wont run fine after removing Internet Explorer!
Expect errors to be spat out and then terminated.

Also, it likely don't even support Windows 98 and ME!

Well, I'm personally on a 266Mhz, pentium laptop which is very similar to your setup. It had initially 32 megs of ram, which was way too little for running win98FE it came with. So I bough two 64Mb sticks foe about$30 delivered. I know it says win98 only needs alot less ram, but that would work only if you run one program at a time, or only one browser window.

I had a few problems with msvrg32 stop responding and what not, so I opted to upgrade it to ME and have been very happy with it since. Grantedm I've only run it for a month, but it works way better than it did, and ME also has some nice additions to it, which you'll need to install as extras to 98. I don't care much about dos either. And basicly, I don't really see the point of using win98 to be able to use dos, when you can just boot up with a dos diskette on ME... Please someone explain that to me if I've got it wrong.

For me, this laptop is for "light" use. That means, it's mostly, web, writing light editing og photos etc and such I'm using it for. In 98 you cant view photos as a pic in a folder, while in ME you can. System restore is know as "bad" since it could back up a virus if you went to a restore point which had one. Sys.restore has an update, which I belive adresses this. I didn't read the accompanying document. But anyways, something to consider. But as I see it, it's better having a system restore than non at all. If you managed to get rid of the virus the first time, you'll do again.

I don't see the huge negative sides with using ME at all. In fact, I like the look and feel better, and if your not going to tinker alot with the OS itself, Me has more and better feautures out of the box.

If you want dvd decoding on a prosessor this slow, you better get a margi card, it decodes dvd's in a pc card format. Note however, that your laptop MUST be ZV(Zoom Video) capable, if not it won't do anything. THey can be had for around 6-7$ on ebay usually.

And NO, it don't take alot more time to install ME than win 98, it's about 30-40 minutes.

Plus parts of ME over 98;
You get moviemaker 1
System restore
view pics in folders
Fresher look
More stable IMO
More apps will install ( not alot though but messenger 7.5 for instance)
Most all of what works on 98 also works on me
Mediaplayer 7.1-9 AND "classic" 6.4 as default
Protection of system files
Not needing to reboot as often
If you connect a digital camera, it will retrieve the pics instantly (WIA feauture)
Improved home networking, IE, you connect to a XP pc and want to get files, it will be more smooth
PChealth
Plus! pack for 98 built-in
hibernate feauture... (is it in win98?)
usb mouse works the instant you plug it in
UPNP universal plugplay which actually works
New tcp/IP stack
ICS internet connection sharing

I'm sure there are more, it's the ones I found atleast.
In short, it feels like a win XP "light", without the hassle of needing to install extra apps to get things to work like you want to like with win98.

Negatives;
Well I don't really know any in particular, exept for the possibility of restoring a virus with system restore. It's supposed to be more "buggy", but I haven't noticed it, or any general problems. In fact I'm very happy with it!

I think that it's become a bit of a sport to bash ME, and thats a big reason why it's not that popular as 98. Given the differences when it was released, I can see why someone who had just paid for a 98 version, and had that up and running with alot of tweaks this and that didn't wantto shell out for the extra me feautures. And I guess the unpopularity just stuck. It hasn't really had that many users, so the ones who bash it mainly does it by what they've heard bad about it. Also, for business users, alot of the digital media enhacnements are nonsense.
For the experienced win98 user, used to jump down to dos on the fly running a dos app, and then fast back into 98, I guess ME was felt as sort of restricting, in the sense they couldn't do things the way they were used to. That had a BIG impact on me's reputation... But IMO the OS itself isn't a problem, it's what your used to before it.

Personally I've come a LONG detour around win 3.1, 95 and 98 to end up on me. Granted, I have used all of them, but not extensivly, exept from writing letters. I came from the old "workstation" platform, on autocad and other construction programs, running first unix, sun, intergraph ( now microstation), win NT 3,5 & 4 with autocad, then win 2000 and then win xp 6 years ago. So I don't have the "inheritage" of using dos 1.0 to 7.0 win 3.1, win95 win98 etc. So I'm not "used" to things needed to be done in this or that way. And maybe thats why I don't feel using ME as a restriction or problem at all. Because I really don't, I cannot see for the love of God whats really wrong with it at all. Win ME is the system I feel works best out of the box for this old laptop.

Basicly, I'd say try me first, and if you can get it working without big problems or stability issues, then just stick with it! If not, consider downgrading to 98.

Interesting post tilstad :-)

This TP600 has 128 Megs of RAM, which I thought was the maximum but it seems it can possibly take more.

