Installing 98SE and or ME

[Junk Parts]

I'm working on a little PC for my Niece. Its not powerful enough to run Xp so I'm going back to the darkages with it. I want to put Me or 98SE on it. Do I have to start the system with a floppy 98 or ME boot disk to do this or can I just cold boot to the 98 or ME OS install disk in the CD-ROM drive? Its been so long since I messed with those old progies. My brain is melting.

[stevo1210]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

Win 98SE would be best for it, ME is just utter nonsense. So basically, boot it up with the CD, then a prompt will come up asking if you want to boot the computer without CD support, select that, then type FDISK into the prompt, do the usual delete and partition whatever you need to do. Restart it, then boot from CD again, this time select "Set up Windows 98 from CD-ROM" (At least I think that's what it says). And follow the instructions.

I'm a bit rusty with this stuff too unfortunately.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

Thanks Stevo. I'm going offline now to see what happens. By the way I used to love ME. Yes over time I did get every goofy error that ME was known for. After I got Xp I never looked back!

[pentium]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

my 98SE disc will boot from the CD but back then if your BIOS was so ghetto you could not boot it from the CD, you had to supply a floppy disk to start the process.
Also, I concur that ME is crap. I have it here...still in the shrinkwrapped box.

[Wizard]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

98SE.

Cheers, Wizard

[ratdude747]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

xubuntu or puppy linux. xubuntu is easier. both are lighweight. no viruses, runs anything ubuntu can, faster, all software free for the taking. they are constantly updated so you"dint have to got to the dark ages" on updates.

what are the specs of the machine? what does she want?

[Newbie2]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

Xubuntu ran pretty slow on an old Pentium III 600MHz computer I had with 192MB of RAM. I wouldn't recommend it.

I actually liked Windows Me, I had no issues using it in the older days before XP. I'd recommend Me over 98SE, one reason being that Me already has drivers for removable storage devices such as USB flash drives so you could plug one in and Me would automatically install the driver without any additional effort, while 98SE doesn't and you'd need to download the driver for your flash drive and install it manually in 98SE.

Windows Movie Maker and System Restore in Me are also other neat features.

Be sure to do all the updates available on Windows Update after installing either 98SE or Me.

[kc8adu]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

forget 9x.
2000 is the oldest m$ o.s i would even consider.
ubuntu would be good on an old box.

[willawake]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

me too
because of dll sharing, installing 98 is like making a house of cards

considering that you are installing it for someone you must also be signing the usual lifetime support support contract.......

2000 would reduce the support requirements considerably

[ratdude747]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

xubuntu is supported forvever as long as you keep it updated. make sure you have @least 256mb of ram though...

[NxB]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

98 doesnt support much. If you want to use it, use it. Don't expect much new software to run unless you modify the installer. 98se and 95 osr2 boot off cd. Don't install ME, its neutered 98. ME is the worst OS MS ever made. Kubuntu with the old KDE 3.5 worked fine even on PII 266s. Xubuntu is lacking and not much faster....

[Newbie2]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

If Windows 2000 Professional is an option then Junk Parts should use it. It doesn't have the fancy features of Me, but it's a lot more stable.

[momaka]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

How old of a computer are we talking about here?
----
Personally, I've had good results with Windows XP even on a 400MHz PII, 128MB RAM, and 17GB HD. It worked pretty well, even ran some older games and Photoshop 7.
Just disable all the visual effects in XP and change to "classic" menus. Add more ram (256MB will do) and put a light firewall.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

