i got nordvpn and it doesnt support older than win10, no port forwarding so you cant download torrents, the windows app is really slow and buggy, connection is unstable and tops at 200mbps their money back warranty is bullshit they wont refund me even afer 2 week
Windows 98 is my childhood and this video brought back some memories, such as looking for an Office key to be able to use my Excel without problems hahaha
Windows 98 was my favourite OS from Microsoft. It retained DOS. It had that modern, esy to see look. It was easy to repair. PNP actually worked quite well; most PNP problems were video cards and scanners. IE was great, better than NS and prettier, too. It truly was an amazing OS.
Hardware and hardware drivers often sucked back then. Usually when people whine about Windows not working with hardware, it's not actually Windows causing the problem. It was just so nice not having to shut down the computer every time you plugged something in. Scanners have never worked right. Especially in the late 90s.
The thing I remembered the most about Windows 98 was the built-in themes. They all have unique color scheme, wallpaper, screen saver, mouse cursor, icon set, even sounds. Changing the theme now and then makes the experience fresh, something I really missed ever since Vista. Yes we still had themes but they're very limited: no unique icon sets or mouse cursors, screensavers are a story of the past, they even removed the ability to customize color scheme since Windows 10. Almost every Windows computer nowadays has the same boring look, that's just sad.
Don't forget MS Plus! 98, which's what got me into theming and GUI customization as a kid. The Internet here in the PH was slow and expensive, so I had to figure it out on my own and make my own themes. Nowadays, I have to resort to registry edits and third-party tools to get the customization I want, which I've grown used to. For Windows 10/11, I recommend WinPaletter, which's essentially the modern version of Windows 9X's Display Properties but also with cursor and sound customization.
I'm one to look at the positives of modern stuff. I do prefer the current interface style over the original default one from the 9x releases, as what we have now is a lot more legible than what looked like a bunch of filing cabinets.
I had Windows 98. It was my Very First Home OS. It was......Adequate, but Buggy as Hell. And IF you ACCIDENTALLY looked at Porn, your PC was held HOSTAGE by Hijack Software.
@@CZghost I don't think you understand. If you accidentally typed in the Wrong URL, it would FORCE you onto a Porn Site. And that Site would Hijack the Hell out of your Computer. Nobody would go to Questionable Site, you'd be FORCED onto a Porn site by Accident if you typed the URL to whatever you were looking for incorrectly.
It's interesting that you've shown the entire clips for Windows 98 in 16 colors, which makes it look a lot more like Windows 95 visually, and in fact when 16 or 32 bit colors are selected, it looks a lot nicer visually than Windows 95, but anyways. Nice video :)
I knew something looked a little off. I started on '95 and remember it looking more archaic than '98 (not to mention our screen resolution was lower too, so icons were enormous)
@@intel386DX yes, plus adds true colors to Windows 95 icons, but Windows 98 have whole system in true color and looks much nicer than 95, but anyways. Ukusi su razliciti :)
@@jasminderventa actuality NT 4 (aka 95 +) icons are much better then 98 and especially compared to ME/2k My computer and recycle bin icons. They are awful. But yes the only pretty thing about 98 and beyond is the gradient on the title windows bars. I am still using the classic 9x GUI on Windows. Pozdrav, druze :) Klasicni oblik windowsa zauvek :)
Windows 98 was the first Windows I've used. I was born in 1999, and my aunt got her first computer in 2000 that came with Windows 98. I started to use it later (don't remember when, but probably around 2002 or 2003), and I just loved it. Used to draw a lot in MS Paint and play games. She eventually installed XP on it, but XP was running slow, so she reverted back to 98. I used that computer whenever I went to visit her up until 2005 when she got a new computer from her workplace. Good times.
Used Windows 98 from 1999-2006. I really love how customizable the classic UI was. Still more fun than the current windows 8, 10, 11 UI. The start up screen and the windows logo itself also looked much more artistic.
I used Win98 SE until 2007 when I switched to XP :D. The biggest problems with 98 were the lack of proper memory management, the eventually very low actually addressable memory (max. 512 MB as far as I remember), and the lack of a proper, powerful task manager.
@@Alefjj XP became good only after SP2. At time i used to dual boot XP and 98SE until SP2 beta came out. I used SP2 beta before full release and was already stable.
512MB wasn't low in the 1998-99 days, where most PCs had 32-64MB. Even some computers were sold with 16MB of RAM even as late as 1999. Win98 just didn't need as much RAM as NT based OSes
Windows 98 was my gateway into the world of computers and it will always hold a special place in my heart. Every computer that I personally own has a virtual machine with Windows 98 on it for when I want to take a trip back to 1998.
I became familiar with computers through the iconic startup sound of Windows 98. Being blind and visually impaired, that particular sound captured my attention and made me realize the coolness of technology. I was born in ’99, which makes me quite proud to be a part of the final chapter of the 20th century.
That Win98SE DOS Core came in really handy for me back when I worked as a technician. A little old lady with a Win3.1 box had her computer fail... in 2007. She didn't want a newfangled computer unless it worked EXACTLY like her previous one. We took a Dell Vostro and loaded it with DOS 7.X, which gave us the hardware and software compatiblity so we could put Win3.1 onto the system. We even managed to salvage most of her personal files from her dead system. She got the computer... and then returned it, angry because the cards bounced too fast when she finished a game of solitaire. Turns out the bouncing card animation was clocked to the CPU. It was at that point that I discovered WHY some computer shops will turn down unreasonable or niche requests from customers.
You didn't mention the fact that you could enter a web site into the File Explorer address bar and the site would load. This was a groundbreaking thing for Windows 98 which then was cancelled due to the lawsuit (if you did this, a separate instance of IE would load). This functionality still exists today btw - your default browser will load with the site you type in. Multi-monitor was great. I upgraded to XP when it came out, but due to my computer specs being pretty basic by the standards of the day, I went back to 98SE for a couple years until I could afford a new computer with a beefier processor and more RAM.
Funnily enough, that's what the old Konqueror did on KDE 3. The file browser and the web browser were the same program so you could type a web address from the file browser. I think KDE 4 introduced Dolphin as an standalone file browser.
And also FTP. Today browsers/Windows Explorer don't support FTP anymore. (At least not like before when IE and Windows Explorer were highly integrated).
The removal of "integrated" Internet browsing on Windows Explorer was more of a security feature than lawsuit compliance. Back when Windows 98 SE was released, Internet Explorer was the most popular browser on the planet and that made it a target of different attacks, especially using ActiveX. This made the browser very vulnerable and that was known since the Windows 95 days, but having it separate from the operating system meant it would only break that program. When Microsoft decided to make Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer one and the same, Windows' reputation as a malware magnet began to spread and made the OS very insecure especially if you didn't have any security software installed. It was very common to see toolbars, adware and other nasty things installed on almost every PC. Windows couldn't get rid of its worse IE-related vulnerabilities until the late 2000's when Internet Explorer was finally updated to versions 7 and 8.
Windows 98 was the first computer I had at home as a kid. I remember whenever anything went wrong it would go into MS-DOS mode, which was like this scary, mysterious beast living in the computer's underworld that was confusing. The best part was when I was stuck on the MS-DOS menus, my older brother would then say: "Quit DOSsing around!" Although I hardly even used it, MS-DOS gives me some huge nostalgia for some reason. It's like older computers had this cranky nuts-and-bolts feature that you'd sometimes be involuntarily exposed to, but are shielded from in modern OSs (unless you specifically look for it). This has recently motivated me to learn Command Prompt and other programming to understand all that stuff I saw and never understood as a kid. Thank you Windows 98 for being a delicate combination of user-friendly enough to get me interested in using computers as a kid, but also being based off of MS-DOS, which left some weird nostalgic imprint on me. It has a special place in my heart.
Same experience here! I would sometimes watch my dad, as a 5 year old, bring up MS-DOS and thought it was this mystical being that only listened to adults 🤣 I was afraid of opening it up under Windows with that multi color MS-DOS icon, aah the memories.
