[submix8c]

Ok, 2-cents...

I have Win98SE on my box (dual-boot w/ an NT-type opsys - nunya, guys/gals)...

Works fine. Granted, hardware support is getting slim, but drivers can be found (a pain). The converse is also true for older hardware on a newer opsys. Bottom line, bite the bullet finding drivers (any opsys), attach it, test it, and if it works use it; otherwise, yank it. The main problem seems to be the MoBo's, of which a list is being kept. Software support in many cases is also getting hard to find, but again can be found and is being listed.

MSFN is probably the best resource for support of Win9x/ME, so "Don't worry, be happy".

[Winn98er]

herbalist, on Apr 29 2009, 05:26 AM, said:

I question the accuracy of the percentages for each type of OS. If that info is obtained from checking the user agent, they could be way off. Most 9X users I know aren't browsing with IE6. They're using an alternate such as SeaMonkey, K-Meleon, etc. Several of these enable the user to spoof the user agent, either directly or by using an extension or free-standing app like Proxomitron as an aid for dealing with sites that don't work properly with 9X systems. I would guess that most 9X users have run into such sites and know how to spoof the user agent.

This computer has had Proxomitron running every day for 6 years and never once displayed the Windows 98 user agent.

[winxpi]

Winn98er, on Apr 29 2009, 10:20 AM, said:

herbalist, on Apr 29 2009, 05:26 AM, said:

I question the accuracy of the percentages for each type of OS. If that info is obtained from checking the user agent, they could be way off. Most 9X users I know aren't browsing with IE6. They're using an alternate such as SeaMonkey, K-Meleon, etc. Several of these enable the user to spoof the user agent, either directly or by using an extension or free-standing app like Proxomitron as an aid for dealing with sites that don't work properly with 9X systems. I would guess that most 9X users have run into such sites and know how to spoof the user agent.

This computer has had Proxomitron running every day for 6 years and never once displayed the Windows 98 user agent.

Yeah you two are right, that percenage of TOTAL 98/ME users isn't really so accuracy.
When I used KUP for example to make FireFox 3 run, I wasn't displayed as Win98 , it was displayed as unknown OS, that's because you have to change the OS which the program your using is supposed to think you are using. For Example you set the OS to Windows 2000 in the KUPVER.INI to run FireFox 3 so you won't even be listed in the Web as Win98 althought it's an Win98SE system you are running.
The numbers might be higher than stated, when people use KUP but I think the numbers are still shrinking althought there may be some shown not anymore as 98 but "unknown" instead. That's only a small part of the total 9x users. I think we 9x users are shrinking but there are still more systems using 9x than official are told(even not all use the internet).

This post has been edited by winxpi: 29 April 2009 - 12:06 PM

[Andrew T.]

As long as we're talking about user agent statistics, these are the numbers from my website:


Win95: 7.5%
Win98: 0.5%
WinME: 0.3%
WinNT: 0.2%
Win2000: 1.7%


Of course, part of that is no doubt due to the fact that I look at my own site.

[BenoitRen]

"Multibooter" said:

I wouldn't be afraid of these cute old-timers, they are just too well known and too easily detected.

Even without an anti-virus program? Because I think we're talking about Windows 98 on its own here.

Quote

With Win98 and old applications disappearing rapidly, many of these old worms and viruses should be dying out in the wild.

You'd be surprised how difficult it is to get rid of these.

herbalist, I personally haven't encountered a site that refused me just because I use Windows 95, but I know they exist. I actually have a custom user agent string that is the result of doing away with old cruft:

SeaMonkey/1.1.16 (Win95; en-US) Gecko/1.8.1.21

[Fredledingue]

Don't be too optimistic: Stats are bad and do look like the Dow Jones circa end of 2008.

It's sad that so few poeple see the advantage of using w9x, and that nobody in the industry ever recognized these advantages.

Morevoer, w98 is perhaps the most hated OS ever by the so called NT-based OSes users.
On every forum where dropping or keeping w98 is discussed there are XP fanboys coming out to destroy w98. Everytime. And I suspect that commercial websites like Lexmart who remove w98 drivers do so because of these XP fanboys.
It's an incomprehensible hatred, like racism or schizophrenia. It's absolutely incredible.
This is even more bizzare since XP is not known for being a success technicaly. It's rather the failed experiment of the new window generation, like w3.1 was to w98. Vista was a slight improvement in some way, wondows 7 should be the real fix.

