Windows 98 Support Ends Next Week

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5138328.html?tag=nefd_top' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-513...ml?tag=nefd_top</a><br /><br /></div>A brief public service announcement for those of you who run Windows 98: Upgrade as soon as you can. Microsoft will cease official support for Windows 98 by the end of next week -- there will be no guarantee of critical updates and you won't be able to call the company up for tech support. They will keep the Windows Update site up for some time longer, but may pull the plug on it soon as well.<br /><br />"Six years after its launch, Windows 98 is still used by around a quarter of Web surfers. Microsoft announced last year that it would stop supporting Windows 98 beginning Jan. 15, meaning that million of users will soon be left exposed when new exploits and vulnerabilities are discovered."

[James Fee]

Send in the "exploits"... 0X

Seriously though, how many of these win98 users actually update their OS anyway?

[ricksfiona]

It was great knowing you Windows 98SE! You were always one of my favorites...

[Ed Hansberry]

According to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[ln];LifeWin it ended June 30, 2003 but WU was being kept up to date. No longer. WinME is going to hit this in Dec 2004, but ME isn't a real OS.

[Gerard]

So 98SE is doomed too? When I read about this last year I thought it was for the older release, 98 only. Oh well, we'll live. I use AVG anyway, and keep it freshly updated all the time though I rarely go online with my PC (mostly to update the anti-virus, and a teensy bit for downloads my iPAQ refuses to do). I'll not be buying XP for my one PC, a sad old Acer notebook. Though I upgraded the RAM, it's just asking too much of a 600MHz notebook to run XP I think. It's hard enough running 98SE on that dog. More likely I'll eventually take the plunge and clear the thing out, run Linux of some stripe on it just to see what that's like. When there's time, anyway. No new PC is going to replace it either. I bought it to support my first PPC, and it's always bugged me that I had to have one to install some PPC software. That tether grows less and less significant, and with it the need for Windows Updates.

Speaking of which, why aren't there equivalent updates for the PPC I wonder? Sure, there's the odd EUU or SP, but those are very rare.

[Michman]

Droping WIN98 stinks. My oldest desktop is still a tried in true browser machine running 166 MMX processor with 32MB RAM. It's the 4th computer and the last resort in a household of five. But it works and I decided upgrading on the motherboard wasn't worth it long ago. I guess I may retire it sooner than I once thought. :cry:

[SassKwatch]

I'll not be buying XP for my one PC, a sad old Acer notebook. Though I upgraded the RAM, it's just asking too much of a 600MHz notebook to run XP I think.
No idea what the 'official' word on this is from MS, but my desktop is only a 733mHz PIII, and XP Pro runs like a champ on it. Of course, it does have 512mb of RAM. Runs Photoshop 7 just fine.

[Gerard]

Well, that's nice. My Acer Travelmate notebook is a 600MHz PIII, with an upgraded 192MB of RAM. I may, perhaps, drop a bit of cash for another 256MB someday, but I'd rather not. Better spending money on PPC stuff. Somehow I'm thinking my notebook is a bit to old school to run XP.

[Ed Hansberry]

I can personally attest thatsa fresh install of XP on a 300MHz machine with 128MB of RAM is acceptable for most people. I wouldn't load photoshop on it, but Office runs just fine.

[PR.]

Bye Win98 I don't ever want to see your sorry self any where near me ever again :evil:

---

I can tell you at work we have a Pentium MMX 166 Laptop running Win2k with just 80mb RAM, and its slow but thats more the fault of the gfx drivers than anything.

[ctmagnus]

Windows 9x? :rotfl:

If you turn a Win9x machine on, let it boot and walk away from it, it will eventually crash, even with no user interaction.