Oh I remember "plug and play". Most of the time it didn't work. You would plug something in to your computer and absolutely nothing would happen. You still had to manually install the drivers yourself. I remember having to tell the computer which parallel port to check to find the device at one point. True plug an play came around with XP.
98 was my very first Windows. When I upgraded to ME, it was more of a downgrade! I have a lot of fond memories of Windows 98, I even changed my Windows 10 startup sound to the 98 one, that was a cool sound.
The computer I used the most in my teenage years ran Windows 98. I remember early on having a fair number of friends still on Windows 95, but Windows 98 was a far more refined OS. Not only did Internet Explorer integrate well with it, but it also paired very well with Office 97. We used that system well into the XP era, and I remember thinking that I preferred the 9x series look to the XP look. Where 95 still looked kind of muddy and low resolution, 98 kept the same minimalistic design but refined and modernized it.
appreciate this video. i'm 38, remember using win95/98se at home. playing quake3 with 150ms ping(dial up!) and the way menus looked. remembering the transition from dos to win3.1 to this. quite the trip down memory lane, thanks!
Although my first ever used Windows was 3.11, it was 98 when everything really took off for me. My first steps on the internet, downloading MP3s, burning CDs, creating my first homepage, Unreal Tournament LAN-Parties, Online Chatrooms, ICQ Era... Everything started on a Win98 machine so for me it will always remain something special.
Hi, im a viewer from iraq and i would like to thank you alot for this great work you are doing covering old operating systems, it brings back many memories and is full of valuable information❤
Great video! Thank you for mentioning that the Windows Explorer address bar can be edited without clicking folders, I wasn't aware that was something a person could do!
Windows XP Professional was also the very first commercial desktop Windows that came with 64bi version. 64bit Windows NT was actually used much earlier, but that was mainly on servers in datacenters where huge computing power was needed, and the architecture was somewhat different. First personal PCs with 64bit architecture hit the market at 2001 with the release of Windows XP. And only Professional edition came with 64bit version. Home edition was still only 32bit. That changed with Windows Vista, that introduced 64bit Windows to homes as well.
They released Second Edition as the original Windows 98 release just wasn't up to task. It was quite buggy in parts, while many didn't consider it worth the upgrade. It also didn't have much of a life before Windows 2000 and XP came along. I don't recall anyone I knew actually buying Windows 98 in isolation, and rather it just happened to be preinstalled on whatever store-bought PC they purchased around that time. Windows 2000 was also pretty rare on a home PC, whereas XP Home was the dominant variant there too.
Plug & Play did not originally mean "automatically install drivers", rather it handled the hardware conflict portion of installing devices (so no manual IRQ settings). Later on, the term started to be used for the overall process of plugging something in and "not worrying about it", such as most flash drives uses a generic Mass Storage driver. Even during Windows XP's days, Plug and Play didn't do a very good job of going online to find drivers (I'm not talking drivers included in the OS here). It wasn't until Windows 7+ that drivers from Microsoft were more readily available.
The problem with plug and play in windows 98 was, in fact, due to developers. Windows 98 offered the possibility to write drivers using windows driver model (wdm) and not having to deal with dos. But this would mean not supporting windows 95 at all, so most manufacturers just stick with dos drivers because they work on both os
Really enjoying this Windows operating system video series. A platform so many of us use everyday, but little is known to the majority of those users. As a security analyst I love doing deep dives into operating systems and their pasts.
As how Windows 98 and Windows ME were the last two OS versions on the MS-DOS build and with ME proving how unstable it was compared to Windows 2000 which was build on the NT build. Windows 98 was pretty much the DOS build OS at it’s maximum potential.
windows 98 is basically windows 95 with some minor changes to the OS itself and big changes to the Internet and of course, clippy was introduced, just to be removed
Again, what a fun and informative video. I actually really miss 95 and 98 (Well, I play around VMware) but I miss the customization of these products! You really could change just about every little detail, colors, and system fonts...etc...Now, All you can do on Windows 11 is have once accent color (And you don't even have title color title bars like Windows 10) I noticed there isn't a whole lot of accent color shown on Windows 11. You can't even change system fonts - heck even my Samsung phone can do that. Everything now is "light theme " or "dark theme" kind of boring. I also loved that you included the Windows 95 "sitcom" It is cheesy and I love it. RIP Matthew Perry.
I know this isn't the focus of this video, but Netscape was also free for personal use. A lot of why Netscape lost the browser wars was that it peaked in quality around version 3 (1997), while Internet Explorer reached feature parity with Netscape at the same time. Microsoft kept improving IE, while Netscape got bloated, and then spent years trying to re-build from scratch. The last old version of Netscape was released in 1998. Between 1998 and 2000 Netscape was not updating their browser at all. Internet Explorer was releasing minor updates to IE through 1998, and there was a major new release (version 5.0) in 1999. Netscape responded by rushing an unfinished buggy version 6 to market in 2000, which didn't do it any favors. After that Netscape was already beyond saving (at least on Windows), while Internet Explorer peaked in quality with version 6 (2001) and rested on its laurels for way too long, opening itself up for competition again from Firefox, and eventually Chrome.
That's crazy to me that IE cost money to use. Win98 is very nostalgic to me and was the first real PC my family got but I really don't miss it. I remember having so many issues with it.
All of my experience with Windows 95 at the time was with the OSR 2.0 release which was only officially available on new PCs. Combining that with the IE4 Active Desktop update made the two systems look almost identical and I think an upgrade from an OSR 2.x release to Windows 98 was less justifiable than it would be if you had the original retail version. I remember trying the original release years later and was surprised by what was missing.
My parents first home computer had Windows 98 on it. Whilst I had been clicking around on computers at my relative's house before that time it was always on Windows 95 or even a Commodore. 98 was suddenly everywhere. Even my school had it.
I was a Windows 95 user when Windows 98 was released. For reference, I had a Compaq laptop with a 486DX4 100MHz and 8 megabytes of RAM, and our school got computers with P2 333MHz, 32Mb RAM and Windows 98. Based on my first perception, W98 was an extremely unstable resource hog when compared to W95. When W98SE came out, I would finally see it as a usable option - it still hogged resources like crazy, but at least it offered something in return: good support for hardware accelerated 3d gaming and internet. I also highly disliked the W95OSR2 that included Active Desktop and other features that were so annoying in W98. I actually have two W98 PCs right now, and I think the fact that my Compaq was better than our school PCs was more down to the fact that I maintained and optimized my system a lot better than our school IT guy Zaven.
I still have a Windows 98 machine at qork with some VERY aincient software from the MS-DOS days. That is the perfect platform to run it on, to this day.
Windows 98 was the first Windows OS I ever used, it had some fun games like the one with the tank that you used to movie boulders around a map into certain spots. I miss that game. I wrote a lot of fanfiction in Word too and lost all the files and fanart I saved when my dad upgraded the computer to XP.
My first windows, my first computer, come straight from it to XP, don't remember any negatives, I still prefer its Start Menu to Xp. The simpler design reminded of the time that windows just a software to use software. It did not feel like it a social experiment to control my life.
Windows 98 brings me a lot of nostalgia from my childhood in the early 2000s when my parents brought the first computer and it had Windows 98 SE, I used it until 2006.
There are many parallels between 95 vs 98 and Vista vs 7 in approach and scope of changes, yet public perceptions of those two pairs are WAY different.
@@Tornado1994 Nonsense. Win98SE lived on for more than a decade. If you had software that needed to run on dos, and almost everybody did, you ran your 98 machine to the ground. And that includes dos games. Also, win98 didn't just come with explorer and plug&play, they lauched directx direct3d with it. If you were looking to play games, win98se was the best option.
It has to mean something that 98 is my go to "old Windows" over 95. It's pretty much what I default to when messing with older hardware/software and the UI tweaks that carried over into modern Windows are way more comfortable to me.