Nevertheless I'm still very pleased with the activity of this board and all the ongoing projects we can find.

[Multibooter]

BenoitRen, on Apr 29 2009, 12:07 PM, said:

Even without an anti-virus program? Because I think we're talking about Windows 98 on its own here.

I am using Kaspersky as an on-demand scanner, I wouldn't recommend to anybody to be without a good and updated virus scanner. I have not had an infection from browsing the internet during the last 5 years, using Win98 + Opera. My eMule downloads with Win98 contain about 5-10 trojans etc per day, but I have not had a worrying virus infection in the last 5 years.

Maybe it's a couple of safe practices, besides using Win98 + Opera/Firefox, which have kept harm away:

1) After fiddling around for a week with new stuff, I restore the clean previous opsys backup, then make a clean re-install of the new worthy stuff, then the next clean opsys backup. So if I had an infection unknown to me for a week, it would be wiped out by restoring the previous clean opsys backup.

2) I let eMule download many differences instances. When they are processed they goes first thru Kaspersky, which doesn't like 10-15% of them. WinRAR then has problems with another 10-15%, that goes. After extracting, Beyond Compare can help identify suspicious stuff (lone instances, large nfos). Whatever has many instances when extracted is usually clean, and whatever looks unusual or smells fishy, goes.

3) New stuff doesn't get installed immediately, it stays in the backlog for 3 months or more, then gets checked again for malware. Kaspersky then still finds a lot of previously undetected malware.

4) I am using a boot manager (System Commander), which prevents an infection with boot sector viruses.

The final line of defense is Win98. When I returned to the US last December, for example, after 6 months in Europe, Kaspersky actually did find a trojan on a desktop, which it hadn't detected 6 months earlier. But no damage, Win98 apparently could not understand what it was supposed to do. It was an ActiveX/Flash Player related trojan, and on my desktops I only have IE 5.5. I left the little critter for several days on the desktop, to see what I does, before deleting it. If I remember right, the only effect was that Opera had a few unexplained crashes while watching a flash movie.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 01 May 2009 - 11:26 AM

[BenoitRen]

I don't use eMule or any other P2P program, so I don't need those additional defenses.

[eidenk]

Multibooter, on Apr 29 2009, 06:49 PM, said:

BenoitRen, on Apr 29 2009, 12:07 PM, said:

Even without an anti-virus program? Because I think we're talking about Windows 98 on its own here.

I am using Kaspersky as an on-demand scanner, I wouldn't recommend to anybody to be without a good and updated virus scanner. I have not had an infection from browsing the internet during the last 5 years, using Win98 + Opera. My eMule downloads with Win98 contain about 5-10 trojans etc per day, but I have not had a worrying virus infection in the last 5 years.

I let eMule download many differences instances. When they are processed they goes first thru Kaspersky, which doesn't like 10-15% of them. WinRAR then has problems with another 10-15%, that goes. After extracting, Beyond Compare can help identify suspicious stuff (lone instances, large nfos). Whatever has many instances when extracted is usually clean, and whatever looks unusual or smells fishy, goes.

Just out of curiosity, what is the kind of stuff you download apparently so much from P2P, that is executable code, that has nfos and that DOES NOT SMELL FISHY ?

[Multibooter]

eidenk, on Apr 30 2009, 09:26 AM, said:

Just out of curiosity, what is the kind of stuff you download apparently so much from P2P, that is executable code, that has nfos and that DOES NOT SMELL FISHY ?

Some people might download stuff which belongs to the cultural heritage of humanity, and which is not available commercially, maybe because it smells fishy to some.

The best music clip EVER made is in Estrellita Castro's 1938 movie Suspiros de España, made in Goebbel's UFA Studios in Berlin; or Estrellita Castros' movie Hijos de la Noche, made 1939 in Mussolini's Cinecittá in Roma; or the music clips in Imperio Argentina's movie Carmen (de la Triana), made in 1938 by Goebbel's UFA/Hispano-Film Produktion in Berlin. These internationalist Nazi movies have gypsy heroines who don't speak Deutsch, this doesn't conform to the truths we all must know. Their copyright status is probably unresolvablable or expired, two of the above examples were produced by a German-Spanish joint venture 70 years ago, dissolved before the end of WWII, produced in a Berlin which was split between 4 victorious powers. I doubt that the U.S. Office of Alien Property Custodian, or its British etc counterparts, or the German government, could prove their ownership in court, and all the artists are long dead. The objective of the time was not to make money with the movies of the defeated powers, but to destroy the Nazi movie industry, which was the only competitor to Hollywood, Marlene Dietrich had gone to Hollywood, Estrellita Castro to Berlin.