That's a fair point about DOS from a floppy, although for me it has to be a CD, as I don't have the slot-in floppy. In fact that's how I got Me on it in the first place, by having a DOS boot CD.

A friend regularly uses "Ghost" so I thought that may be a good alternative to System Restore as the size is relatively small, so can be backed up to a DVD RW.

I put "Tiny Personal Firewall" on it (not that tiny actually) then disabled it, went to Steve Gibson's Shields Up site, & it said it couldn't identify the OS & it passed his tests :-)

I only use a pc normally for a particular task associated with a pci card that only has win drivers, so am not an expert user. For several years I've used Mac OS X daily. I'm used to web browsing with > 20 tabs open at a session, & many other programs running, so it's interesting to see Me in action.

Like you I've only used this TP recently, but I've deliberately used Opera with about 15 to 20 tabs open, & apart from slowing down a bit, no crashes.

My ghost-using friend's son had Me on his pc until recently, & only changed to xp as he couldn't get a driver for his new TV card. They both think Me is fine. It is hard to understand why it got such a bad press. Maybe there's problems ahead for us ;-)


Thanks for the margi card tip. Next to find out if my pc is Zoom Video capable.

Although this is intended for "light", occasional use, as I'm not a regular pc user I've been looking for utilities to speed up folder access, particularly in load & save dialogue boxes, launching app's etc., so the program menu is on its second page now, & it's being stress tested :-)

I've tried "Xfilesdialog" & "Fastfolders", & am still looking.

"GOMplayer" seems a pretty good media player, & Xnview for pic's.

Firewire on Me seems pretty reliable too. I'll try the f/w networking soon.

I've done a few tests with 98se on a newish intel based mobo, & although it mostly works, it feels a bit fragile compared with Me, so I think I'll stick with Me.

I generally agree with your other observations. It's not clear to me that 98se has major advantages over Me.

I think you should have tried Win98 SE for a better comparison.
Thanks to IE4 integration.

WinME still has DOS, it's just hidden from view, which is quite silly.

DOS can be nice for playing older games. It's also much faster to switch to DOS than to boot from a floppy. You would have to make the floppy yourself anyway, so it is a disadvantage, considering your positive "more features out of the box" stance.

And if Windows complains that you can't mess with a file, DOS comes to the rescue. Basically, it's an extra OS that you can use to do maintenance or tweaking of Windows while it's not running, or without having it check what you do. For instance, I don't have IE installed, but there is the odd application that will create the Favorites folder (probably with a hidden desktop.ini) for no reason, and Windows will claim it's a system file that should not be deleted. Open a DOS prompt, and delete it from there, and you're done.
Win98 can do that, but only from BMP files. I read that somewhere. My problem with this feature is that the explorer is a file manager, not a picture browser. As such, viewing 20+ pictures in a folder is really heavy on resources, and slows things down.

More features out of the box means less choice, and not everyone likes that. There's also the problem of where it ends.
Someone explain to me what that program is good for. I have the second version on my WinXP laptop, and I can't figure out why I would want to use it, or how it would be productive.

Didn't Windows have that since Win95?
Win98 had that too.

I think the same thing sometimes. But I don't really care, as I don't use either as my home OS (though my newer PC will have Win98 SE).

I was wondering why for most people it would be necessary to reinstate real mode, so that's a useful explanation.

I read yesterday that Microsoft wanted boot time reduced, so one of the reasons to "ignore" DOS.

If you regularly need DOS then clearly it's better to have quicker access than a floppy :-)

It would also be important for engineers doing embedded applications where they needed relatively simple access to serial & parallel ports for example.

Well, there's also the command window in Me, and I haven't yet not been able to do what I wanted in that... as in 2000 and XP. In fact I do run a dos mediaplayer in ME which I launch automaticly through the connand window/quasi dos... and that works fine... I don't have alot of dos apps though. Can't really see the need for it. But anyways... It has been said that dos , real mode dos is in fact enableable in ME anyway...? Anyone know how to do it?

But if thats the case, there isn't really alot of arguments left for not using me...exept for "more buggy" of course.

Ok, just found it http://www.geocities.com/mfd4life_2000/
It paches and changes a few files so you get real mode dos from the boot. I just did that, and it worked as it said. But then again, it also made the boot slower, which was the reason they removed dos from the boot process in the first place... Oh well, I easily removed everything rather quickly with system restore, so I got the faster ME boot again. :-)

Much rather have the faster boot, and just use the floppy the extremely few times I need dos.