[blang]

This is sad. Windows 98 is the perfect operating system for little kids. Nothing beyond this can play the older kids games like Jumpstart or Reader Rabbit. Oh Well :(

[Stormswift]

Well, this is just peachy.
You know with all of the griping about win 98 I liked the system. It was simple. You could find things. It was predictable. You could learn to hack the registry. With the right upgrades it finally stopped crushing. I have a 300mz dinosaur. It works just fine on it. I even got the old box to start synching again with my old IPAQ. Life was good for about a month. Now I have to re-configure Internet connection and do pass through because I cannot allow the "dino" to go on the internet all on its own, else the bad people will read all of my steamy e-mails and be up to date on all of family happenings. I am sure they will find the baby's toilet training facinating. Can't have that. I gueass Win 98 is now trully like my Titanic98 startup screen : hopelessly sunk....
I am sure that in the years to come and Mr. Gates' innovations occuring with regularity only matched to that of the appearance of pipmples on a teens nose we will all miss the good ole' days. We will miss the freedom to exlplore, the freedom to get frustrated, the freedom to crush our box at least once a week because we "just had to install and try that new proggie". Now we will glance at the screen (does it still go blue I wonder?) and hit the restore button and we will remember th excitement and total unpredictability of Titanic 98.. uh...I mean windows 98, may it rest in peace

[sponge]

What's with the tone of the messages? It's not like you can't run the OS anymore. Any exploits can be worked around with a firewall, or by a different program, say Firebird for the countless IE holes. Just because MS won't support it, doesn't mean you can't use it. If it works, stick with it.

[mangochutneyman]

I imagine once MS starts requiring forced activation on it's OS with every startup, all those old 98SE CD's are going to get pretty valuable! :wink:

[Janak Parekh]

Just because MS won't support it, doesn't mean you can't use it. If it works, stick with it.
True, but plan for an eventual transition. Now that Microsoft is dropping support, expect software and hardware vendors too as well. You'll eventually find that the new printer you by doesn't come with 98 drivers, etc.

--janak

[Iznot Gold]

Hey what a coincidence, yesterday I eventually upgraded from Win98 to 2000 Pro. Why....because bit by bit W98 wasn't supported....Repligo....WIFI...are but the first that come to mind. I think I got my monies worth outta 98 but it was unstable to the end!!
Regards
David
PS....right off to download the endless patches and security updates & drivers..no fun with a dial up connection! 8O

[Jonathon Watkins]

If you turn a Win9x machine on, let it boot and walk away from it, it will eventually crash, even with no user interaction.

Come on, that's not fair. A properly tuned 98SE machine can be a pleasure to use. I set up offices with W98SE years ago, and those machine ran pretty stably. You can get under the hood easily enough and in it's time it was pretty decent. Lets not talk about Win ME. As far as I was concerned, Windows jumped from Win 98SE to Win 2K with nothing in-between.

I still keep a copy of Win98SE running dual boot on one machine just in case I ever need a boot disk or something else that XP won't give me.

[Steven Cedrone]

Come on, that's not fair. A properly tuned 98SE machine can be a pleasure to use. I set up offices with W98SE years ago, and those machine ran pretty stably. You can get under the hood easily enough and in it's time it was pretty decent. Lets not talk about Win ME. As far as I was concerned, Windows jumped from Win 98SE to Win 2K with nothing in-between.

Yup, and it was a pleasure to walk up to a pooched 95 box, put in the 98 CD and have it fix all of the problems on the box...

WinME on the other hand... What a piece of crap...

I still keep a copy of Win98SE running dual boot on one machine just in case I ever need a boot disk or something else that XP won't give me.

http://www.bootdisk.com/

Steve

[Ed Hansberry]

If you turn a Win9x machine on, let it boot and walk away from it, it will eventually crash, even with no user interaction.

Come on, that's not fair. A properly tuned 98SE machine can be a pleasure to use. I set up offices with W98SE years ago, and those machine ran pretty stably.
It is fair, and true. there is a KB on it somewhere. After 96 days or so of being on, a ’98 box will just crash. Never fixed as I recall. the solution is to reboot.

[Steven Cedrone]

It is fair, and true. there is a KB on it somewhere. After 96 days or so of being on, a ’98 box will just crash. Never fixed as I recall. the solution is to reboot.

