What To Choose ?
Pro & Contras of following Windows Operating Systems
Win98
Microsoft's
mostly used Operating system after times of Win3.11
and Win95 . Win 98 is a 32bit platform and will run , smooth and problem less for the regular
user if certain rules are obeyed. It's easy to install and more easy to use also
very reliable to work with.
Setup from Dos The Setup utility of Win98 when used from a Boot disk or made from the DOS Prompt will need to include Himem.sys ,this to run SCANDISK then it will also need to have the real mode drivers for the Cdrom loaded in Config.sys and the Autoexec.bat . To see the SETUP procedures from DOS or MS DOS Prompt click on the link also to see the procedures of setting up Windows from within Windows . Setup time should range form 30 minutes for a 233Mhz &up CPU but this depends also very much on the Hard drive used and the amount of Ram and also on the other Hardware components such as Sound ,VGA & Disk controller not to leave out the reading speed of the CDrom where the source is read from when setting up Windows.
Windows 98 has following Features :
Automatic Skip Driver or ASD is a utility which will during startup (boot) check the hardware for eventually miss loadings and then write a *.log file which can be opened using notepad or any DOS text editor to view. Editing doesn't do any good because the ASD will not look at it again and if everything's is clear it will just by pass it or in case that the hardware error still is there it will prevent from being loaded or unload the driver if the driver has been loaded.
Dr. Watson is a utility DRWATSON which comes with Win98 & Win98 SE and also with Win2K. This utility can become helpful in times when applications making problems and drwatson.exe will be able to trace the applications and if set proper will prevent in most cases the applications to lock up (hang) the Computer.
Reg Clean or Microsoft registry cleaner REGCLEAN is a very easy and useful tool to get unused or leftover registry entries cleaned out of Windows registry but it will NOT repair registry errors. It will look for class identifiers and scan the registry for bad entries and if regclean doesn't know the entry it will NOT MAKE ANY CHANGES TO REGISTRY. See regclean.txt
Automatic registry checker or SCANREGW.EXE which backs up the registry on each new day on the first start of the Computer. Then there is also SCANREG.EXE this is DOS version of the first one and it's used to correct and RESTORE Corrupted registry.
System File Checker or SFC.EXE which will check your system files for corruption and possibility to restore corrupted files, then also to extract some Win98 files from the Win *.cab's files.
Tshoot or Microsoft Configuration Tools MSCONFIG.EXE which will allow the user to manually check the system configuration and also to resolve boot or other problems which may occur while running Win98 for what ever may possible reason.
TweakUI is a add on utility , TWEAKUI which can be found on the Windows 98 (not SE) Cdrom in the Tools folder and it will be very helpful to tweak Windows for maximum performance or also to fix minor problems and to restore some of Windows setting back to Original
.
Boot Time When configured right and NOT using config.sys, autoexec.bat and also active desktop and view as Webpage , then Boot Time should be under 1 minute for most computers having a 233 Mhz and upwards and with a minimum amount of 100Mb ram .
Most of the slow boots relating either to slow hard drives ,not enough ram ,bad configurations and or loading to much small "freeware Appz" at boot up and than also every one and the last Virus scanner will slow down the Boot Time in which Mcaffee hold surely the record to delay the Boot Time to a maximum .
Safe Mode Windows 98 and Windows98 SE (second edition) features like Windows 95 a safe mode option to repair bad Windows configurations .By default all Windows 9X will enter Safe Mode after a incomplete Boot ,but there are other ways to enter Safe mode:
1. While Booting ,after pressing the power button on the computer press and hold the SHIFT KEY on the keyboard this will enter Windows 9X Safe Mode
2. While booting ,after pressing the power button just when the screen comes up press and hold the CTRL KEY on the keyboard ,this function is only for Windows 98 & 98SE &Millennium will not work with Windows95 , and this function also will not work on a computer which has SCSI PCI cards installed. This function will also not work on Windows2000 (Win2K)
3.While Booting , just right after the initialization of the computer press the F8 Function Key on the Keyboard this can be used for all Windows including Millennium and Win2k.