I miss Active desktop. The fact that you could have interactive websites as your wallpaper meant that You could have all your fav webcomics and stuff directly on your desktop. Microsoft tried to revive it with Gadgets and Live Tiles, but nothing really compares.
I don't really remember using Windows 98, however I plan on getting a retro computer for some old software, and this is the OS that I wanna install on it.
Windows 10/ 11 still struggles with plug and play. As a hobby music producer I’ve always had to manually install drivers on windows. Mac OS legitimately has plug and play, never had to even think about installing a driver on there for the exact same equipment
@@GolfWangMedia-incorporated come tell me more about your great computer lmao. I'm sure it lets you post all your sick beats to sound cloud from your moms basement woth ease.
@@Dillybar777 Who pissed in your cornflakes. I have my own house but nice try. I’m also a windows user too, was just pointing out that plug and play is a lie. Whatever helps you sleep at night you neckbeard virgin.
I still have some old PCs with Windows 98se.98SE solidified Windows 98, it was rock solid based on the DOS kernel.I still use legacy OSes offline for older gaming and is more user friendly.
You misunderstand Plug and Play. You plug the device in (when turned off) and the device is ready to be configured. If the OS had the driver, great. But even having to install drivers still means it is plug and play. If you went to Device Manager, the device could be sent a request to identify it and that code returns a unique code so it knows where to display it. Unknown was when something was detected, but no identifying code available. Before Plug and play, you had to find an available IRQ address not in use, DMA address not in use and Memory Address and set these 3 manually with jumpers on the board. This means the settings with the jumpers could never be changed. Having plug and play means these are still set, but can be moved or changed in the BIOS or the OS. Printers still need a driver, keyboards and mice do not unless it needs drivers to allow the OS to use all buttons unless the firmware on the mouse adjusts output for the computer input port. Windows 98 was always available to offer more than Windows 95. Hard disks were getting bigger and FAT 12 and 16 could only go up to 2GB with a limit on file size. While 95 needed a patchti allow processors speed above 170MHz to 700MHz, 98 was supporting FAT32 from the get go. USB support helped, but Windows 95 only supported FAT32 from Version B, C would support USB but wasy troublesome. Microsoft can not outdo Windows NT which needs to support multiple processors, ECC RAM, multiple graphics cards, purely 32bit and no DOS, which meant it was faster. If anything WIndows NT stuff was the newer stuff being ported into the home releases. You never put everything on the table in one go. Some things can remain worked on and go in the PLus! package or the next OS. Windows 95 supports 8GB RAM, but 98 with Physical Extensions can support 48GB RAM. Windows 98 offered more than you think. To the average user, they were essentially the same that look a little different.
Windows 98 also introduced more than 256 color support on the desktop as Win95 only lets programs take advantage more the 256 colors. Win98SE is also the OS of choice for retro gamers as it can play DOS games all the way up to early 2000s games. To me Windows 98SE is the greatest OS ever.
I remember downloading the windows 98 upgrade from irc warez channels. There were so, so many cosmetic upgrades between win95 and 98 that it was literally a night and day difference. It was a major graphical overhaul. You didn't change the color depth in your win98 install so of course it's gonna look like win95. Menus no longer just popped up, but they slid out with a smooth animation. The title bars were no longer a single color but an aesthetically pleasing gradient between two colors. The quick launch icons on the taskbar came standard instead of having to install the IE4 upgrade on win95 to get them. You slick dropped the ball on this one homie.
I quite liked windows '98 when I was a kid, i only remember a couple crashes and other weird glitches, it seemed like most of my games and programs functioned like they were supposed to overall, especially my DOS games which to me were at their peak.
Windows 98 was a big part of my middle childhood. I was introduced to the Internet, educational software (incl. Microsoft Encarta and Mavis Beacon), 3D PC gaming, graphics editing, music editing, programming, and game modding. And I learned so much about computers that I became the "computer wiz" of the family, heh. When I built a virtual machine for my childhood software as a kind of archive, I was originally going for 98 SE as the OS, but because of issues with DirectX, I switched to XP. To my delight, tho, almost all of my Win 98 stuff work on XP (incl. Welcome to Windows 98), and believe it or not, you could port Win 98's Web View to XP, lol.
I popped out of somewhere in the early 90s and so 95 and 98 were the first OSes I knew, I loved 98 so much, partly because it wasn't 95, and so there's a spot deep in my heart reserved for it
At our school the IT guy said Windows 98 was just more internet dependent, making it less secure so, we didn't need it... But he retired soon and the new guy got a new lab of Windows 98 SE computers. Personally I loved how much more stable it was. I only had to format and re-install Windows 98 on my personal computer about every other month, it was a great improvement of the stability arguments I had with Windows 95.
Windows 98 is to 95 what XP Pro is to XP Home. On the surface it's more or less the same with the latter adding in more power-user features that your average single computer family just had no need for. Compatibility for software was basically universal between 95 and 98 and all purchased hardware would come with driver disc's so plug n pray wasn't some desperately needed feature. Honestly, the only real feature 98 had that average users truly need is updates and by 2000 plug and play actually being somewhat useful. But of course with XP coming out based on the highly stable NT with its radical new design it just made more sense to upgrade then for most people.
Windows 98 also had multi-user support, which didn't exist in 95 or 3.11. Although not with a permission system like in NT, it had the ability to set things like your own desktop wallpaper, shortcuts and other settings. For a family sharing the same computer it was a game changer.
@@sarahkelly6425 You're right, after researching it a little seems it was available in 95 as well. I do remember vividly it was advertised as a "new window 98 feature" when it came out and that we as a family gladly started using it after installing the new os but I guess we just weren't aware it's possible before that.
15:37 Minor correction: gigabytes=no; megabytes=yes. The entire drive was only a few gigabytes in this era. Windows 98 installed from CD-ROM was only around 250 megabytes.
Back in the day our family had a Pentium MMX machine shipped with Win95, later we learnt that it was one of the newer ACPI and PnP ready motherboards, it came disabled because even tho Win95 had it, support for it was worse than awful (you can't even finish the installation without being flooded with BSOD) the coolest feature was not having to flip the switch on the PSU everytime the computer turned off, it did by itself, like magic. Under the hood had more changes than just the GUI. And that ACPI capability doubled battery runtime on laptops
I was an IT Support man in a company in 2000s. And we still used many older PC at that time (Pentium 1 and 2 era machines) with windows 98 SE... Because all that users needs are MS. Office and email.
You forgot to mention one thing and the m ost important. Even so similar to Win95, Win 98 was a huge leap forwards thanks to it's stability. Win95 was a BSOD festival, on Win98 you got BSOD too, but much fever times. Similar great leap in stability was afterwards with WinXP. But that change in stability was key to Win98's success thanks word-to-mouth and in many parts of the world Win98 was totally dominant on household PCs.
We had this system on out first family computer. I really liked it has multiple themes to choose - not just color and wallpapers, but also cursor and sounds :) . From POV of a kid who used computer mostly to play games, Windows 98 was great, as many games available to me in the earty 2000s, like StarCraft, Settlers2, Icewind Dale or Quake worked without any problems. It was not so great from POV of system administrator. Not only anyone could create an account (just write login and password, you already have your own account) but also everyone has administrator rights as default. While it works great for games, it's not great for the security. You have absolutly no control over who installs what and you never know if your computer got infected because someone tried to be cheap and installed a pirated game.
3.1 was a monster leap ... I was using DOS in a manufacturing environment, brutal! 9x were just place holders in the NT revolution. NTFS was the second revolution.
i spent my entire childhood on win98se... the biggest flaw i had was BSOD after being in rest mode for too long. and no monitor signal due to poor analogue signal to a crappy 50hz crt. when i wanted higher performance at 60hz. also i was modding flight sim a lot and many other things too. and internet security was much of a thing so i was a god at breeding trojan horses and worms. nowadays windows 98se is just memory now. i remember many fond and silly memories of my pc back then. i also remember complaining to my dad about simcity 4 not working correctly on my P3. i had soo many issues with my voodoo card and BSOD's in win98 it was a total pain compared to XP/7/10/11. i remember trying a little of ME. and i do remember my first windows usage was 95. and i remember my high school had varied pc's running 95, 98, 98se, 2000 and xp. so i h have had my fair share on using all windows to be honest.