I remember that as well...

Problem was: the box never ran long enough to hit the mark, you always had to reboot it before then...

Steve

[Ed Hansberry]

49.7 days and it was fixed if you downloaded a file. I don't know if this was ever posted on WU or not. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;216641&amp;Product=w98

You are right Steve - the only way you could get 98 to run 49.7 days was to not use it. I don't know how in the world they found this bug. :lol:

[Jonathon Watkins]

Well, for 'Office' work Win98SE was quite sufficient at the time. We're not talking server OS here, but client OS. I do remember that bug now you mention it - never seen it of course. :lol:

Good site there Steve.

[Janak Parekh]

I still keep a copy of Win98SE running dual boot on one machine just in case I ever need a boot disk or something else that XP won't give me.
http://www.bootdisk.com/
Actually, XP can make boot disks. Just go to My Computer, right-click on the drive, choose Format, and check "Create Startup Disk". :)

--janak

[kcmedic]

What I find funny is that six years after launch, It STILL NEEDS updates and patches. Go Microsoft :D

[Janak Parekh]

What I find funny is that six years after launch, It STILL NEEDS updates and patches. Go Microsoft :D
Any and every piece software has bugs. I'm glad to see MS has been patching it this long; most manufacturers would stop patching it earlier.

--janak

[Jonathon Watkins]

Actually, XP can make boot disks. Just go to My Computer, right-click on the drive, choose Format, and check "Create Startup Disk". :)

8O Well, you learn something new every day. I thought you could not make boot disk with XP. You couldn't in W2K anyway. There you go. Ta. 8)

One less reason for Win 98 then. :lol:

[kcmedic]

What I find funny is that six years after launch, It STILL NEEDS updates and patches. Go Microsoft :D
Any and every piece software has bugs. I'm glad to see MS has been patching it this long; most manufacturers would stop patching it earlier.

--janak

I was mostly joking, but I would think that in 6+ yrs we still wouldn't need critical updates.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Any and every piece software has bugs.
Yup.

There are Always new ways of attacking systems. The trouble with MS is that there are often Design Decisions to blame rather than traditional 'bugs'. Still, as a software tester this is strangely comforting. It keeps me in a job anyway! :lol:

[Janak Parekh]

I was mostly joking, but I would think that in 6+ yrs we still wouldn't need critical updates.
Why not? ;)

If you've got a service listening for an IP connection or a tool that makes IP connections, bugs in the code can lead to vulnerabilities. Most products that are Internet-based today have vulnerabilities of some sort. I wouldn't dare install my ancient copy of RedHat 4.2 on a non-heavily-firewalled setup...

I can get into a whole discussion of good coding practices and good IP-based programming languages, but we'll get seriously offtopic then.

--janak

[Ed Hansberry]

What I find funny is that six years after launch, It STILL NEEDS updates and patches. Go Microsoft :D
Any and every piece software has bugs. I'm glad to see MS has been patching it this long; most manufacturers would stop patching it earlier.

--janak

I was mostly joking, but I would think that in 6+ yrs we still wouldn't need critical updates.
Anything with several million lines of code will never have all bugs worked out. Someone, somewhere with nothing better to do will find a vulnerability. There is a critical one in Windows NT 3.51 and NT4 that MS isn't going to bother fixing - too much to rework in the OS. The solution is either change that server to Windows 2000 or higher or put it behind a firewall.

[Janak Parekh]

8O Well, you learn something new every day. I thought you could not make boot disk with XP. There you go. Ta. 8)
Apart from ClearType, this is the single handiest feature XP has over W2k for me. ;)

--janak

[kcmedic]

I was mostly joking, but I would think that in 6+ yrs we still wouldn't need critical updates.
Why not? ;)

If you've got a service listening for an IP connection or a tool that makes IP connections, bugs in the code can lead to vulnerabilities. Most products that are Internet-based today have vulnerabilities of some sort. I wouldn't dare install my ancient copy of RedHat 4.2 on a non-heavily-firewalled setup...

