Going back to Windows 98..

Myname

Established Member
I've tweaked and tweaked XP, but I still can't get it running anything like how I'd like it to. Stable enough, but hogs too many resources so I've decided to bite the bullet and go back to 98SE with 98lite.

I know my program compatability will be much better with 98, but I'm a little concerned with the hardware since it's a relatively modern machine so I'm unsure with how 98 will like it.

I debated setting up a dual boot so I could test it out, but I figure that's a lot of effort if I'm just gonna take XP off if it's successful, so does anyone have any ideas about this or know of any decent forums that could give me more in-depth discussion on it (not that I don't have faith in this one, but it isn't an OS forum after all)?
 
I had problems with XP as well. Especially after adding the windows updates from Microsoft. Things did not work right so I put Win2k back on the system from scratch. So far, I have not had any troubles as far as the OS is concerned.

However, I have found difficulty in running most of my favorite games is a constant problem. I am looking at reverting back to Win 98SE as well. I have had 98SE on this system before which is an XP Athlon 1900, 60 gig hd, 256 Meg DDRAM, GeForce 2 video, and a decent sound card. It ran smoothly, but I wanted to upgrade since I was having driver problems with CD-ROM and my LG rewriteable drive. I don't think you would have any problems reverting, but make sure you can find drivers that will work with all of your hardware before doing so.

XP should be supported like Win2K and these updates for it should be tested before posting them for consumers. It is really irritating! :agree
 
I didn't get any new problems with the last service pack, but after I advised my mother to download it on her system it slowed to about half the speed
blink.gif
 
i had too many software probs in xp i switched back to 98 also -- kind of sucks i liked xp -but i could not do certain things with it so i had to drop it for now
 
There are alway drivers for mos modern pc, just takes time to do it all again, most of my favorite games ran better on 98 than xp and so do olde dos programs, and emulators. Xp is just for show, just like win me.
 
One can only hope the folks at litepc.com will have XPlite finished reasonably soon. I know I'm staying with 98SE (lite) until then. I even have an XP Pro CD with a long list of - ahem - generated keys, but have had no desire to even try it so far.
 
I have been wanting to go back to 98SE since I have gotten XP. Just want to be able to play all the games and emulators I used to without having problems. The question I have is what happens if you try to reinstall XP later and have to register it again?
 
I think so long as you haven't changed your hardware, you can reuse the product activation key for that computer. At least, that's the way they should have made it...
 
Originally posted by allsport11@Mar 1, 2003 @ 12:46 AM

The question I have is what happens if you try to reinstall XP later and have to register it again?

I don't remember where I read it, but you can back up the activation files (don't remember their names either, but there were two files) and if you haven't changed your hardware you don't have to re-register if you reinstall XP.
 
I think you can use a program called ViewXPkey (or something) to show you your key. I haven't used this since my own install of XP is tied to my laptop - if I want to reinstall I pop a recovery CD in and it re-installs the files from a hidden partition on my HD.
 
Originally posted by googlefest1@Feb 28, 2003 @ 04:40 PM

taleon- is that an official software or something not legal

It's completely legal and fully supported. In fact, you have to purchase a registered version to get the whole thing. There's a demo version with only a few components enabled, and a free .inf script called IEradicator that removes IE completely from your existing Win9x installation as well.
 
Originally posted by Taelon@Mar 1, 2003 @ 03:57 AM

I even have an XP Pro CD with a long list of - ahem - generated keys, but have had no desire to even try it so far.

That ain't legal though.
tongue.gif
 
Thought I'd give a quick update as to how it went/didn't go
smile.gif
.

After partitioning and formatting my hard drive, the floppy disk drive decided it was going to stop working
sad.gif
. Typical luck. I've only used the floppy maybe twice since I bought the system so it's been faulty the whole time, but decided to work with fdisk out of spite
rolleyes.gif
. I'm OS-less for the time being (on someone else's computer now), but on the plus side my computer is probably running better now than it ever did with XP
wink.gif
.

Ah well, it's all sent to try us.
 
You can't just boot from a CD?

Also, could it be possible that the floppy was just inadvertently disabled in the BIOS?
 
The BIOS is set so that it tries any present bootable devices and the floppy is definately enabled. Even if it did boot from the CD, the floppy drive would need replacing eventually anyway so I may as well get it done now.
 
sort of jumping to another part of the topic, but just so anybody considering changing knows, windows 98 has compatibility problems with a lot of the high end amd chips. there's a patch for 2k, and xp was built with this issue in mind, but running win98 or se on the big amds can cause frequent crashes.
 
Back
Top