I was too young during its release, but I remember during its heyday that people considered 98 and specifically 98 SE the best release Microsoft had done, and was a sort of XP of its day. Windows 2000 was relegated to businesses and people skipped ME and sometimes even XP because of the HW requirements and the need for and possible headaches with DOS compatibility. Nobody thought that 98 was just a re-skin of 95. Even I remember very well that when our family computer was upgraded to 98 it had a lot less crashes. Most notably, our machine now had power management and the "It's Now Safe To Turn Off Your Computer" screen was gone, so it was clear that 98 was very different
Win 98 was my first experience with PCs when I was seven years old We had some games like half life and starcraft among others of course, but sometimes I just entertained myself with paint or by changing the themes and listening to the sound effects
I love 98se. It was actually my last Windows OS. When I first installed XP, I found out 90% of my games would not work or had no sound, as DOS support sucked at the beginning, and that was a huge problem at the time, where a lot of games and software was DOS based. I returned to 98, and in 2005, before 98se EOL I switched into Linux, as I found out about DosEmu which worked really well for DOS (DOSBox was too slow and unoptimised for my computer at the time). Never went back to Windows again, but I still keep some virtual machines and even some old laptops with DOS, Win3.1, Win95 and Win98
even though I was there when all of this happened, it's really great to see a video documenting what happened too 😉😉😉😉 I had a Tandy 2500 SX/33 that I added a CD-ROM drive and a 28.8Kb/s modem, during a time when people and ISPs were going to 56Kb/s modems and we got AOL service, it took us an hour to get online and took a second(or nanosecond, I'm not sure) to get kicked off!! 😂😂😂😂
One big feature indicating that 98 is really built almost entirely on Internet Explorer is Active Desktop - you could set webpage as your wallpaper. It would slow down your PC a bit but it is an option. Of course, since 98 Internet Explorer removal is almost impossible... There is a 98 mod without IE which has... 95 UI! Because 98 UI simply won't work without IE.
It's a little bit past my time, but my family had a Windows 98 when I was younger that was left over from before I was born. But by the time I found out we even had computers (aka learning what one even was for the first time), they already bought an XP, but still kept 98 on the side. The whole emphasis with its relationship with the internet is extremely ironic because once we got XP, our 98 was disconnected from the internet and relegated only to playing educational video games, so we kind of knew it as the windows computer that wasn't connected to the internet lol.
Windows 95 did have the "explorer", too, which had the directory tree on the left. I consider that the *best* file explorer. NB! When you record b-roll from VMs, please install graphics drivers before recording. That 16-color mode looks just awful and nobody daily-drove it like that.
I recognized "Beauty Flow" immediately. I love the way your videos are edited, the way you speak is clear and engaging, I just absolutely love your content :3 Even moreso since you add the song names in the description! ^w^ Keep up the good work
i remember it being a much better operating system than 95, and many people said it was a much better operating system also. Never heard anything bad about it in the day.
I love your videos about Desktop Operating Systems. I expect you to continue this trend and talk about macOS next, but nothing's certain. I would be a fanboy if you ever decide to dedicate some time to create a video about Linux.
Windows 98 fixed several issues / problems / compatibilities from windows 95. The only one I remember was the restart into dos mode for old stubborn dos programs. I think it had something do with memory mapping. Anyway one of the greatest combos was windows 98se and office 97. Also remembered better usb support to.
PnP has nothing to do with automatic driver installs at all, what it actually was was a bios extension that allowed the BIOS to take control of interrupt ports. In the old days all your hardware would have jumpers and you'd be expected to set things like IRQ Port and DMA Address manually, things were kinda structured in a way that, in most cases the defaults would work but if you tried to use 2 cards on the same port neither would work. PnP simply moved all of that over to the BIOS so during POST the board would scan your cards and assign them a free port automagically, TBC this was added to the BIOS standard, all MS did was write a fancy wrapper that used PnP to ID the card and ask the user to provide a driver (and they did include a bunch of common drivers so older hardware would usually just work).
Widows 95 was a hard act to beat. Along with figuring out that streamlining programs in the "start button" they had the rolling Stones "start me up" for the ads soundtrack... Plus it had Easter eggs like the music video for Weezers buddy Holley to show off it's video features. Doom ran turbo charged... It was a good time to be a geek lol
For a certain era of vintage computing, I believe if a computer was able to handle any 9x, I use Windows 98SE. Any older and it's DOS 6, any newer and it's Windows XP. In some edge cases where ram is low and I want networking without a lot of hassle, then Windows 95A (before they added FAT32 or USB).
Great video, thanks! Though you *really* should have captured Win98 in 16 bit or 24 bit color - those hi-color icons, gradient titlebars were sooo beautiful in 90's.
🌎 Get NordVPN 2Y plan + 4 months free here ➼ nordvpn.com/NationSquid
It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✌
Twitter: twitter.com/NationSquidYT
Hi
no
i got nordvpn and it doesnt support older than win10, no port forwarding so you cant download torrents, the windows app is really slow and buggy, connection is unstable and tops at 200mbps their money back warranty is bullshit they wont refund me even afer 2 week
Not you too! (Proceeds to turn off VPN to comment)
VPNs dont protect you from malware
If Windows 98 had anything going for it, it had an amazing startup sound.
W98 was Fine for what it was. Not the BEST 9x OS, but it got the job done. If you looked up Porn, it would HIJACK your computer.
I came here strictly to say this lmao
I still have the W98 startup sound as my default W10 startup sound LMAO. And I wasn’t even born in the 90s, W98 is legendary
🎶 NyyyyyyeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrwoooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!! 🎶✨✨✨
Windows 95’s start up was better.
Windows 98 is my childhood and this video brought back some memories, such as looking for an Office key to be able to use my Excel without problems hahaha
It brings back memories for me too and BNH Software always helps me get them.
The fact that much of the retro computing community skips 95 and uses 98, shows how good 98 was.
true, the b iggest reason is support for usb storage for me
I do not think my Pentium 133mhz would like 98.
@@blackterminal might be surprised
@@blackterminal i sued to ran a pentium 133 on windows 98, what hurted more was the lack of ram and the slow hdd
@@ibm5155 Ok.
Windows 98 was my favourite OS from Microsoft. It retained DOS. It had that modern, esy to see look. It was easy to repair. PNP actually worked quite well; most PNP problems were video cards and scanners. IE was great, better than NS and prettier, too. It truly was an amazing OS.
Hardware and hardware drivers often sucked back then. Usually when people whine about Windows not working with hardware, it's not actually Windows causing the problem. It was just so nice not having to shut down the computer every time you plugged something in.
Scanners have never worked right. Especially in the late 90s.
oh noo installing a driver, the horror
The thing I remembered the most about Windows 98 was the built-in themes. They all have unique color scheme, wallpaper, screen saver, mouse cursor, icon set, even sounds.
Changing the theme now and then makes the experience fresh, something I really missed ever since Vista. Yes we still had themes but they're very limited: no unique icon sets or mouse cursors, screensavers are a story of the past, they even removed the ability to customize color scheme since Windows 10. Almost every Windows computer nowadays has the same boring look, that's just sad.
Don't forget MS Plus! 98, which's what got me into theming and GUI customization as a kid. The Internet here in the PH was slow and expensive, so I had to figure it out on my own and make my own themes.
Nowadays, I have to resort to registry edits and third-party tools to get the customization I want, which I've grown used to. For Windows 10/11, I recommend WinPaletter, which's essentially the modern version of Windows 9X's Display Properties but also with cursor and sound customization.
