1) Upgrading to IE6 on a Win98 machine will probably end up in a lot of
trouble. Many people had problems after installing IE6. IE6 was clearly
not written for Windows 98.

2) Upgrading to Windows XP on a sub ghz machine, it can be too slow. It'll
probably work on a Pentium 3 processor, but don't install XP on anything
lower than that.

3) Ok. So now what? Does that mean our aging computers are stuck with
Windows 98 and Internet Explorer 5 ? NO!

I must blow away Microsoft's little secret. The version of windows you want
is Windows 2000. Windows XP is basically just Windows 2000, but with all
that cute graphical bloat added (among other useless bloat). Windows XP's
bloat just adds to the memory requirements, and processor load. Windows XP
was clearly written for multi-ghz machines.

Windows 2000 is 99 percent compatible with Windows XP. Windows 2000 is
actually about 10 percent faster than Windows 98. So, it translates to
this. You can take that old 120 mhz machine, and install Windows 2000 on
it, and it'll run a bit faster, and it will be compatible with Windows XP.
And you'll be able to install Internet Explorer 6 without problems.

Ebay is a great place to get almost any Windows version. You should be able
to easily get a copy of Windows 2000 from Ebay easily.

Windows 2000 will run with as little as 64mb of ram, but at least 128mb is
recomended for additional work space.

Some very important factors when installing Windows 2000. Because 2000 is
the same as XP, 2000 also has the same security flaws out-of-box. Remember
all those viruses that infected XP machines from just being connected to the
internet? Well, 2000 has the same problem out-of-box. VERY IMPORTANT: When
installing, Do not expose the computer to the open internet. If you do,
it'll get infected in minutes. For now, you can just disconnect the
computer from the internet.

Ok, when you're finished installing Windows 2000, you will need to visit
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com to fix the security flaws. Because you
can't expose the freshly-installed Windows to the internet, you will need a
firewall or router. If you are on a broadband connection you probably
already have a router. Make sure your router is setup to route incoming
connections AWAY from your IP address. If you do not have a router, then a
software firewall will work. You will need to find the software firewall on
a cd-rom, or perhaps off of a local LAN connection. I like Tiny Personal
Firewall, for example. Once Installed, block incoming connections, or at
least block ports 135-139 and 445, is where the viruses come in.

Ok, now that you setup your router or firewall, you can now safely
re-connect your computer back to the internet. Direct Internet Explorer to
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com . In the list of Security patches, there
will be one named "Service Pack 4" The total download will be more than 45
megs, so a broadband connection is a must if you want to get it done
quickly. After SP4 is done installing, reboot the computer. Now go back to
Windows Update, and there will be some more patches. Install all the ones
that are "Security Update". Reboot computer, come back to Windows Update
and repeat until the Security Update patches are gone. It usually will take
at least a few times. That's it. Now from here the computer is patched
over, and the security flaws will be gone.

*** Sometimes you'll get lucky, if you got a later version on 2000, SP4 will
already be included. That means that fewer patches will have to be
downloaded.

From here, you may install Internet Explorer 6 if you want. It works
wonderfully with Windows 2000. It is available from Windows Update. But
please go back to Windows Update after installing, there have been several
security patches for IE6 since it was released. There are also Direct X
9.0b (for games) and Media Player 9 . If you thought the previous version
of Media Player was slow, Media Player 9 is faster than the previous since
Microsoft did a wonderfull job on it this time. As always, go back to
Windows Update to for the patches since both Media Player 9 and DirectX 9
both have security patches for them since they were released.

All in all Windows 2000 far less prone to the "blue screen of death" and
other crashes, vs Win98 since it is so stable. It is about 10 percent
faster, and there's a neat little video performance boost also.


This is a little about Windows ME. What is Windows ME? WinME is
basically just Windows 98 redressed and some additional features added. It
does not address "blue screen of death", crashes. It may be even worse than
Win98. It is not compatible with Windows XP. If you want to upgrade to
Windows 2000, treat it as Win98.


That's all for this FAQ. If you have any questions about this, or anything
else about Windows 2000, like "How do I remove the logon screen?", or "How
do I close ports 135-139 and 445?", or anything else, please email me at
. You may post your reply here, if you'd like.