Win 98se vs Win ME

[LaughingMAN.S9]

im currently in the middle of bringing my 12 year old gaming rig back to life to play mostly late 90's games and possibly a few early 2000 games if it can handle


this is what i've been able to salvage

1 ghz pentium III complete with original motherboard
256mb rdram dim
60 gig hd (may have a higher capacity hd somewhere lying around somewhere tho)
nvidia GeForce 256 card (a little dirty but im almost positive can be salvaged)
soundblaster live sound card
50x cd drive
3.5" floppy drive


im pretty sure im going to need a new case and power supply but apart from that i think im good to go, only thing i cant decide on is which OS to go with or which would be better for my needs


win 98 seems like the defacto go to right now being as i mainly want grim fandango and bladerunner up and running along with a few earlier rts titles (kknd, dune, command & conquer, dark reign) light 3d shit like quest for glory V and possible dos titles later on down the line but not a real deal breaker


but i also want to be able to play games like max payne and giants citizen kabuto without problem and i dont know if they were win 98 compatible, which overall do you think i should choose?

[kedawa]

I'm pretty sure any game that plays on ME will work on Win98SE.
None of the features added to ME are of much use for gaming anyway.

[Boltorano]

I recently resurrected my own Windows95 box and got a copy of Win98SE off eBay. CD-ROM had disc rot and it still installed perfectly!

Looking online, both Max Payne and Giants: Citizen Kabuto support Win95, so you should be fine there. WinME is nothing but bad, bad memories for me. Sure, if you gave me a copy for free I'd take it but I wouldn't ever use it, except perhaps to boot up and laugh at. It's terrible.

[ownerizer]

I would go 98SE or Win2K. ME was HORRIBLE.

[johno590]

ME is straight up horrible. Windows 2000 is the best because it was more stable, very close to NT edition.

[LaughingMAN.S9]

lol only reason i mention me is because when i originally built my machine i had me preinstalled on it and it always treated me right, lol for about 7 or 8 months when xp came out and i just moved on, i didnt realize win 98 was supported for so long either, i honestly thought as soon as me rolled out, microsoft just stopped giving a fuck and moved on within that same year, good to know



will i have any problems running 98se with any of the parts i have? specifically the 60 gig hard drive and the 1ghz pentium iii?

[fahlim003]

will i have any problems running 98se with any of the parts i have? specifically the 60 gig hard drive and the 1ghz pentium iii?
The processor is no problem but if the 60GB harddrive is in NTFS file format, Windows98 and lower won't be able to see it. Windows2000 will, so that's my recommendation if it's NTFS.

[kedawa]

Under no circumstances should you install Win2K for playing games made for Win95/98.
It's a better OS, but it's not compatible with a large portion of 90's PC games. It also has basically no DOS support.

[WesternNYCollector]

Just divide that hard drive into multiple FAT partitions. Sure the early 2000s era games might be in the 1GB+ range but most of the 90s stuff is measured in hundreds, if not tens of megabytes.

[RP2A03]

Go with Win98. WinME's DOS mode is gimped and older games that require DOS will not work.

[Jorpho]

Over at mdgx.com, there's instructions on how Windows 98SE can be selectively upgraded with some of the nicer features of Windows ME to create something the author calls "98SE2ME".

I'm told ME really isn't as bad as some people say it is, provided you disable system restore and don't mind the hastily-removed DOS support. Here's a bit from the MSFN forums: (http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/61407-service-pack-for-windows-me/page__st__460__p__841393#entry841393)
ME is not for DOS-Freaks.

ME is a modern Multimedia general purpose OS for a networked multimedia Home or a personal Laptop.

ME is the most evolved Win9x OS and is more stable than 95,98 and SE.

Don't buy the "Me is Beta" phrase that everybody badmouthes ME. The Truth : it shipped with prereleases of IE 5.5 and WMP 7.0, now what's that about - install IE 5.5 final or IE6 and WMP 7.1 or 9 and voila everythings solved. In fact the german ME edition came on two CDROMs : one OS, and one with WMP 7.0 final plus some bonus stuff to satisfy customers. The systemresore bug is a bug indeed, but theres a well-known and available hotfix and afterwards its solved. Systemresore works exactly like in XP and it is very reliable.