I pretty sure themes were there in win95 too. For sure they were there in NT4.
I'm one to look at the positives of modern stuff. I do prefer the current interface style over the original default one from the 9x releases, as what we have now is a lot more legible than what looked like a bunch of filing cabinets.
@@reubendensmore4648 What are those positives?
@@MezeiEugenthere's none because everything is going into that minimalistic look
I think Windows 98 had room to grow especially when the room was finally filled up in the second edition in 1999
I had Windows 98. It was my Very First Home OS. It was......Adequate, but Buggy as Hell. And IF you ACCIDENTALLY looked at Porn, your PC was held HOSTAGE by Hijack Software.
@@Tornado1994"Accidentally"
@@Tornado1994 Don't go to queastionable sites then.
@@CZghost I don't think you understand. If you accidentally typed in the Wrong URL, it would FORCE you onto a Porn Site. And that Site would Hijack the Hell out of your Computer. Nobody would go to Questionable Site, you'd be FORCED onto a Porn site by Accident if you typed the URL to whatever you were looking for incorrectly.
@@Tornado1994 ayo?
It's interesting that you've shown the entire clips for Windows 98 in 16 colors, which makes it look a lot more like Windows 95 visually, and in fact when 16 or 32 bit colors are selected, it looks a lot nicer visually than Windows 95, but anyways.
Nice video :)
I knew something looked a little off. I started on '95 and remember it looking more archaic than '98 (not to mention our screen resolution was lower too, so icons were enormous)
Windows 95 have very nice icons provided by Microsoft Plus. They are the same as Thsie in NT 4 and are much nicest then 95 and even 98 icons.
@@intel386DX yes, plus adds true colors to Windows 95 icons, but Windows 98 have whole system in true color and looks much nicer than 95, but anyways. Ukusi su razliciti :)
@@jasminderventa actuality NT 4 (aka 95 +) icons are much better then 98 and especially compared to ME/2k My computer and recycle bin icons. They are awful.
But yes the only pretty thing about 98 and beyond is the gradient on the title windows bars.
I am still using the classic 9x GUI on Windows.
Pozdrav, druze :)
Klasicni oblik windowsa zauvek :)
I think that may have just been my computer. 😆
Added a little nice touch though looking back at it! Thanks for watching! :)
Windows 98 was the first Windows I've used. I was born in 1999, and my aunt got her first computer in 2000 that came with Windows 98. I started to use it later (don't remember when, but probably around 2002 or 2003), and I just loved it. Used to draw a lot in MS Paint and play games. She eventually installed XP on it, but XP was running slow, so she reverted back to 98. I used that computer whenever I went to visit her up until 2005 when she got a new computer from her workplace. Good times.
Used Windows 98 from 1999-2006.
I really love how customizable the classic UI was. Still more fun than the current windows 8, 10, 11 UI. The start up screen and the windows logo itself also looked much more artistic.
WINDOWS 98 2008 ?!?!?!?
clearly, you've little need for security and redundancy.
I ran Me till 2006, once hardware didn't have drivers for it had to switch to XP unfortunately. Lost a lot of software too.
@@arnoldmbuthia2687 i didnt even had internet back in the day. Internet was a luxury back then. So security was not a concern back in the day for me.
I loved how simple, clean, and fast Windows 98 was. I would still use it to this day if it was compatibale with modern day devices and programs.
I used Win98 SE until 2007 when I switched to XP :D. The biggest problems with 98 were the lack of proper memory management, the eventually very low actually addressable memory (max. 512 MB as far as I remember), and the lack of a proper, powerful task manager.
MS-DOS limitations!
you need to tweak system.ini to overcome that, i use win me which is win98 third, same limitations, my pc has 2gb of ram and can use all of it
I used it until 2006. At the time there was a myth that Windows Xp was very unstable.
@@Alefjj XP became good only after SP2. At time i used to dual boot XP and 98SE until SP2 beta came out. I used SP2 beta before full release and was already stable.
512MB wasn't low in the 1998-99 days, where most PCs had 32-64MB. Even some computers were sold with 16MB of RAM even as late as 1999. Win98 just didn't need as much RAM as NT based OSes
Windows 98 was my gateway into the world of computers and it will always hold a special place in my heart. Every computer that I personally own has a virtual machine with Windows 98 on it for when I want to take a trip back to 1998.
I became familiar with computers through the iconic startup sound of Windows 98. Being blind and visually impaired, that particular sound captured my attention and made me realize the coolness of technology. I was born in ’99, which makes me quite proud to be a part of the final chapter of the 20th century.
That Win98SE DOS Core came in really handy for me back when I worked as a technician. A little old lady with a Win3.1 box had her computer fail... in 2007. She didn't want a newfangled computer unless it worked EXACTLY like her previous one.
We took a Dell Vostro and loaded it with DOS 7.X, which gave us the hardware and software compatiblity so we could put Win3.1 onto the system. We even managed to salvage most of her personal files from her dead system.
She got the computer... and then returned it, angry because the cards bounced too fast when she finished a game of solitaire. Turns out the bouncing card animation was clocked to the CPU. It was at that point that I discovered WHY some computer shops will turn down unreasonable or niche requests from customers.
You didn't mention the fact that you could enter a web site into the File Explorer address bar and the site would load. This was a groundbreaking thing for Windows 98 which then was cancelled due to the lawsuit (if you did this, a separate instance of IE would load). This functionality still exists today btw - your default browser will load with the site you type in. Multi-monitor was great. I upgraded to XP when it came out, but due to my computer specs being pretty basic by the standards of the day, I went back to 98SE for a couple years until I could afford a new computer with a beefier processor and more RAM.
You could also set your desktop background as a website if you wanted to as well.
That's how I browsed the web, when my school "uninstalled IE"🤣
Funnily enough, that's what the old Konqueror did on KDE 3. The file browser and the web browser were the same program so you could type a web address from the file browser. I think KDE 4 introduced Dolphin as an standalone file browser.
And also FTP. Today browsers/Windows Explorer don't support FTP anymore. (At least not like before when IE and Windows Explorer were highly integrated).
The removal of "integrated" Internet browsing on Windows Explorer was more of a security feature than lawsuit compliance. Back when Windows 98 SE was released, Internet Explorer was the most popular browser on the planet and that made it a target of different attacks, especially using ActiveX. This made the browser very vulnerable and that was known since the Windows 95 days, but having it separate from the operating system meant it would only break that program. When Microsoft decided to make Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer one and the same, Windows' reputation as a malware magnet began to spread and made the OS very insecure especially if you didn't have any security software installed. It was very common to see toolbars, adware and other nasty things installed on almost every PC.
Windows couldn't get rid of its worse IE-related vulnerabilities until the late 2000's when Internet Explorer was finally updated to versions 7 and 8.
Windows 98 was the first computer I had at home as a kid. I remember whenever anything went wrong it would go into MS-DOS mode, which was like this scary, mysterious beast living in the computer's underworld that was confusing. The best part was when I was stuck on the MS-DOS menus, my older brother would then say: "Quit DOSsing around!"
Although I hardly even used it, MS-DOS gives me some huge nostalgia for some reason. It's like older computers had this cranky nuts-and-bolts feature that you'd sometimes be involuntarily exposed to, but are shielded from in modern OSs (unless you specifically look for it). This has recently motivated me to learn Command Prompt and other programming to understand all that stuff I saw and never understood as a kid.
Thank you Windows 98 for being a delicate combination of user-friendly enough to get me interested in using computers as a kid, but also being based off of MS-DOS, which left some weird nostalgic imprint on me. It has a special place in my heart.
Same experience here! I would sometimes watch my dad, as a 5 year old, bring up MS-DOS and thought it was this mystical being that only listened to adults 🤣 I was afraid of opening it up under Windows with that multi color MS-DOS icon, aah the memories.
