Win98/Win98Se Issues

I have seen on this forum and many others, users asking for advise on beefing up security on their Win98 machines. Win98 is about as secure as a paper sack, which is one reason it is not supported any more

The best advice is to upgrade (and not to WinME).
I know this could pose a financial burden on people, but if they are spending money on keyloggers, AV's, Anti-Trojan, firewall, etc...for a Win98 box, then they are not spending it wisely.

I do not mean to criticise anybody that still uses '98, but trying to secure it is not always worth the time and effort.

The only time Win98 is secure is when it is not connected to the internet.

 

I used WinMe and found that it was surprisingly more secure than I thought. But still crap when compared to NT...

Capp is right. Win98 does not support USB2.0 or FireWire. many features of modern hardware and software are not supported under 98/SE, drivers no longer have WHQL certification.

Win9x was not built to handle more than 256MB of RAM (WinMe=384MB). It causes BSODs and loads of crashes when you have more RAM than that.

Win98 was a very good OS but its time has passed. It just does not make sense to have it anymore.

Infact, billygunn wanted to throw 98 into the dustbin back in 1998, but they had to release 98SE as a 'placeholder' since NT 5 was delayed.

WinMe was release because Win2k development was very late and a consumer version was improbable, so they had to release another 9x OS to keep place till XP Home came.

I am not trying to flame anyone here. Listen to what Capp says. Its the only logical way.

 

Good! I'm glad you are able to secure your pc using Win98. Most people don't know how to do that. Your PC may be secure on the internet, but if somebody came to your workstation, one key press and they could have access to everything on it.

I didn't intend this post to say it can't be done, but the majority of people using Win98 have no security.

 

Are you aware of Unofficial Win98 SE Service Pack?

http://www.msfn.org/board/

MDGx 98SE2ME project is also very active.

http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=37302

For years I have also use 98Lite to improve security

 

Thank you for the kind words. I do appreciate it

 

On basis of keypress feature you say xp is more secure than 98? Just because a feature is present doesn't mean the user has activated. You'll have to do better than that.

Explain how using xp will make a computer more secure than using 98. Please don't say it is better for gaming, lol.

 

lol. With Win98, If I want to log into a system..I don't even have to try and guess the password or use any special software. All I have to do is click "Cancel" or hit the escape key and I have full access. With XP, I can lock down the system so that you would have to have winternals or equivalent software to get in.

Plus with NTFS permissions, I can prevent anyone from accessing any file. Win98 (using Fat32) can't prevent anything other than read/write permissions.

 

Passwords can not protect your computer from theft. Neither can NTFS permissions prevent the harddrive from being removed and examined.

I could use a bios password to accomplish all that you are doing.

I should upgrade to xp because of...ADS?

Try again.

 

Since most XP users run XP as they would run 98 (they all run as an admin), default security of XP is minimal. It allows for far better memory protection than 98, but that's about it. NTFS has to be acivated, but indeed, it will not prevent stealing the information once a device is stolen or lost.
XP came to be, because MS wanted to support only one code case for their OS. And since 98 is based on the old MSDOS, expandability was not enough, technically speaking.

I do believe 98 can be made quite secure, for normal beings, it can be as secure as a default XP (not SP2). But it will never ever be as secure as an xp that's installed with a little understanding. Just by creating a regular XP user account, with just the necessary permissions needed by a regular end user, security is much better than 98 can ever achieve without hindering functionality.

 

Of course 2000/XP is a better and more advanced OS, I think we can all agree on that. And a lot of the advanced security apps like Process Guard, PrevX and the DropMyRights tool don't even work on 9X. But sometimes you can't always upgrade, for example, I have a slow machine and running 2000/XP on it is out of the question.

That's why I have tried to make my 98SE machine as secure as possible, with all kind of tools . And I never had a virus/trojan infection in the five years since I've been using 98SE. Of course common sense also helps a lot.

 

Btw, the tools I'm using to secure/monitor 98SE are:

Secure IT, Qwik Fix, Bug Off, Safe XP, Script Sentry, Zone Alarm, Kaspersky AV, Port Explorer, Process Explorer, Startup Control Panel (AK Software), CurrPorts, Ad Aware, Trojan Hunter, StartupMonitor and A2 HijackFree.

Some notes: I'm not loading Kaspersky at startup and I don't use the realtime protection because of my slow computer. I'm also not using Spybot S&D because it's very unstable on my system. I would probably also have used System Safety Monitor but it was very unstable.

And to sum it all up, all of my software is always fully patched, for example when there is a vulnerability in IE/Windows, MS Office or other software like Quicktime or Winamp I always try to find a workaround or patch them as fast as possible.

 

Hey all you ppl are only taking about Win98SE and WinXP. Has everyone forgotten Millennium Edition?

If I put these tweaks on a WinMe PC, it will be noticeably more stable, reliable and protected than Win98 mainly because of the improved network code on WinMe!

The only advice I got for all you W98 users is...upgrade to WinMe if you cannot afford Win2000 or XP.

 

I say WinMe because Windows Me gave me a noticeable boost over 98 in video quality, games quality, game performance and overall system reliability and stability using the same software and drivers.

 

Well lets see...for Intel Pentium 4 processors WinMe is generally more stable as far as encoding of audio goes, and while I never tried any security tweaks for WinMe, I might say it would have a better effect because WinMe has Win2k's TCP/IP stack and network code and so it should be more reliable for Internet.

Non-WHQL drivers have caused me problems in the past. Generally graphics appear clearer or smoother, and for me, WinMe was more stable than 98SE. Those with P3s dont think so though. I cant comment because I now have an AMD64 and I have never tried WinMe on AMD64 or Intel Pentium 3.

Even though WinMe hung a lot like Win98SE it NEVER BSODed on me. The main feature in play here is the System File Protection, it prevents important system files from being replaced by an app. This has caused problems with 98SE.

Also, WinMe was very very responsive but 98SE seemed sluggish even though it didn't feel so.

Best Regards,
Firecat

 

Nice to hear from you too. For media and Music, Windows Me is probably a better choice because now Creative and others are only offering WDM drivers for their soundcards for WinMe and up and no support for W98SE with WDM..I tried to install my SBLive! 5.1 on Win98SE but it installed only VxD drivers.

Basically it just boils down to the drivers, this is where WinMe's better.

Regards,
Firecat