It's few glitches can all be worked out, in generally it depends all on compatible Drivers : ME had the same problem as vista - when it came out there were only 98 drivers around, but ME wants WDM only. Otherwise ACPI wont work and system stability is in danger.Another thing to consider is that ME needs a lot of CPU power and RAM. 500 MhZ and far more than 128 MB will work wonders.

ME has capabilities not found elsewhere in win 9x :


full ACPI aware: improving cold boot time, pre and post-logon boot times and time required for resuming from hibernation, OS-controlled ACPI S4 sleep state and other power management features without manufacturer-supplied drivers

WDM Driver modell throughout the OS, less use of VxDs for more stability. Needed for ACPI to work its magic.

Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) instead of TWAIN , still used in XP, support for PICT-Cameras and Scanners ( lots modern devices use this protocol ).

Universal Plug and Play ( UpNp) , detects devices on the network automatically.

Built in Windows 2000 TCP/IP and NDIS networking stack and architecture, more reliable, full-featured, stable and offered better performance over the 98SE stack .

Support for networking over FireWire, IrDA, ( Bluetooth capable with 3rd party drivers like Toshibas famous stack ) a network diagnostic troubleshooter, outstanding Home Networking Wizard which let people share folders,printers or set up a connection-sharing with offline-machines.

native USB support for Mass-storage Devices and external CD/DVD devices, better USB-printer support.

native Firewire support, for DV-Camcorders and the like (think of the Moviemaker application )

far better memory handling than 98SE, especially if more than 256MB Ram is present. Depending on mainboard you wont have to workaround the 512MB - "bug", I have seen PCs with 1GB and ME without any tweak running stable.

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) , Distributed COM+ ,MDAC and JET database working in background like in XP, mainly used for diagnostic-wizards and the PC-Health services like :

SystemRestore, automatic Regstry backups,Signature-Checkers for Files ( ME uses *.CAT files like 2000 and XP ), resulting in System File Protection, automatic recovery of overwritten or deleted core-files ( that's why a Servicepack is hard work, you cannot simply overwrite OS-files with custom ones )

Help and Support Center is by far more userfriendly and interesting to use than 98SE's HTMl-Help. You can access the Microsoft Knowledgebase / Support website inside this application. When you click on the support options you get access to DXdiag,Systeminfo, WMI,Dr Watson and all other system-diagnosis tools. Built in wizards and Troubleshooters.

Multimedia inside, unseen in any Consumer-OS before : MovieMaker , WMP , Internet Games, DirectX Voice chat,DVD,Onlinestuff, MS Agent "merlin" as your talking OOBE- wizard makes this the total multimedia-Windows out of the Box .
DVD player supports software decoding for playback of DVD movies without a dedicated decoder card


Better and feature rich Windows 2000 like Explorer :


Image Preview: In Windows Me, images can be viewed by using the Image Preview utility. It allows users to rotate an image, print or zoom in/out an image. Image Preview supports images with .BMP, .DIB, .EMF, .GIF, .JPEG, .PNG, .TIF and .WMF file formats.

Compressed Folders: Windows Me includes support for ZIP files through a shell extension known as Compressed Folders; allows users to create, access and extract files from ZIP archives similar to a regular folder in Windows. The user can also restrict access to files with a password.

Search facility is integrated into Windows Explorer ( very much like the XP one )

Accessibility extras : Onscreen Keyboard,magnifier, Speech .. prettty good for people that need it.


Well.. that's not all, but the topnotch argument to choose this over 98 my friend.

last my own extra Remark : I have a MS wired keyboard 500 with multimedia buttons, pause/play/Home/Favorites/Calc and such..

In Windows 98 and 2000 I need " the Intellitype software" to make them work..

Only In ME and XP they work without any running software at all Wink

Those little surprises are worth it, believe it or not..