I can get into a whole discussion of good coding practices and good IP-based programming languages, but we'll get seriously offtopic then.

--janak

Point taken. I guess i was thinking more of flaws in the software causing it to crash so much.

[Ed Hansberry]

8O Well, you learn something new every day. I thought you could not make boot disk with XP. There you go. Ta. 8)
Apart from ClearType, this is the single handiest feature XP has over W2k for me. ;)
That, and mobile stability. I couldn't suspend/resume Win2K for more than a week without Win2K getting flakey. WinXP will go a month or more. I usually reboot for a critical update or other software install before having to because XP is getting weird with suspend/resumes.

[eustts]

Well,this might be off topic a bit...

If you were goig to update a W98SE machine (PII 450mhz), do you buy the upgrade or do you buy the full blown version of XP (XPpro)

[Ed Hansberry]

Well,this might be off topic a bit...

If you were goig to update a W98SE machine (PII 450mhz), do you buy the upgrade or do you buy the full blown version of XP (XPpro)
The upgrade, even if you want to do a fresh install. If you do a fresh install, and I recommend you do, have your Win98 CD handy and install XP formatting the HD. At a point it will see you don't have a valid OS on the machine and ask for a qualifying CD. Just take out the XP CD, insert the 98 CD, wait a minute and press OK, then put the XP CD back in.

[tanalasta]

Here's an article i found on http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8371656%255E15306,00.html regarding Win98 support. I've been using this OS on the *newest* computer in my house - an intel 433Mhz celeron and have no intentions of upgrading to WinXP or a new computer.

And for the first time in about 2 years i downloaded some 20 critical updates last week :oops:

MS extends Win98 support
Chris Jenkins
January 12, 2004

MICROSOFT has announced it will extend the paid support service for its Windows 98 and Millennium edition products until the end of June 2006.

Microsoft's "Extended Support" for Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition (SE) had been due to end on Friday 16 January, while support for Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me) was due to wind up at the end of December.

However it has now announced an extension period, during which it will offer paid phone support and "continue to review critical security issues and take appropriate steps", Microsoft Australia senior product marketing manager Danny Beck said. Support will also include the availability of "hotfixes" that mend security vulnerabilities and other flaws in the operating systems.

Mr Beck said the worldwide extension would give Microsoft more time to "communicate its product lifecycle support guidelines in a handful of markets - particularly small and emerging markets".

The change was a result of customer feedback in a number of markets, including Australia, he said.

The change also brings Windows 98 SE into line with the company's current policy of a seven year support program.

"We made the decision to also lengthen support for Windows 98 and Windows Me customers through (to) the same date in order to provide a clear and consistent date for support conclusion for all these older products," Mr Beck said.

Microsoft had claimed a courtroom loss to Sun Microsystems over the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine forced it to end support for its older operating systems products. However, some analysts suggested that in reality Microsoft was trying to push users to newer versions of its products.

Mr Beck said Microsoft believed 15 to 20 per cent of all desktop computers still run Windows 98, although web statistics indicate the figure could be as high as 25 per cent amongst internet users. The company's research indicated that 50 per cent of those customers planned to upgrade their systems to Windows XP within the next six to 12 months, he said. It is believed there are more than 58 million Windows 98 systems still in use worldwide.

Mr Beck said a CD that contained a range of fixes, updates and patches for Windows 9x, Me and XP operating systems was still planned for release early in 2004. The CD, which would be available free from Microsoft's website, was designed to address the concerns of dial-up internet subscribers that found some updates to large to download, he said.

Mr Beck said he was not aware of how the decision to continue support would relate to the Sun court decision.

Australian IT

[Janak Parekh]

The change was a result of customer feedback in a number of markets, including Australia, he said.
I wonder how many screaming customers it took... :razzing:

Thanks for the update.