The beginnings of the movies start with "Filmoteca Nacional de España", http://es.wikipedia....moteca_Española without a copyright notice, in Spain it's considered part of their national heritage. There are some Estrellita Castro clips from these emule downloads on YouTube http://www.youtube.c...h?v=ep9dKLlJezw with some people wanting to make Suspiros de España Spain's national anthym, but that won't happen with a song of such an origin. About 20+ other performers have made recordings of it, my favorites among them are Pasión Vega and Rocío Jurado; Plácido Domingo wasn't that good at it, he tried, but maybe women are better at singing this Nazi poetry. http://es.wikipedia....piros_de_España and http://es.wikipedia....trellita_Castro The lyrics of the song can be found at http://www.lyricsondemand.com/o/orquestami...spaalyrics.html

So the mule not only disseminates malware.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 30 April 2009 - 04:49 PM

[winxpi]

Fredledingue, on Apr 29 2009, 05:44 PM, said:

Don't be too optimistic: Stats are bad and do look like the Dow Jones circa end of 2008.

It's sad that so few poeple see the advantage of using w9x, and that nobody in the industry ever recognized these advantages.

Morevoer, w98 is perhaps the most hated OS ever by the so called NT-based OSes users.
On every forum where dropping or keeping w98 is discussed there are XP fanboys coming out to destroy w98. Everytime. And I suspect that commercial websites like Lexmart who remove w98 drivers do so because of these XP fanboys.
It's an incomprehensible hatred, like racism or schizophrenia. It's absolutely incredible.
This is even more bizzare since XP is not known for being a success technicaly. It's rather the failed experiment of the new window generation, like w3.1 was to w98. Vista was a slight improvement in some way, wondows 7 should be the real fix.

Nevertheless I'm still very pleased with the activity of this board and all the ongoing projects we can find.

I'm happy somebody finally said what I was thinking all the time. The NT -Line guys should stop discrediting Win9x, it got support stopped by MS so what do they want more? However that's the issue so many Win 9x forums also were close because of administrations which didn't wan't new topics in 9x sections or XP fanboys discrediting the old 9x Line ("use XP because 9x is cr ap and so on"). Of course I aggree XP some way bether than 98, but 98 would have been much more stable than XP if it had a NT kernel too. So MS is to blame and not the 9x Fanbase.
We did the best to even bugfix old system bugs done by MS, the NT line threadens that Upgrades like KUP could get 98 be used much longer than Windows 2000 ,and that would be a big success. Because of the compatibility to old and many new games I prophecy you 98 WILL still be used after the last Windows 2000 system has upgraded to XP /7
or even only XP/Vista/7 and successors exists. Windows 98 is used all time, I needed an Windows 98 Boot disk in 2008 so they could install Windows XP on my NOW using XP Laptop, so one can say WIHTOUT 98 XP WOULDN'T EVEN WORK in some cases!


And second:

Multibooter, on Apr 30 2009, 03:01 PM, said:

eidenk, on Apr 30 2009, 09:26 AM, said:

Just out of curiosity, what is the kind of stuff you download apparently so much from P2P, that is executable code, that has nfos and that DOES NOT SMELL FISHY ?

Some people might download stuff which belongs to the cultural heritage of humanity, and which is not available commercially, maybe because it smells fishy to some.

The best music clip EVER made is in Estrellita Castro's 1938 movie Suspiros de España, made in Goebbel's UFA Studios in Berlin, I just don't get tired of it; or Estrellita Castros' movie Hijos de la Noche, made 1939 in Mussolini's Cinecittá in Roma; or the music clips in Imperio Argentina's movie Carmen (de la Triana), made in 1938 by Goebbel's UFA/Hispano-Film Produktion in Berlin. These internationalist Nazi movies have gypsy heroines who don't speak Deutsch, this doesn't conform to the truths we all must know. Their copyright status is probably unresolvablable or expired, two of the above examples were produced by a German-Spanish joint venture 70 years ago, dissolved before the end of WWII, produced in a Berlin which was split between 4 victorious powers. I doubt that the U.S. Office of Alien Property Custodian, or its British etc counterparts, or the German government, could prove their ownership in court, and all the artists are long dead. The objective of the time was not to make money with the movies of the defeated powers, but to destroy the Nazi movie industry, which was the only competitor to Hollywood, Marlene Dietrich had gone to Hollywood, Estrellita Castro to Berlin.