Like I said it is NOT for DOS-freaks..

but for XP-feature seeking and multimedia-loving people on older or less powerful hardware or the need to have games and apps running fast as possible ( I do a lot of Photoshop 7, Poser 5 on a 256MB equipped ME Machine - dont even think of that under XP !).


win 98 seems like the defacto go to right now being as i mainly want grim fandango and bladerunner up and running along with a few earlier rts titles (kknd, dune, command & conquer, dark reign) light 3d shit like quest for glory V and possible dos titles later on down the line but not a real deal breakerI'm pretty sure a lot of those will run on a modern machine without much persuasion.


The processor is no problem but if the 60GB harddrive is in NTFS file format, Windows98 and lower won't be able to see it. Windows2000 will, so that's my recommendation if it's NTFS.You do realize that even if the drive is NTFS, it's trivial to reformat it, right? NTFS isn't embedded in the hardware or anything. (Using FAT32 on large hard drives isn't especially recommended for performance reasons, though.)

[fahlim003]

You do realize that even if the drive is NTFS, it's trivial to reformat it, right? NTFS isn't embedded in the hardware or anything. (Using FAT32 on large hard drives isn't especially recommended for performance reasons, though.)
Who said it was embedded? Also, who is talking about reformat, seems to me you're the only one with that idea. I said to simply not bother if your harddrive is NTFS since Windows 98 cannot access the drive in this format. I'm well aware that performance goes down after ~40gb and up with FAT32 so logically if you want to format an NTFS hdd into FAT32 and partition every 40gb, so be it. I still stand by what I said, I would suggest 98 and if not that then 2000 (there are tweaks for 2000 as well which have added support, much like what you've posted for ME).

[Jorpho]

Who said it was embedded? Also, who is talking about reformat, seems to me you're the only one with that idea. I said to simply not bother if your harddrive is NTFS since Windows 98 cannot access the drive in this format.That's like saying you shouldn't buy a house just because you don't like the color of paint on the walls. If I am the only one with the idea of reformatting, I do not comprehend why that is the case. (It's not like the performance penalty is a total deal-breaker.)

I mean, sure, there are reasons to run Windows 2000 instead of 9x or ME, but it does not strike me as a particularly good reason to do so just because a random hard drive just happens to be formatted to NTFS, as that can be very easily changed.


(there are tweaks for 2000 as well which have added support, much like what you've posted for ME).I think it is quite safe to say that there is no way Windows 2000 will ever be as compatible with Win9x games as WinME, as Mr. kedawa suggested.

[Tokimemofan]

Why not dual boot Windows 98 Second Edition with Windows 2000 that would allow you to use one to recover the other if it crashes and it allows real mode DOS
Windows Millennium Edition isn't as bad as some say it is, it just isn't as good as it should have been. It was the latest home OS for just a few months, not enough time to work out the bugs. I am posting with Windows 2000 and I have used every Microsoft OS since Windows 3.0.

Edit: Oops, I hit quote

[beigemore]

I've used a few WinME computers that ran unbelievably well. I think the problem most people had was with their hardware not being powerful enough to handle it.

[Zing]

I have absolutely no idea why people claim Windows ME was "horrible". It was significantly more stable and refined than Win98. However, there is one critical difference to a gamer: no pure DOS mode. WinME removed real mode DOS, which you may as well have if you are going to play old games. That is the only practical difference for a pure gaming PC.

[fahlim003]

That's like saying you shouldn't buy a house just because you don't like the color of paint on the walls. If I am the only one with the idea of reformatting, I do not comprehend why that is the case. (It's not like the performance penalty is a total deal-breaker.)You're the only one who suggested reformatting was "trivial", nobody myself included say outright that you should not reformat. I clearly said in my last post that you can reformat NTFS into FAT32 for use in 98 if the user wants, I'm not opposed to the idea, I simply said to avoid using NTFS if you can since 98 can not use it. I know of countless people who've reformatted into FAT32 but I've personally never had the need.