@@alexg9155Yeah, haha! We learnt from a young age to not be decieved by the cute, colourful logo so as not to wake up the MS-DOS beast 😂
Oh I remember "plug and play". Most of the time it didn't work. You would plug something in to your computer and absolutely nothing would happen. You still had to manually install the drivers yourself. I remember having to tell the computer which parallel port to check to find the device at one point. True plug an play came around with XP.
2.0K
98 was my very first Windows. When I upgraded to ME, it was more of a downgrade! I have a lot of fond memories of Windows 98, I even changed my Windows 10 startup sound to the 98 one, that was a cool sound.
The computer I used the most in my teenage years ran Windows 98. I remember early on having a fair number of friends still on Windows 95, but Windows 98 was a far more refined OS. Not only did Internet Explorer integrate well with it, but it also paired very well with Office 97. We used that system well into the XP era, and I remember thinking that I preferred the 9x series look to the XP look. Where 95 still looked kind of muddy and low resolution, 98 kept the same minimalistic design but refined and modernized it.
It took some getting used to the XP Luna theme when it came out. My favorite version of the classic interface was the one in Win2K.
appreciate this video. i'm 38, remember using win95/98se at home. playing quake3 with 150ms ping(dial up!) and the way menus looked. remembering the transition from dos to win3.1 to this. quite the trip down memory lane, thanks!
Although my first ever used Windows was 3.11, it was 98 when everything really took off for me. My first steps on the internet, downloading MP3s, burning CDs, creating my first homepage, Unreal Tournament LAN-Parties, Online Chatrooms, ICQ Era... Everything started on a Win98 machine so for me it will always remain something special.
win9x is the windows that bring the entire planet together, winxp is when the 3rd world war started lol
Another great video by NationSquid. I remember using Windows 98 for a time as a kid before upgrading to Windows 2000, and eventually XP in 2007
Hi, im a viewer from iraq and i would like to thank you alot for this great work you are doing covering old operating systems, it brings back many memories and is full of valuable information❤
Great video! Thank you for mentioning that the Windows Explorer address bar can be edited without clicking folders, I wasn't aware that was something a person could do!
98 SE was great and probably the pinnacle of the 9x OS
Windows XP Professional was also the very first commercial desktop Windows that came with 64bi version. 64bit Windows NT was actually used much earlier, but that was mainly on servers in datacenters where huge computing power was needed, and the architecture was somewhat different. First personal PCs with 64bit architecture hit the market at 2001 with the release of Windows XP. And only Professional edition came with 64bit version. Home edition was still only 32bit. That changed with Windows Vista, that introduced 64bit Windows to homes as well.
They released Second Edition as the original Windows 98 release just wasn't up to task. It was quite buggy in parts, while many didn't consider it worth the upgrade.
It also didn't have much of a life before Windows 2000 and XP came along. I don't recall anyone I knew actually buying Windows 98 in isolation, and rather it just happened to be preinstalled on whatever store-bought PC they purchased around that time.
Windows 2000 was also pretty rare on a home PC, whereas XP Home was the dominant variant there too.
Plug & Play did not originally mean "automatically install drivers", rather it handled the hardware conflict portion of installing devices (so no manual IRQ settings). Later on, the term started to be used for the overall process of plugging something in and "not worrying about it", such as most flash drives uses a generic Mass Storage driver. Even during Windows XP's days, Plug and Play didn't do a very good job of going online to find drivers (I'm not talking drivers included in the OS here). It wasn't until Windows 7+ that drivers from Microsoft were more readily available.
The problem with plug and play in windows 98 was, in fact, due to developers. Windows 98 offered the possibility to write drivers using windows driver model (wdm) and not having to deal with dos. But this would mean not supporting windows 95 at all, so most manufacturers just stick with dos drivers because they work on both os
Really enjoying this Windows operating system video series. A platform so many of us use everyday, but little is known to the majority of those users. As a security analyst I love doing deep dives into operating systems and their pasts.
98SE was the end of an era. Last "good" Windows OS that fully supported DOS programs natively as well as early win32 applications.
As how Windows 98 and Windows ME were the last two OS versions on the MS-DOS build and with ME proving how unstable it was compared to Windows 2000 which was build on the NT build. Windows 98 was pretty much the DOS build OS at it’s maximum potential.
windows 98 is basically windows 95 with some minor changes to the OS itself and big changes to the Internet and of course, clippy was introduced, just to be removed
Wow, thanks for that..... We were all ignorant of this till your comment , thanks
Again, what a fun and informative video. I actually really miss 95 and 98 (Well, I play around VMware) but I miss the customization of these products! You really could change just about every little detail, colors, and system fonts...etc...Now, All you can do on Windows 11 is have once accent color (And you don't even have title color title bars like Windows 10) I noticed there isn't a whole lot of accent color shown on Windows 11. You can't even change system fonts - heck even my Samsung phone can do that. Everything now is "light theme " or "dark theme" kind of boring. I also loved that you included the Windows 95 "sitcom" It is cheesy and I love it. RIP Matthew Perry.
I know this isn't the focus of this video, but Netscape was also free for personal use. A lot of why Netscape lost the browser wars was that it peaked in quality around version 3 (1997), while Internet Explorer reached feature parity with Netscape at the same time. Microsoft kept improving IE, while Netscape got bloated, and then spent years trying to re-build from scratch. The last old version of Netscape was released in 1998. Between 1998 and 2000 Netscape was not updating their browser at all. Internet Explorer was releasing minor updates to IE through 1998, and there was a major new release (version 5.0) in 1999. Netscape responded by rushing an unfinished buggy version 6 to market in 2000, which didn't do it any favors. After that Netscape was already beyond saving (at least on Windows), while Internet Explorer peaked in quality with version 6 (2001) and rested on its laurels for way too long, opening itself up for competition again from Firefox, and eventually Chrome.
Wow
That's crazy to me that IE cost money to use. Win98 is very nostalgic to me and was the first real PC my family got but I really don't miss it. I remember having so many issues with it.
All of my experience with Windows 95 at the time was with the OSR 2.0 release which was only officially available on new PCs. Combining that with the IE4 Active Desktop update made the two systems look almost identical and I think an upgrade from an OSR 2.x release to Windows 98 was less justifiable than it would be if you had the original retail version. I remember trying the original release years later and was surprised by what was missing.
98 was a big step forward. So much so it got an update in 98se to improve an already good system with better usb support
My parents first home computer had Windows 98 on it. Whilst I had been clicking around on computers at my relative's house before that time it was always on Windows 95 or even a Commodore. 98 was suddenly everywhere. Even my school had it.
I was a Windows 95 user when Windows 98 was released. For reference, I had a Compaq laptop with a 486DX4 100MHz and 8 megabytes of RAM, and our school got computers with P2 333MHz, 32Mb RAM and Windows 98. Based on my first perception, W98 was an extremely unstable resource hog when compared to W95. When W98SE came out, I would finally see it as a usable option - it still hogged resources like crazy, but at least it offered something in return: good support for hardware accelerated 3d gaming and internet.
I also highly disliked the W95OSR2 that included Active Desktop and other features that were so annoying in W98.
I actually have two W98 PCs right now, and I think the fact that my Compaq was better than our school PCs was more down to the fact that I maintained and optimized my system a lot better than our school IT guy Zaven.
Got a new PC in 1998 with, of course, Windows 98. Never updated my computer (what was an "update" anyway?) and still got through Y2K no problem.
Dont be sad about Win 98,
Fun fact: many programs from windows 98 are still used in/part of windows 11
I still have a Windows 98 machine at qork with some VERY aincient software from the MS-DOS days. That is the perfect platform to run it on, to this day.
Windows 98 was the first Windows OS I ever used, it had some fun games like the one with the tank that you used to movie boulders around a map into certain spots. I miss that game. I wrote a lot of fanfiction in Word too and lost all the files and fanart I saved when my dad upgraded the computer to XP.