The beginnings of the movies start with "Filmoteca Nacional de España", http://es.wikipedia....moteca_Española without a copyright notice, in Spain it's considered part of their national heritage. There are some Estrellita Castro clips from these emule downloads on YouTube http://www.youtube.c...h?v=ep9dKLlJezw with some people wanting to make Suspiros de España Spain's national anthym, but that won't happen with a song of such an origin. About 20+ other performers have made recordings of it, my favorites among them are Pasión Vega and Rocío Jurado; Plácido Domingo wasn't that good at it, he tried, but maybe women are better at singing this Nazi poetry. http://es.wikipedia....piros_de_España and http://es.wikipedia....trellita_Castro The lyrics of the song can be found at http://www.lyricsondemand.com/o/orquestami...spaalyrics.html

So the mule not only disseminates malware.

To be kind I ask you just, what the**** has WW2 to do with Windows 98 or Win9x ?

This post has been edited by winxpi: 30 April 2009 - 04:57 PM

[herbalist]

Quote

This computer has had Proxomitron running every day for 6 years and never once displayed the Windows 98 user agent.

I've been running Proxo for about 4 years too. When Proxo is controlling the the user agent string, the browser displays as "not your concern" and the OS is a WinMacNix. When an actual user agent is sent, it's usually IE6 and XP. I haven't found many sites that discriminate against 9X, but out of the ones I've encountered, sending a newer user agent string is sufficient to satisfy/deceive the majority of them.

Quote

This may make Win9x safe for the Internet.

If malicious code was limited to attacking just the OS itself, that statement could be true. Unfortunately, nowadays more code is targeting applications, and not just Internet Explorer. Code that attacks PDF software is becoming common. Flash is another common one. As long as internet software works on both 9X and NT systems, there will be malicious code that affects 9X systems, making some form of protection necessary.

Quote

I have not had an infection from browsing the internet during the last 5 years, using Win98 + Opera. My eMule downloads with Win98 contain about 5-10 trojans etc per day, but I have not had a worrying virus infection in the last 5 years.

I haven't been infected via the browser either. When I was beta testing SSM, I collected a good number of malware samples from sites that tried. P2P is an excellent source of material for anyone who tests/works with malware. I get a few more samples every time I download something other than audio files. With P2P, there's always a risk of downloading malicious code. IMO, as long as the user is aware of that and treats the downloads accordingly, there's very little risk.

If I remember correctly, didn't several of the better known AVs drop 9X support during the 2nd half of 2008? I'd suspect that may have been the reason for the decline of 9X systems online. Most users have been conditioned to connect PC security with AV software and security suites and don't realize that they have other options available to them.

Quote

Morevoer, w98 is perhaps the most hated OS ever by the so called NT-based OSes users.
On every forum where dropping or keeping w98 is discussed there are XP fanboys coming out to destroy w98. Everytime. And I suspect that commercial websites like Lexmart who remove w98 drivers do so because of these XP fanboys.
It's an incomprehensible hatred, like racism or schizophrenia. It's absolutely incredible.

I still suspect that the real hatred for 9X comes from commercial sources who don't like the unlimited system access that 9X and DOS gives its users. It wouldn't surprise me if some of those "fanboys" represent those commercial interests. As far as the rest of them and all the noise they make is concerned, they just prove that some things in this world are totally without value.
"It's all just an echo of what they've been told."

[Multibooter]

winxpi, on Apr 30 2009, 03:57 PM, said:

To be kind I ask you just, what the**** has WW2 to do with Windows 98 or Win9x ?

Sorry, a little off-topic. But one of the reasons I am still using Win98 is the mule. Somehow things look safer using the mule under Win98 than under WinXP.

I am also migrating away from Win98, application-by-application, but it's a very slow process and will probably take years. My game plan are dedicated computers, i.e. computers whose main function is to run a single application. Currently I have an eMule computer, next month I'll add a bittorrent computer. On some dedicated computers I'll expect to keep Win98 running for years to come.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 30 April 2009 - 06:05 PM

[cannie]

Rjecina, on Apr 28 2009, 12:08 PM, said:

It is not important how good, or how nice is computer if he is without software support he is DEAD and this is today situation with Windows 98 SE

Even without any drivers Windows 98 can be installed and may be an essential security for Windows XP. I have dedicated many hours to study it, and the results are here:

http://www.msfn.org/...howtopic=129983

and here:

http://www.msfn.org/...howtopic=118623

[BenoitRen]

Multibooter, that doesn't answer eidenk's question. What EXECUTABLE code are you downloading? Music clips don't contain such a thing (unless, of course, it's some proprietary Microsoft format with some scripting).

