ms wrote:

I have used W98SE for about 9 years, almost always very stable, once in awhile screen
crashes or BSOD. Just before a reinstall last week, it was having screen crashes
constantly for no reason I could determine, except the registry was 9 years old.

I have heard that people switching to W2000/SP4 say it is far more stable than the
W98SE they were running.

Is it correct that W2K/SP4 is considered much more stable than W98SE?

MS

Windows 2000 is newer than Windows 98, so it is somewhat better suited
to running on today's hardware. And it supports the NTFS file system
which is much better than FAT32 for today's large hard drives.

Windows 2000 is based on the Windows NT kernel, which is entirely
different from the 9x kernel used in Windows 95/98/Me. It was
intended primarily for business use so consumer aspects such as
multimedia support were a secondary consideration. Security and
enterprise scale networking were major concerns, much more so than
they were with 95/98/Me.

There was more post-release development with Windows 2000, as
evidenced by the number of Service Packs that have been released for
it.

Software compatibility can be an issue with Windows 2000, especially
with older applications written for DOS or Windows 3.x. Many of these
older apps, especially games, used programming shortcuts such as
writing directly to the hardware instead of using operating system
function calls. These apps invariably crash and burn when they are
run on Windows 2000 or XP, as direct control of the hardware by an
application is totally prohibited in the NT kernel versions of
Windows.

But I cannot definitely state that there is a "stability" difference
between the two Windows versions.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."