Vic wrote:
MS said:


That's not easy for me. The tech building my computer will put Ubuntu, a Linux
distro, on as dual boot with W2K.



Sounds like he really objects to win98 for some reason. Heck, you said you've already reinstalled 98 so what would be his beef with
installing W2K. A middle school kid could do it!

No, a misunderstanding here. He will do what I want, but as in my earlier post, today
it seems hardware available is not as advertised, does not run W98SE reliably, and
that is my prime requirement. He has lots of experience with W98Se before he switched
himself to W2K. He installed fresh W98Se on a new hard drive, practically nothing
else installed. In initial scandisk, we got screen freezes. This with a new, clean
registry, 128 MB VRAM. Answer seems to be the 865 chipset and motherboard for it are
not *really* compatible with W98SE. So I still run it on my old P166.


Only a few apps I run in W98SE are DOS, but I hoped to run some DOS games and old
football and aircraft games on the W2K computer, guess not.

My use mainly is plain text apps, nearly all 32, bit, some 32 bit games and the
internet, so W2K should handle that fine...?


from the sounds of it, you could live without 98 and would make due with W2K, but FYI, W2K has a 'compatibility mode' which 'fakes'
a program into thinking it is working in Win95, 98 or NT so your legacy programs MIGHT benefit from that feature. I had no success
with it but instead had to install DOSBox to run one particularly fussy DOS program. It works ok now, not as good as Win98 ran it,
but it's ok.

I'd like to back up a little; your initial post mentioned getting BSOD, then you reinstalling 98. How stable is the system now? If
it is good (to me indicating the BSOD was not caused by hardware)

Mentioned the likely cause in thread, don't want to get into that as the P166 works
OK now, has some sort of video problem between monitor cable to video card, as long
as it operates 24/7 it's fine, but in my normal pattern of cold boot each morning, I
get a black screen.

why not install W2K4 yourself, on your current HW? You can buy W2K
upgrade CD on ebay and install it to a partition other than the one for 98 (assuming you currently have more than one partition).
W2K will set up dual boot automatically for you! It's not hard. And if you make sure of having internet access the people here will
usually provide helpful information in case you need extra help!

See above, I will wind up on new computer with W2K and Ubuntu Linux in dual boot. Old
computer is no way capable of running W2K.

By installing a dual boot system you can have the best of both worlds, and although doing it may sound a little intimidating, with a
good BACKUP (of your entire HD) and some time, I think you find the rewards worth it.

You may think this is nuts but I have two PC's, an oldie (but a goodie) which includes a MULTI boot system with Win3.11, Win95 and
Win98. I love this pc (on it right now).

Then I have a hot-rod PC for multimedia production. It's off most of the time but, liking to tinker, ended up installing MULTI-BOOT
with Win95, Win98se, W2k4 and Xp1 on it! Can't find the Intel chipset drivers for the MOBO for Win95 so 95 doesn't work well but the
other OS's are great. And I find each OS has their strengths and weaknesses. Which have I found to be the 'best' all-round? XP1
(it's quite amazing)!

Waited until just this year to install XP (I don't change easily). And much to my surprise, really like it. It does better than W2K
running legacy programs, but not THAT much better, so Win98 is here to stay as long as I can find HW to run it on!

XP for some of you experts here is OK as you are capable of removing the crap from
it, but it's not easy for me.

Hope you find some ideas for yourself reading through all this. And don't let the tech. steer you into something you don't want.
I've noticed over the years people in service can have VERY different approaches; some want to steer you THEIR way (it's easier for
them, and often more profitable), and some will bend over backwards to accommodate YOUR desires. I prefer the latter.

If you think you can install a dual boot system yourself, consider taking the risk. If you have a GOOD, RELIABLE, FULL backup of
ALL your 'stuff' (on the HD), take the jump! You can do it. If you don't really want to be 'bothered' with all the technical stuff,
your choice will be different.

All the best, Vic

Thanks for your comments,

MS