I mean, sure, there are reasons to run Windows 2000 instead of 9x or ME, but it does not strike me as a particularly good reason to do so just because a random hard drive just happens to be formatted to NTFS, as that can be very easily changed.Easily changed yet trivial? Also, there is a wealth of tweaks for 2000 if one is so inclined to look and again speaking from personal experience I found ME to be more headache than it's worth compared to when having worked with 2000. 98SE or bust for old games, the end.

[Cornelius]

You're the only one who suggested reformatting was "trivial", nobody myself included say outright that you should not reformat. I clearly said in my last post that you can reformat NTFS into FAT32 for use in 98 if the user wants, I'm not opposed to the idea, I simply said to avoid using NTFS if you can since 98 can not use it. I know of countless people who've reformatted into FAT32 but I've personally never had the need.

Easily changed yet trivial? Also, there is a wealth of tweaks for 2000 if one is so inclined to look and again speaking from personal experience I found ME to be more headache than it's worth compared to when having worked with 2000. 98SE or bust for old games, the end.

Not trying to be a smartass, but do you know what "trivial" means? It really just seems like you don't from the above post. I'll also suggest in support of J'orph that reformatting is indeed trivial. In fact, I thought it was pretty standard practice to re-format anytime you were doing a clean install of a new OS. I always have, anyway.

As to the question of the OP, I'd go Win98. It has become the standard for running older stuff, so beyond working pretty well for most games, there is also more community knowledge and support available. That's the best reason IMO.

[LaughingMAN.S9]

I'm pretty sure a lot of those will run on a modern machine without much persuasion.




not on a 64 bit system it wont, i mean it can with alot more than just a "handful" of tweaks here and there, but still, thats alot more trouble than im willing to suffer thru, plus i already have these pieces lying around and i was just going to torrent windows 98 anyway so might as well right? lol

[MrSparkle]

google "virtualization" you can run both operating systems on a more modern computer/operating system in virtual machines allowing you the ability to play both modern and classic games without needing multiple computers to get around driver issues.

[fahlim003]

google "virtualization" you can run both operating systems on a more modern computer/operating system in virtual machines allowing you the ability to play both modern and classic games without needing multiple computers to get around driver issues.
This is good to a certain point since 3D acceleration is limited in virtual machine booting, at least it was last I checked. So long as the majority of the games aren't graphics hogs a virtual machine is a good idea.

As for NTFS vs FAT32 in Windows 98, I've recalled that you can install drivers to allow 98 to use/see NTFS without significant issue. It's been years since I've done it but if you look around, you should be able to find some information concerning this.
For example: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/installing-sysinternals-ntfs-for-windows-98-driver/1047598

Even then if you would rather format back to FAT32, that too is an option. The bottom line is that Windows 98 SE is not a bad choice.

[LaughingMAN.S9]

google "virtualization" you can run both operating systems on a more modern computer/operating system in virtual machines allowing you the ability to play both modern and classic games without needing multiple computers to get around driver issues.


the thing is, i recently swapped out my hd on my laptop for a 32gig solid state drive, after windows installation i was left with only 5 gigs left, even after optimzation and getting rid of things i didnt need, i only have around 11 gigs left, so going the route you mentioned still wouldnt be to my benefit

[Jorpho]

I have absolutely no idea why people claim Windows ME was "horrible". It was significantly more stable and refined than Win98. The System Restore stnank was pretty bad.


This is good to a certain point since 3D acceleration is limited in virtual machine booting, at least it was last I checked.VMware has 3D acceleration, but only in virtual installations of Windows XP or later. Apparently you can also get 3D acceleration in VirtualBox, and can even use Windows 2000. However, at this time the only way to get 3D acceleration in any kind of virtualized Win9x installation is to use a special build of DOSBox; it's completely unsupported and doesn't work very well, however.