[herbalist]

Quote

It is not important how good, or how nice is computer if he is without software support he is DEAD and this is today situation with Windows 98 SE which is supporting "only" DirectX 9 and it is using single core !

I can't agree with that conclusion. When the next release of an application won't run on 98, there's no reason the user can't keep running the last version that does. When I have time, I try to work with KernelEX and SeaMonkey 2.0 on a 98SE testbox. If I choose not to add KernelEX to my primary unit, 98FE, there's no reason I can't keep using one of the 1.1 releases of SeaMonkey. DirectX is not a necessity for web browsing. Neither is Internet Explorer.

Quote

Even without any drivers Windows 98 can be installed and may be an essential security for Windows XP.

Definitely. I've long used DOS and batch files to protect Win98. As long as the user installs the NT system on FAT32, it will work just as well there. I recently copied the DOS boot image I made for a service CD to the boot partition and added entries to Grub4DOS to load it. It gives me full access to all the drives and operating systems with LFN support. I'm presently setting up batch files that will automate maintenance work, do file system and registry backups and restoring, and more.

[Multibooter]

herbalist, on Apr 30 2009, 05:01 PM, said:

nowadays more code is targeting applications, and not just Internet Explorer. Code that attacks PDF software is becoming common. Flash is another common one. As long as internet software works on both 9X and NT systems, there will be malicious code that affects 9X systems, making some form of protection necessary.

Yes.

Quote

With P2P, there's always a risk of downloading malicious code. IMO, as long as the user is aware of that and treats the downloads accordingly, there's very little risk.

Yes.

Quote

If I remember correctly, didn't several of the better known AVs drop 9X support during the 2nd half of 2008? I'd suspect that may have been the reason for the decline of 9X systems online.

Kaspersky Internet Security v6.0.2.621 still updates nicely under Win98SE, my last update was today 1-May-2009. I have purchased a supply of 3 keys, on ebay as old unopened retail boxes of KIS 6, which should keep me going for another 3 years or until Kaspersky Lab stops providing new signature updates under Win98. I have de-selected, after installation and before the first signature update of KIS 6, the selection "Update application modules", to make sure Kasperky Lab doesn't kill my installation by updating parts of their program with stuff which is incompatible with Win98, as happened in Dec.2008, when they killed v4.5 on my computer in this way.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 01 May 2009 - 10:02 AM

[Multibooter]

BenoitRen, on May 1 2009, 06:58 AM, said:

Multibooter, that doesn't answer eidenk's question. What EXECUTABLE code are you downloading? Music clips don't contain such a thing

Never said that I download executable code. eMule has usually rars, zips, mp3s, avis etc. There might be even some nice old Win95 stuff

[Multibooter]

cannie, on May 1 2009, 03:17 AM, said:

Windows 98 can be installed and may be an essential security for Windows XP.

Yes, a 2nd opsys puts you in control of your software environment. The next higher level of control is if you have 2 nearly-identical computers, with nearly identical HDD content. Then you know whether a problem is caused by bad hardware.

Old computers eventually wear out physically, one should be ready for it. I have 8 working Dell Inspiron 7500 laptops, about 10 years old. Some of the laptops are used heavily, the dedicated eMule/print server computer, for example, is running under Win98SE 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. To reduce physical wear on the HDDs I have built myself an external USB drive with SDHC cards. A USB 2.0 CardBus card of mine (the old Inspiron 7500 only comes with a built-in USB 1.1) sometimes smells a little burnt, but hasn't broken down yet. I even had a new Netgear router and 2 new cable modems die within a year, maybe because of a heavy load or just bad quality.

My experience has been that about 1 old laptop dies per year, but that's no problem, I then just take the HDD out and put it into a spare laptop.

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 01 May 2009 - 11:57 AM

[dencorso]

winxpi, on Apr 30 2009, 07:57 PM, said:

To be kind I ask you just, what the**** has WW2 to do with Windows 98 or Win9x ?

Why...
Both got "W"s, of course!!!