HELP!
I have been perusing this forum using much of my time for the last three weeks, AND MGDx's most excellent pages as well as going to Wiki for greater understanding of some terms, and I am STILL not sure of exactly how to go about upgrading my 98SE system to 98SE2ME.
There is the order of install. I believe that it is as follows:
SP2.1
98SE2ME
MD's Cumulative Upgrade
KernelEx
I am not sure whether to install the notebook drivers first, last or both. MGDX says first, and some others say at a different place in the upgrade process. Somewhere in there I believe I have to upgrade to IE6.0 of some flavor, but then, as the last thing, I will remove IE completely with IEradicator. This seems to produce more favorable results that removing IE with 98Lite, which can be used to remove all the other stuff necessary. As I am sure IEradicator will remove IE6, and am not sure it will remove later versions, I do not want to upgrade to any later version if there is not some clear cut reason for doing so and no work around. It does not seem necessary to upgrade to a later version of IE, or to upgrade WindowsMediaPlayer at all. IF later versions of IE or WMP have some necessary files, a work around might be to install 98SE with no other upgrades, install the later version of IE or WMP, copy the necessary files to my data drive, and then format the C: drive and start over.
I am doing a fresh install of 98SE on a ca.early 2001 IBM Thinkpad A22m. Currently it is dual boot with XP. The C: drive ONLY contains the OS, all the data is in other partitions. Firefox portable, the last version 98SE runs, is on the D: drive and the same installation is run under 98SE or XP depending on which I booted into.
Are there any things specific to notebooks in general and IBM notebooks in particular which are not in SP2.1 or the Cumulative Upgrade 3.0.5 which I need to install also? IN view of the below, are there things in SP2.1 or Cumulative Upgrade 3.1.5 which I need to change or remove afterwards. I am passing on WUPG98 and AutoPatcher as both seem to install things I don't want, plus I have a dial-up connection.
One thing which makes things confusing are that when Windows 98 first came out, there was a definite distinction between a LAN and the Internet, and now both are classified as Network. Consequently, if your goal is to prevent anything on the internet from running anything on your computer, but you also have a hardwired Ethernet LAN, how do you know what you can remove, or do not need to install in the first place? I do not, for instance, want to allow my notebook to run anything on my desktop or vice versa, even over the LAN.
I used to let the modem talk to the TCP/IP protocol, but removed all bindings to NetBios, IPX, and Windows File Sharing, while using NetBUEI on the Ethernet, and removing any bindings from the Ethernet card to the TCP/IP protocol.
I do not allow anything to update itself or anything else automatically. Back in the days of DOS and WFW 3.11, you got everything installed and then you never upgraded anything unless it was because a newer device or program couldn't work otherwise. Therefore, I want to remove as much code as possible which lets anything update automatically.
What makes things really difficult is the way I configure a computer. I first install 98SE and get it set up properly, and then I disable Windows Update, ActiveX, Active Desktop, and completely remove IE using 98Lite. The dependencies make things very confusing, for instance, for audio sequenciers and programs which interface with MIDI devices, I need DirectX plug-ins, which seem to depend on DirectShow, which seems to depend on COM+. However, it appears the only part of DirectX Media I need is DirectShow, so it appears I can remove or not install much of the rest of it. The same thing with DCOM, I appear to need COM+, but not DCOM, and Steve Gibson thinks that DCOM merely gives a drive by virus opportunity - but where and how do I upgrade COM+ and loose DCOM. Is MSDE needed if you are not running Office or using SQL?
These are merely instances I know about, There are far far more that I do not. The reason I am so completely detailing what I am trying to do is so that others, far more expert than I in this area, can help me learn what to do to create the most stable, impervious to outside manipulation, advanced in respect to running newer software and newer hardware, Win9x installation is is possible for someone who can't write code to create!
The not write code is not completely true, I got an AA in computer science in 1982, but since I haven't written much code in 30 years, I have forgotten how to write Cobal, Fortran, and Assembly on an IBM System 3 using punch cards.

I took an earlier, ca.1970, correspondence course on computer maintenance in the Air Force, but today knowledge of maintaining the hardware of vacuum tube based computers is an even MORE useless skill!
I also want to make the 98SE2ME installation as compatible with more modern hardware as possible in general, and especially in relationship to USB devices. USB compatibility is why I built the desktop to be an XP machine, and now I have learned that I can make 98SE compatible with most of the USB devices I especially need, Flash cards and USB HDDs, that is why I am attempting to downgrade, most of our computers to 98SE from XP, or at least a dual boot them.
I also want to make 98SE compatible with as much as possible of the newer software which only run on XP, especially Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice.
Computability to XP means computability to an XP install which has been treated in the same manner, use XPlite to remove WindowsUpdate, ActiveX, Outlook, IE, and WMP. For a media player, in both OS, I use the K-Lite Codec pack with MediaPlayer Classic along with VLC portable. Don't need Movie Maker or any other MS application included as "part" of the OS to do something which can be done better and less intrusively by somebody else. I do not need to make anything compatible with DRM, if something needs DRM, I don't need IT!
Incompatibility to MS applications is perhaps an asset!
Neither version of the OS needs compatibility with running anything in MS Office outside of as much compatibility as possible to read and write Office files, as I haven't ever considered installing it since sometime in the mid 90's when I learned that buried in all the Office files was a GUID so that any document created in Word or Office could be traced back to the computer on which it was created. As there was a period of time where most versions of Word documents could be opened only with Word, the work around, since the GUID was created only when a document was created and not when it was modified, was to download a Word file from MSoft, rename it and then delete the contents and use it as a blank file when creating a new document instead of clicking on "new". That way any documents I created in Word or Excel would be traced back to MS as being the originator. I use SoftmakerOffice 2006, and for things it won't handle OpenOffice.
Insofar as internet compatibility is concerned, I always thought that if a Linux box running Netscape, Opera or Firefox could not view a specific web page or site correctly, my install of Windows shouldn't be able to either! I certainly don't need to be more compatible with Windows Vista servers etc.
OTOH, I want my LAN to be able to transfer any file which XP might be able to write, as on some occasions, I might have an XP and a 98SE box on the same LAN.
I wonder how many of the "security patches" are really necessary to a system set up this way, for instance, if something can create a virus in a Word document giving an ActiveX control the ability to do something awful to your installation of MS Office, how unsecure is a system which has the virus, but does NOT have MS Office or ActiveX?

Finally, I want to give GREAT

MUCH

and munificent

thanks to MGDX, for his totally awesome

site and great contributions and dedication toward keeping the last OS Microsoft designed for stand alone machines alive!!!!!
'Sides, it ain't REALLY that old, the OS currently used on the Space Shuttles was designed in the mid '70s, long before the first PC ever came off the Assembly Line!