As for NTFS vs FAT32 in Windows 98, I've recalled that you can install drivers to allow 98 to use/see NTFS without significant issue. It's been years since I've done it but if you look around, you should be able to find some information concerning this.
For example: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/installing-sysinternals-ntfs-for-windows-98-driver/1047598While it might still be available somewhere through unofficial channels, Sysinternals stopped offering their Win98 NTFS driver when they were bought by Microsoft. Paragon still offers something, though:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-win98/

Nonetheless, while it will let you access an NTFS partition, it won't let you boot Windows 98 from an NTFS partition.


the thing is, i recently swapped out my hd on my laptop for a 32gig solid state drive, after windows installation i was left with only 5 gigs left, even after optimzation and getting rid of things i didnt need, i only have around 11 gigs left, so going the route you mentioned still wouldnt be to my benefitEven a single gigabyte would be plenty for a Win98 installation, virtual or otherwise. You could even run it off a USB flash drive.

[fahlim003]

VMware has 3D acceleration, but only in virtual installations of Windows XP or later. Apparently you can also get 3D acceleration in VirtualBox, and can even use Windows 2000. However, at this time the only way to get 3D acceleration in any kind of virtualized Win9x installation is to use a special build of DOSBox; it's completely unsupported and doesn't work very well, however.Yeah, I had heard about that DOSBox version but never followed through given the limited use it has.


While it might still be available somewhere through unofficial channels, Sysinternals stopped offering their Win98 NTFS driver when they were bought by Microsoft. Paragon still offers something, though:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-win98/

Nonetheless, while it will let you access an NTFS partition, it won't let you boot Windows 98 from an NTFS partition.

Even a single gigabyte would be plenty for a Win98 installation, virtual or otherwise. You could even run it off a USB flash drive.
Thanks for the reminder. When I had used those drivers in the past it was for my D drive, not C as mentioned since it isn't possible in 98 no matter what. I'll try and find my original install but for now I managed to locate another version for anyone interested: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CWWPGNFP

[Edmond Dantes]

IIRC, the big hard drive is only a problem if your BIOS doesn't recognize it--Windows 98 itself doesn't care.

[Zing]

If you format the drive outside of the Windows setup, Win98SE should be able to use up to 137GB via FAT32. Windows setup, or more specifically, the version of fdisk included, was limited to something lower (32GB?).

[Jorpho]

I posted http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm in an earlier thread. Win9x scandisk stops working properly at 127 GB, and partitions larger than 64 GB cannot be made with the default version of fdisk; the 32 GB limitation in Windows 2K/XP/etc is artificially-imposed, simply because large FAT32-formatted drives are not such a good idea.

But that said, http://toastytech.com/guis/miscb2.html has a screenshot of Windows 95 running on a 500 GB drive.

[Zing]

And to lock you into using NTFS to discourage using another platform. ;)

[kedawa]

I've used a few WinME computers that ran unbelievably well. I think the problem most people had was with their hardware not being powerful enough to handle it.
My first brand new PC was a Dell running WinME that I bought for college back in 2001, just before XP came out.
I never had any real problems with it, and it ran great, especially after I upgraded to 512MB of RAM.
My friends who held out for XP had nothing but problems until SP1 came out. People sometimes forget what an absolute dud XP was when it first launched. There was no reason to choose it over Win2K at all, and that didn't change for several years.

[heybtbm]

People sometimes forget what an absolute dud XP was when it first launched. There was no reason to choose it over Win2K at all, and that didn't change for several years.

XP being a "dud" it's first year was certainly the minority opinion at the time. To most people, XP was light years ahead of ME or 2000. It also looked gorgeous back in 2001/2002.

Anyway, I'm loving this topic since I was going to post the exact question the same day this one was started. I have full installs of just about every Windows version since 95. This thread (and other forums) seem to indicate Win98SE is the best OS for mid/late '90's games. DOS-based games anyway.

The question is how do I trick my Pentium III running XP (SP3) to install Win98SE? Would a HD format + reboot with the Win98SE disc work? Would it really be that simple?

[Jorpho]

The question is how do I trick my Pentium III running XP (SP3) to install Win98SE? Would a HD format + reboot with the Win98SE disc work? Would it really be that simple?What makes you think otherwise? A PIII is sufficiently old that there are unlikely to be serious hardware issues.

Actually, I have a PIII that dual-boots XP and Win98SE using Grub4DOS. (Technically, it triple-boots XP and two separate installations of 98SE, for no particularly good reason.) You'd have to resize your XP partition to do that, of course.

mdgx.com has a good number of links to projects on the MSFN forums that are useful for new 98SE installations, including unofficial service packs.