I kind of want to own the scanner that crashed Win98 in front of the world. I'd put it in a glass case and show it off in my dining room or something.
My first windows, my first computer, come straight from it to XP, don't remember any negatives, I still prefer its Start Menu to Xp. The simpler design reminded of the time that windows just a software to use software. It did not feel like it a social experiment to control my life.
Windows 98 brings me a lot of nostalgia from my childhood in the early 2000s when my parents brought the first computer and it had Windows 98 SE, I used it until 2006.
There are many parallels between 95 vs 98 and Vista vs 7 in approach and scope of changes, yet public perceptions of those two pairs are WAY different.
MS phased out Windows 98 after only a year, With Windows 2000 in 1999, and then in late 2001, XP phased everything else out.
@@Tornado1994 Nonsense. Win98SE lived on for more than a decade. If you had software that needed to run on dos, and almost everybody did, you ran your 98 machine to the ground. And that includes dos games.
Also, win98 didn't just come with explorer and plug&play, they lauched directx direct3d with it. If you were looking to play games, win98se was the best option.
It has to mean something that 98 is my go to "old Windows" over 95. It's pretty much what I default to when messing with older hardware/software and the UI tweaks that carried over into modern Windows are way more comfortable to me.
I miss Active desktop. The fact that you could have interactive websites as your wallpaper meant that You could have all your fav webcomics and stuff directly on your desktop. Microsoft tried to revive it with Gadgets and Live Tiles, but nothing really compares.
I don't really remember using Windows 98, however I plan on getting a retro computer for some old software, and this is the OS that I wanna install on it.
Windows 10/ 11 still struggles with plug and play. As a hobby music producer I’ve always had to manually install drivers on windows. Mac OS legitimately has plug and play, never had to even think about installing a driver on there for the exact same equipment
Good for you, buster.
@@Dillybar777 Salty windows user. My comment didn’t need any response 😂
@@GolfWangMedia-incorporated come tell me more about your great computer lmao. I'm sure it lets you post all your sick beats to sound cloud from your moms basement woth ease.
@@Dillybar777 Who pissed in your cornflakes. I have my own house but nice try. I’m also a windows user too, was just pointing out that plug and play is a lie. Whatever helps you sleep at night you neckbeard virgin.
I still have some old PCs with Windows 98se.98SE solidified Windows 98, it was rock solid based on the DOS kernel.I still use legacy OSes offline for older gaming and is more user friendly.
I really love Windows 98. I have that is since when I was a little girl.
You misunderstand Plug and Play.
You plug the device in (when turned off) and the device is ready to be configured.
If the OS had the driver, great. But even having to install drivers still means it is plug and play. If you went to Device Manager, the device could be sent a request to identify it and that code returns a unique code so it knows where to display it. Unknown was when something was detected, but no identifying code available.
Before Plug and play, you had to find an available IRQ address not in use, DMA address not in use and Memory Address and set these 3 manually with jumpers on the board. This means the settings with the jumpers could never be changed. Having plug and play means these are still set, but can be moved or changed in the BIOS or the OS.
Printers still need a driver, keyboards and mice do not unless it needs drivers to allow the OS to use all buttons unless the firmware on the mouse adjusts output for the computer input port.
Windows 98 was always available to offer more than Windows 95. Hard disks were getting bigger and FAT 12 and 16 could only go up to 2GB with a limit on file size. While 95 needed a patchti allow processors speed above 170MHz to 700MHz, 98 was supporting FAT32 from the get go. USB support helped, but Windows 95 only supported FAT32 from Version B, C would support USB but wasy troublesome.
Microsoft can not outdo Windows NT which needs to support multiple processors, ECC RAM, multiple graphics cards, purely 32bit and no DOS, which meant it was faster.
If anything WIndows NT stuff was the newer stuff being ported into the home releases.
You never put everything on the table in one go. Some things can remain worked on and go in the PLus! package or the next OS.
Windows 95 supports 8GB RAM, but 98 with Physical Extensions can support 48GB RAM.
Windows 98 offered more than you think. To the average user, they were essentially the same that look a little different.
Windows 98 also introduced more than 256 color support on the desktop as Win95 only lets programs take advantage more the 256 colors. Win98SE is also the OS of choice for retro gamers as it can play DOS games all the way up to early 2000s games. To me Windows 98SE is the greatest OS ever.
I remember downloading the windows 98 upgrade from irc warez channels. There were so, so many cosmetic upgrades between win95 and 98 that it was literally a night and day difference. It was a major graphical overhaul. You didn't change the color depth in your win98 install so of course it's gonna look like win95. Menus no longer just popped up, but they slid out with a smooth animation. The title bars were no longer a single color but an aesthetically pleasing gradient between two colors. The quick launch icons on the taskbar came standard instead of having to install the IE4 upgrade on win95 to get them. You slick dropped the ball on this one homie.
I quite liked windows '98 when I was a kid, i only remember a couple crashes and other weird glitches, it seemed like most of my games and programs functioned like they were supposed to overall, especially my DOS games which to me were at their peak.
I never had 95. Went right from 3.11 to 98. I don't think it can really be explained what a leap in technology that was
In early to mid 2000s I knew many people who still had Windows 98, but I didn't know anyone who had Windows 95 at that time.
Windows 98 was a big part of my middle childhood. I was introduced to the Internet, educational software (incl. Microsoft Encarta and Mavis Beacon), 3D PC gaming, graphics editing, music editing, programming, and game modding. And I learned so much about computers that I became the "computer wiz" of the family, heh.
When I built a virtual machine for my childhood software as a kind of archive, I was originally going for 98 SE as the OS, but because of issues with DirectX, I switched to XP. To my delight, tho, almost all of my Win 98 stuff work on XP (incl. Welcome to Windows 98), and believe it or not, you could port Win 98's Web View to XP, lol.
I popped out of somewhere in the early 90s and so 95 and 98 were the first OSes I knew, I loved 98 so much, partly because it wasn't 95, and so there's a spot deep in my heart reserved for it
"God damn fucking windows 98. You said it was supposed to be faster and have better access to the internet!"
Internet Explorer 5 was an amazing browser.
At our school the IT guy said Windows 98 was just more internet dependent, making it less secure so, we didn't need it...
But he retired soon and the new guy got a new lab of Windows 98 SE computers. Personally I loved how much more stable it was. I only had to format and re-install Windows 98 on my personal computer about every other month, it was a great improvement of the stability arguments I had with Windows 95.
Windows 98 is to 95 what XP Pro is to XP Home. On the surface it's more or less the same with the latter adding in more power-user features that your average single computer family just had no need for. Compatibility for software was basically universal between 95 and 98 and all purchased hardware would come with driver disc's so plug n pray wasn't some desperately needed feature. Honestly, the only real feature 98 had that average users truly need is updates and by 2000 plug and play actually being somewhat useful. But of course with XP coming out based on the highly stable NT with its radical new design it just made more sense to upgrade then for most people.
Windows 98 also had multi-user support, which didn't exist in 95 or 3.11. Although not with a permission system like in NT, it had the ability to set things like your own desktop wallpaper, shortcuts and other settings.
For a family sharing the same computer it was a game changer.
I had multiple users on Windows 95. Everyone had their own wallpaper and sound settings.
@@sarahkelly6425 You're right, after researching it a little seems it was available in 95 as well. I do remember vividly it was advertised as a "new window 98 feature" when it came out and that we as a family gladly started using it after installing the new os but I guess we just weren't aware it's possible before that.
15:37 Minor correction: gigabytes=no; megabytes=yes. The entire drive was only a few gigabytes in this era. Windows 98 installed from CD-ROM was only around 250 megabytes.