--janak

[Gerard]

Well now, this colours things rather differently! Good for you, all those who complained loudly and bitterly against the pulling of updates. My own notebook running Win98SE was brand new almost 4 years ago now, so that'll make about 6 years of use with Microsoft standing gaurd over the many bugs and vulnerabilities before it's rendered obsolete. That's not nearly so bad, something I can live with. By that time the old notebook won't be worth it's weight in scrap plastic anyway, though maybe it'll still work.

The other day a miracle happened, so who knows? I had 2 batteries, and both were only charging to about 30%, 33% on a good day. I mostly leave it plugged in. Then on Friday I booted the thing to check on something Pocket IE couldn't access, and happened to notice the battery icon was showing all blue! Double-clicking on it revealed a proud '100% - fully charged' notification. It had been 2 years at least since I last saw that. And after two more short sessions, one of about a half hour on battery only, it's still charging to 100%. That half hour took it down to 81%, but it climbed right back again on AC. So somehow the dang battery healed itself, at least for now. I didn't know that could happen spontaneously.

[heyday]

I guess Microsoft caved in.... Support is now available till June 2006.......

[maximus]

Does that mean that there are actually a LOT of people still using win98 ?

As for myself, I skipped everything between win98 and winXP on my PCs and servers. I was not impressed with winME, and win2K is too expensive. win2K is way more expensive than winXP Pro in my part of the world, I wonder why. I dont know, but win98 left quite a good impression to me.

[ctmagnus]

Anyone know when the new End Of Life for Win98 is scheduled? Is is still a year past the new End Of Support date?

[Jonathon Watkins]

Off topic, but I love your new title ctmagnus "2000 posts and this is all I get?". Very nice. :lol:

Show MS the money and they'll bite. I wonder which large customers persuaded them to extend the support.

[corphack]

so M$ is going to stop issuing critical updates and patches for 98? and just how is this "a bad thing"?

without M$' critical updates, and the subsequent flood of hotfixes, the OS will finally be stable.

what we need is for M$ to declare 2000 & XP as "end of life" so that those OS' stablize. My machines have suffered way more damage from M$'s support and critical patches (#39 - 49+), etc. than mblaster, et al.

[elentz1]

A press release this week Microsoft stated that due to so many countries still running 98 they will extend the support for another year.

[ux4484]

2006 as reported by another thread.

Considering that PC's from MS's benefactors (HiPaq, Dell etc) were shipping machines with '98SE on them in 2000, and some into 2001 (at least on laptops), I think it's wise of them to do a turn around on it. AIR, MS said that PC OS's will be supported for about 5 years. Well, does that mean 5 years from the original release date, or the 5 years from the last new machine shipped with that OS? I think pressure from mfg's as well as customers helped MS decide on five years from "last shipped". A wise move IMO. A lot of very viable machines are still running the most reliable version of the 9x code.

[Janak Parekh]

what we need is for M$ to declare 2000 & XP as "end of life" so that those OS' stablize. My machines have suffered way more damage from M$'s support and critical patches (#39 - 49+), etc. than mblaster, et al.
I disagree. Apart from a few patches (NT4 SP2 comes to mind), I've had very few problems with Microsoft updates. There's currently one server that refuses to install W2k SP4, but that's it across countless numbers of machines I've worked with.

--janak

[corphack]

I disagree. Apart from a few patches (NT4 SP2 comes to mind), I've had very few problems with Microsoft updates. There's currently one server that refuses to install W2k SP4, but that's it across countless numbers of machines I've worked with.


and I have over 2000 that have required complete image reloads since patch #40 was issued....

[Janak Parekh]

and I have over 2000 that have required complete image reloads since patch #40 was issued....
Sorry to hear about it. You must maintain more complex images than me. I've heard scattered reports of incompatibilities, but it sounds like you have that problem on a massive scale. 8O

--janak

[Wasp]

There was an opinion in ZDNet that Linux was the reason for the extension, not third world needs. If memory serves me correctly, MS was worried that people would move to Linux instead. I don't recall the particulars, but it wouldn't surprise me if bloatware wasn't one reason. These older machines may not be able to run XP.