[WesternNYCollector]

My first brand new PC was a Dell running WinME that I bought for college back in 2001, just before XP came out.
I never had any real problems with it, and it ran great, especially after I upgraded to 512MB of RAM.
My friends who held out for XP had nothing but problems until SP1 came out. People sometimes forget what an absolute dud XP was when it first launched. There was no reason to choose it over Win2K at all, and that didn't change for several years.

Was that the Inspiron 8000 "desktop replacement" notebook by any chance? I got one in 2001, 900MHz Pentium III, 128MB of memory, on the basis that it was "for college" although I didn't go to college until 2002. I also upgraded the RAM to 256MB, it was the first major purchase I ever made on my credit card. It also ran horribly with Windows ME, XP was WORLDS better, memory upgrade or not. I still have it sitting out in a dead computer parts box in the garage, no hard drive (it was louder than every fan in my current PC combined), but I wonder if it will boot...

[Zing]

People sometimes forget what an absolute dud XP was when it first launched. There was no reason to choose it over Win2K at all, and that didn't change for several years.

This is the total opposite of my experience. I started using Windows XP with RC1 and it served me very well for my PC gaming needs. This was a stark contrast to Windows 2000, which had inferior DirectX hardware support.

[Zing]

The question is how do I trick my Pentium III running XP (SP3) to install Win98SE? Would a HD format + reboot with the Win98SE disc work? Would it really be that simple?

Yes, assuming your motherboard uses an Intel chipset. A P3 with a BX chipset board is pretty much the best Win98 machine you could ask for.

[MarioMania]

ME Sucks...My friend had it, Nothing but trouble ...I went from Win 95 to XP

[beigemore]

I've worked on some ME machines that were stable as hell. ME gets a bad rap because it was generally sold with hardware that wasn't powerful enough to really handle it. It's kind of like how Vista was thrown on computers with only 512mb ram with those same people wanting to get their 15 year old printers to work with it, then complaining when they have issues. I use to hate on ME, but it can run very well if it has the hardware to support it.

[Darkman2K5]

I had a P3 800mhz machine with 1gb of ram that came installed with ME and performance on it was really slow. The worst part about my experience with ME was the longer I let the machine run, the slower it would get. Apparently ME had a "memory leak", it would grab RAM for the OS and never let go of it even when it wasn't needed. I'm sure it would run better on machine that had better than my did at the time, but it wasn't a good first impression. With all that said, I would definitely go with WIN98 for a 90's pc. It just works, and all games released in that era should run with no issues.

[Jorpho]

Running any of the Win9x operating systems continuously without restarting on occasion is generally not a good idea.

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

For personal use, I favor Me for any 3DFX build I will do for myself that does not need Dos command prompt support. Me seems to favor 256-512 megs as its sweet spot, and I have honestly never had any issues with Me on stable hardware. If you need the ability to boot into DOS at start up or leaving Windows for Dos games though, it is best to go with 98.

[Emuaust]

I actually have an ME box setup, I prefer it for Win9x gaming as it supports more ram then 98 along with networking a little easier, for Dos gaming I use dos box and it works fine for me.

What I want to know though, what games are worth playing from that era that have issues on later hardware, I have the obvious games, thief 2, SShock 2. Anyone have any ideas?

[Jorpho]

Well, that's the thing: games that are well-known like Thief 2 and SShock 2 get patches and don't need to be run on older hardware anymore. (Look up DDFix.) Anything that still needs a Win9x box is likely to be obscure and not as good.

Apparently a lot of the games that used the Unreal engine have problems, but aside from Unreal, UT, Rune, and Deus Ex, can you name anything that uses that engine that you might want to play?

[Jaruff]

I've always used Windows 98SE for my older builds. That's the OS that really taught me a lot about computer software so I'm comfortable with it.

[Emuaust]

I like to have Half-Life pre steam installed just for the nostalgia, but yeah, there isnt a lot worth booting the older OS's for/