Updgrading win98 to win98SE - worth it?

[kbaasit]

Is it worth the hassle of upgrading win98 to win98 SE?

If so, what is it going take in hard drive spave when it is all done? I have a 3.2 GB HD with approx 600mb remaining.

thx

[Confused]

Unless you have a need to run ICS, I would not mess with it.
Chas

[TheJackal]

I would. A lot of new hardware requires 98SE to run.

However if you only have a 3.2gig hard drive then I would upgrade to a bigger one first, before I decided to go to SE.

[DragonNOA1]

Actually if it is that time of the year to reformat I would just install 98SE on the freshly-deleted drive. A 98SE install shouldn't go over a gig. But as far as what to do now.... just let it go and install it when you reformat.

[grasshopperbe]

i"ve done many installs of win98se and i mostly get it to 240 mb right after install. Shouldn' like 500 - 600 megs be enough to keep it running. with enough space for swap and all. most systems here have been running between 3 - 5 years now and windows is still far under 300 mb.
so even on a 3.2 Gb hd that shouldn't be a problem.
i run 2 pc's with 98 from a 1.5 and a 2 Gb hd.

[Kubie]

kbaasit,
Something to keep in mind. If you d/l SP1 to your Win98, you will have Win98se without ICS as Confused mentioned.
I believe the SP1 will give you the upgrade to run the newer hardware TheJackal mentions.
HTH
Carl

[kram 2.0]

To tell you the truth, I would watch for sales on HD (they always go on sale) and find lets say a 80GB or a 40GB Harddrive around 20 USD. Then, install XP, not 98SE (their prices are similar anyways).

Hope that helps,
kram

[glc]

kram - ever consider that some people just don't WANT xp, or don't have machines with the horsepower to run it well?

If you have access to 98SE, it's an easy and worthwhile inplace upgrade. Just revert IE back as far as it goes before you do the upgrade and it will wind up with 5.01 when you are done with the upgrade, and I'd leave it *right there* without putting IE6 on - unless you want to do the 84 meg download of IE 5.5 SP2 from evolt.org..

SE doesn't take up much more room than FE - about 100 megs at the most as I remember. Clean it up good (temp, TIF, etc., scandisk, defrag) before you upgrade. If you have to upgrade with a full retail or OEM disk, you have to boot to dos first and rename win.com (in c:\windows) to win.old or the upgrade will not run. Make sure you install Windows to c:\windows and not c:\windows.000 as it might suggest.

[CrazyMike]

98 SE is known to be less buggier then 98 FE. I had first edition and had nothing but problems and have friends with wecond editon and claim it's the ultimate gaming operating system.

If you don't want XP, 98 SE is the best choice compared to the extreamly buggy ME/98 FE and the resource hogging Windows 2000.

[Panama Red]

Just some thoughts and info. I have XP Home on it's own paritition along with drivers and software relating to attached hardware. All other programs and the Page File (virtual memory) are on their own partitions. Even with that lean of an os partition, XP still takes up a little over 3Gb of space. I also have 98se on a second hard drive on it's own partiton. All the same equipment drivers are installed as well as AVG, Spybot, Adaware, Registry Healer, Nero, Intel Application Accellerator, Audigy Soudcard Support, and a couple other minor things. Total space is just under 900Mb.

My neighbor had an older system with 98FE on it and had Comcast cable installed. I had to do an "over the top" to Second Edition in order for it to run. Some services and programs have a minimum requirement for 98se or they won't function. With all the updates to SE, including IE6.0, it runs very smoothly. I even have 1Gb of ram in my dual boot machine and thanx to the tips from here at PC Mech it runs excellent. Hope this helps.

[glc]

2000 a resource hog? Not even close, it's a lot leaner than XP, it just takes forever to boot. It's not a gaming OS but it's stable.