Well in a word, its old. Don't see too many of these little boxes around anymore. My kitten is helping me type again. Guess she wants some lovin. Anyway the thing is a HP Pavilian 6530. I think it has 384 megs of ram, and a celeron 433mhz CPU. I added and old PCI Matrox video card just because I had it here. I did a cold boot 98SE install and it went right in. Didn't care for the "Good Olde" 98SE at all. Well next I put ME on it.This was a bit of a trick because my ME came from someone named Dead-O-Alive. I think that was his name. ME wouldn't cold boot at all....Wonder why...LOL Anyway I made a 98 boot disc and put ME on it that way. ME ended up sucking too. Well I ended up putting Xp home on it with sp3 and its running fine this time. Oh I forgot to mention that I also added a second 40gig HD so now it has 80gigs total. This is enough room for her little games I would think...LOL I hope that little cigarette pack of a PSU can handle it. I could tell you about the hour that I spent try to boot a disk that I had maked as ME that turned out to be a collection of Johnny Cash songs...Me stupid! Yes I used my Dell Xp home disk on this one too. When installed on a Dell it doesn't ask for a serial but on this PC it did. I just happen to have that serial so I put it in. Xp activated online just fine. Got all the updates too. I would have used Win 2k but I don't have a copy of it. I do have an unopened copy of NT 4.0 kicking around someplace but I don't think it would be much of a gaming platform even for a child. The only sick part in the little box now is the Linksey 10/100 card. I'll pick up a new/used one at my friends shop today for it. All thats left to do now is get her screen names and passwords for all her little game sites and set her up. She will not be using this little dog too long. I'm going to find a used mobo and set that 1gig AMD Athlon up for her soon. I just might find something better for myself and give her this Old Dell. It does everthing she needs to do. Lorianna doesn't need to burn any DVD's as of yet.

[ratdude747]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

you could run xubuntu on that. that is about what you should have spec wise to run it well. it would be fast and nice. xubuntu is ubuntu with a more lightweight graphics manager. my old thinkpad t22 runs it because pc100 256mb chips are hard to find cheap.

[ratdude747]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

btw, xubuntu has the following games pre-installed:

aisleriot solitare (a collection of solitare games)

blackjack

chess

5 or more

for in a row

freecell (also in aisleriot)

gnometris (tetris)

iagno (classic reversi)

klotski (a sliding block logic game, both fun and frustrating)

mahonjogg

mines

nibbles (worm navigation game)

robots (classic unix game, addictive)

same GNOME

sudoku

tali (yahtzee)

tetravex

and 5 zillion others avaliable via add/remove programs applet

she would love it, i bet on it.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

Ratdude I'm giving it to a five year old, and she doesn't live close by. All she can do is boot it and play her games. I don't think she is ready for the incomplete world of ubuntu as of yet. If I put ubuntu on it her mother would be on the phone everyday looking for coaching...ect. Next thing I would be making a one hundred eighty mile round trip just to put Xp back on the thing. I don't want to do that. You see, these relations never pay me even a little gas money for coming down and fixing their messed up PC's. Dealing with these people is a real bitch and it ALWAYS cost me money, but I do like the kid. That why I'm trying to hook her up her own little PC to play with. Maybe when I get her a better one up and running I'll put ubuntu on the little one, and in six months she will be giving me lessons on using it...LOL

[momaka]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

384MB of ram is a pretty decent amount. That's plenty for clean XP. Just don't put a lot of programs that load at startup, or you'll run out of ram quickly. You can also use CCleaner to remove unwanted processes from startup.

You see, these relations never pay me even a little gas money for coming down and fixing their messed up PC's

Ask them to compensate with beer money (or just beer) .

[bgavin]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

Ratdude I'm giving it to a five year old, and she doesn't live close by. All she can do is boot it and play her games.

At five years old, kick her ass outside and make her go play...

Seriously, I have no experience with Ubuntu, so I don't know if it can be supported remotely.

If they have a broadband connection, you can support an XP machine with NetMeeting.
A large portion of my business is remote support with NetMeeting.
Vista users need not apply. 1-800-CALL-BIL

ME is dogshit.
98SE is nearly as bad.
I had to actually work a 98SE machine the other day... how primitive. Ick.
Stupid box, terrible USB support.

[NxB]

Re: Installing 98SE and or ME

That's plenty for clean XP

If you turn EVERYTHING off. Someone actually brought in an XP machine with 64mb of ram. It ran... very... very... slowly...