I'm curious, how does hiding DOS make the system boot faster? Is it some calls it doesn't do?

Does this software work on Windows 2000 Professional? I've ripped the IE core out of my install, so just wondering.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269524

Yep, from that keyb:


(bolding and underlining is mine)

So, it looks like to prevent users to have too much things in their startup files, they removed the files alltogether, but what is the difference with empty autoexec/config?

And, though the date of the article is

most probably they took those times on a PII 400 Mhz, and with ATA33 disks, I don't think that with more performing hardware there can be much difference.

jaclaz

Interesting. My config.sys only consists of two lines, so emptying it wouldn't help. My autoexec.bat isn't heavily populated, but I'll try experimenting with it.

Well, wehen i tried this trick on ME, I only had one single line in config sys, and it was still very much noticably slower.

I renamed autoexec.bat to autoexec.old, and rebooted while using a timer. After that I renamed it back, and timed again.

The difference was barely not one second, my autoexec.bat processes in less than one. My system needs 28 seconds to boot (months earlier, it was 29 seconds). And they say that WinXP broke the 30 second barrier (they cheated, many things are still loading after your desktop appears).

The procedure was starting the timer when my BIOS screen appeared, and stopping it when my desktop appeared.

This is on a Pentium II 233 Mhz CPU with 160 MB of RAM. It could boot faster if I didn't share my printer over the home network.

I'll try config.sys next, since you claim one line makes a noticable difference.

Well, I didn't meausure it, but I'd say it was about 2-4 seconds perhaps. But I believe there was more to it than just adding a line to the autoexec.bat file.. If you read the howto, 3 files is pached ( not sure what it really does though, add data I guess) plus adding that line to autoexec.bat. So I believe you won't be able to replicate it with just adding a line to your autoexec bat file...

Also the splashscreen vanished. But if they claimed it was between 4-12 seconds, I guess it could have been a lil more. Anyways, the fast boot is one of the things I really love about this machine, as I really hate my 2,1Ghz, 1gb ram xp box slow boot.

Granted, that machine has alot of crap loading though, IIS, dual screens, network cards, etc.

But wow, 28 second boot? how do you manage that? It was 55 second to desktop, and 1min 10sec for the harddisk to stop load extras, I measured it right now. BUt thats with win 95,right?

It was about the same with 98 on this machine though, not much difference. Seems it waits a while for the network card it seems.

I didn't add a line, I renamed the file so Windows wouldn't load it.

Yes.
I optimised my boot sequence. It doesn't auto-detect my hard drive, I let it save the paramters. It doesn't look for my floppy drive at start-up (separate from the process of trying to boot from a floppy). On the Windows side with no IE desktop shell, Windows is noticably quicker and more stable (or so I hear, I never had it installed). The install is also IE-free. I think the rest of the performance is because Win95 is smaller and more conservative in its functions. I don't load anything at start-up either, because in my experience that's slower than starting it manually after Windows has booted.

Yes, if you use DHCP to get an IP, Windows will wait for it before continuing. You will lose at least 5 seconds that way. I made my network card a static IP to prevent this.

That is impressive, yes ;-)



This laptop always show a floppy, even though it will never see one. There seems to be no way to tell the bios there is no floppy :-)

I too prefer to manually start tasks, as not every boot requires the same things.



That's right. I also wonder why \\ip is faster, or even why it works, when net neighbourhood either fails or returns an error message!

Most of the long term forum members may have seen this, but in case it's useful (or controversial ;-) )

http://aumha.org/a/whichwin.php

Laptops seem to have customised BIOSs, so they don't have all the options that desktop BIOSs do.

It always amazes me how people don't (want to) realise that there's something wrong with the OS when it runs that slow on such hardware, when earlier versions run fine on it.

...my apologies if by "photos" you mean an alternate file type

Otherwise you can view .bmp, jpeg and .gif files in 98 folders by enabling thumbnails on the desired folders properties tab

choosing thumbnails was not a possibility in my win98 installation. It was FE, so maybe thats the reason, but I assure you, there was absolutely no thumbnail option in any folder at all.

Based on my own experience I would have to recomment Windows 98 Second Edition.

Windows 98 FE is basically Windows 95 + IE4 + some bugfixes.

WINDOWS 2000 WORKS FINE FOR THIS PC...I have the same conditions on my notebook an run perfectly...

"Thumbnails" is not an option in the menu on Win 98, it is an option with Win ME (or by using 98SE2ME and adding the Win ME explorer shell (option 3).

Somewhere on this forum there is a software someone has mentioned that can add the "Thumbnails option in 98.