Back in the day our family had a Pentium MMX machine shipped with Win95, later we learnt that it was one of the newer ACPI and PnP ready motherboards, it came disabled because even tho Win95 had it, support for it was worse than awful (you can't even finish the installation without being flooded with BSOD) the coolest feature was not having to flip the switch on the PSU everytime the computer turned off, it did by itself, like magic. Under the hood had more changes than just the GUI. And that ACPI capability doubled battery runtime on laptops
I was an IT Support man in a company in 2000s. And we still used many older PC at that time (Pentium 1 and 2 era machines) with windows 98 SE... Because all that users needs are MS. Office and email.
You forgot to mention one thing and the m ost important. Even so similar to Win95, Win 98 was a huge leap forwards thanks to it's stability. Win95 was a BSOD festival, on Win98 you got BSOD too, but much fever times. Similar great leap in stability was afterwards with WinXP. But that change in stability was key to Win98's success thanks word-to-mouth and in many parts of the world Win98 was totally dominant on household PCs.
We had this system on out first family computer. I really liked it has multiple themes to choose - not just color and wallpapers, but also cursor and sounds :) . From POV of a kid who used computer mostly to play games, Windows 98 was great, as many games available to me in the earty 2000s, like StarCraft, Settlers2, Icewind Dale or Quake worked without any problems.
It was not so great from POV of system administrator. Not only anyone could create an account (just write login and password, you already have your own account) but also everyone has administrator rights as default. While it works great for games, it's not great for the security. You have absolutly no control over who installs what and you never know if your computer got infected because someone tried to be cheap and installed a pirated game.
3.1 was a monster leap ... I was using DOS in a manufacturing environment, brutal! 9x were just place holders in the NT revolution. NTFS was the second revolution.
15:34 Gigabytes lol Great video! I'm still using Windows 98 SE. It's the best DOS based OS. Only offline of course.
I feel like this wasn't supposed to happen lol
tf you mean
@sodicious Squid doesn't usually upload his videos at night. The latest is like 9pm, I think, so it just felt weird
i spent my entire childhood on win98se... the biggest flaw i had was BSOD after being in rest mode for too long. and no monitor signal due to poor analogue signal to a crappy 50hz crt. when i wanted higher performance at 60hz. also i was modding flight sim a lot and many other things too. and internet security was much of a thing so i was a god at breeding trojan horses and worms. nowadays windows 98se is just memory now. i remember many fond and silly memories of my pc back then. i also remember complaining to my dad about simcity 4 not working correctly on my P3. i had soo many issues with my voodoo card and BSOD's in win98 it was a total pain compared to XP/7/10/11. i remember trying a little of ME. and i do remember my first windows usage was 95. and i remember my high school had varied pc's running 95, 98, 98se, 2000 and xp. so i h have had my fair share on using all windows to be honest.
I was too young during its release, but I remember during its heyday that people considered 98 and specifically 98 SE the best release Microsoft had done, and was a sort of XP of its day. Windows 2000 was relegated to businesses and people skipped ME and sometimes even XP because of the HW requirements and the need for and possible headaches with DOS compatibility. Nobody thought that 98 was just a re-skin of 95. Even I remember very well that when our family computer was upgraded to 98 it had a lot less crashes. Most notably, our machine now had power management and the "It's Now Safe To Turn Off Your Computer" screen was gone, so it was clear that 98 was very different
I kinda still miss Win98. More importantly, where do I get that "Pluto: Never Forget" hoodie? 👀
Win 98 was my first experience with PCs when I was seven years old
We had some games like half life and starcraft among others of course, but sometimes I just entertained myself with paint or by changing the themes and listening to the sound effects
I love 98se. It was actually my last Windows OS. When I first installed XP, I found out 90% of my games would not work or had no sound, as DOS support sucked at the beginning, and that was a huge problem at the time, where a lot of games and software was DOS based. I returned to 98, and in 2005, before 98se EOL I switched into Linux, as I found out about DosEmu which worked really well for DOS (DOSBox was too slow and unoptimised for my computer at the time). Never went back to Windows again, but I still keep some virtual machines and even some old laptops with DOS, Win3.1, Win95 and Win98
even though I was there when all of this happened, it's really great to see a video documenting what happened too 😉😉😉😉 I had a Tandy 2500 SX/33 that I added a CD-ROM drive and a 28.8Kb/s modem, during a time when people and ISPs were going to 56Kb/s modems and we got AOL service, it took us an hour to get online and took a second(or nanosecond, I'm not sure) to get kicked off!! 😂😂😂😂
One big feature indicating that 98 is really built almost entirely on Internet Explorer is Active Desktop - you could set webpage as your wallpaper. It would slow down your PC a bit but it is an option.
Of course, since 98 Internet Explorer removal is almost impossible...
There is a 98 mod without IE which has... 95 UI! Because 98 UI simply won't work without IE.
I still love this version of Windows. So many memories.
The themes of Windows 98 were amazing. I actually miss them and I wish they were available on Windows 10.
The first computer I ever owned was Win 98 SE, it'll always be especially nostalgic to me for that~
It's a little bit past my time, but my family had a Windows 98 when I was younger that was left over from before I was born. But by the time I found out we even had computers (aka learning what one even was for the first time), they already bought an XP, but still kept 98 on the side. The whole emphasis with its relationship with the internet is extremely ironic because once we got XP, our 98 was disconnected from the internet and relegated only to playing educational video games, so we kind of knew it as the windows computer that wasn't connected to the internet lol.
Windows 95 did have the "explorer", too, which had the directory tree on the left. I consider that the *best* file explorer.
NB! When you record b-roll from VMs, please install graphics drivers before recording. That 16-color mode looks just awful and nobody daily-drove it like that.
Preach!
Yeah, because of that he also missed how much better 98 looked compared to 95, as 95 was locked to low color at the OS level.
I recognized "Beauty Flow" immediately. I love the way your videos are edited, the way you speak is clear and engaging, I just absolutely love your content :3 Even moreso since you add the song names in the description! ^w^ Keep up the good work
i remember it being a much better operating system than 95, and many people said it was a much better operating system also. Never heard anything bad about it in the day.
windows 98 is PERFECTION!!!!!
Im obsessed with you channel. My fav before going to bed 😊
Loved Windows Memphis - 98SE, used it right through 😀 Ran 98 & NT till 2k8 and still even use both to this day 😉
98 SE is nostalgic and brings me back to a specific point in time for me.
I love your videos about Desktop Operating Systems. I expect you to continue this trend and talk about macOS next, but nothing's certain.
I would be a fanboy if you ever decide to dedicate some time to create a video about Linux.
Windows 98 fixed several issues / problems / compatibilities from windows 95. The only one I remember was the restart into dos mode for old stubborn dos programs. I think it had something do with memory mapping. Anyway one of the greatest combos was windows 98se and office 97. Also remembered better usb support to.
PnP has nothing to do with automatic driver installs at all, what it actually was was a bios extension that allowed the BIOS to take control of interrupt ports. In the old days all your hardware would have jumpers and you'd be expected to set things like IRQ Port and DMA Address manually, things were kinda structured in a way that, in most cases the defaults would work but if you tried to use 2 cards on the same port neither would work. PnP simply moved all of that over to the BIOS so during POST the board would scan your cards and assign them a free port automagically, TBC this was added to the BIOS standard, all MS did was write a fancy wrapper that used PnP to ID the card and ask the user to provide a driver (and they did include a bunch of common drivers so older hardware would usually just work).
Widows 95 was a hard act to beat. Along with figuring out that streamlining programs in the "start button" they had the rolling Stones "start me up" for the ads soundtrack... Plus it had Easter eggs like the music video for Weezers buddy Holley to show off it's video features. Doom ran turbo charged... It was a good time to be a geek lol
For a certain era of vintage computing, I believe if a computer was able to handle any 9x, I use Windows 98SE. Any older and it's DOS 6, any newer and it's Windows XP. In some edge cases where ram is low and I want networking without a lot of hassle, then Windows 95A (before they added FAT32 or USB).
Great video, thanks! Though you *really* should have captured Win98 in 16 bit or 24 bit color - those hi-color icons, gradient titlebars were sooo beautiful in 90's.