IPV6 - no support

the internet will soon go to IPV6, which will at some point no longer work with windows 9x/me without a modification. IPV6-only clients are expected January 2012. windows 9x/me is not normally IPV6-capable.

this means soon you will not be able to get on the internet with this OS without a TCP/IPv6 stack.

But I will say that a new machine from a computer store costs $500-$800 for a quad core or 6-core AMD with a 1-2TB hard drive and 6GB-16GB RAM. and 2.8GHz. That's nothing to sneeze at. Those are ZT Affinity Desktops, and they are available at Costco and Wal-Mart.

You could get on the internet with trumpet winsock, which may cause the system to stop functioning, or Hitachi Toolnet6

well, I think to be on the safe side, you should get a new machine. for another reason why, read the next heading "Still useful?"

Still useful?

surprisingly, windows 9x machines can still be useful. if you are running MAS90 and you are an accountant, this is critical (at least it used to be). windows 98 machines can get on the internet. sort of. install IE6, Java and .Net 2.0 and you should be set.

it has wordpad, which is a basic word processor, and I package a word processor which runs on windows 9x, OpenOffice.org Productivity Suite (2.4.3 CD or DVD version).

Still running Windows 9x/me?

Printer Availability

there aren't any new printers any more which will work with windows 3.1.

But I will say that a new machine from a computer store costs $500-$800 for a quad core or 6-core AMD with a 1-2TB hard drive and 6GB-16GB RAM. and 2.8GHz. That's nothing to sneeze at. Those are ZT Affinity Desktops, and they are available at Costco and Wal-Mart.

minimum RAM/Virtual Memory(VM) settings

• 32-bit: Can get by on 64-128MB. 256MB with Eset Nod32 Antivirus+Java+IE6. these days, suggest maxing out the machine if at all possible, and it's inexpensive to do. severe performance penalties and program aborts on anything less.

I always prefer to max out the machine's RAM in case anything goes wrong.

managed VM tends to run the more disk I/O than it would for a fixed size: resizing itself and allocating and deallocating disk space using the filesystem takes up some amount of time, plus there's all the disk platter file scatter (fragmenting) for this method. you can save a lot of that time by using a fixed VM. However, if you are not comfortable working with VM, you can leave it as System Managed.

however, I have discovered that if windows doesn't have enough RAM, programs will crash or just quit all by themselves for no reason, dialogs won't display properly (buttons and other controls disappear).

If you can set VM to max, do that. With any VM it will run like a basset hound, but it shouldn't crash.

generally the machine will run somewhat slower the more RAM you put in, but when you put in the max memory:

• you won't have memory hungry apps like Microsoft Outlook crashing
• you can run lots of applications at once without having to close them. The heydays of single-tasking OS's like DOS are long gone (with the exception of embedded systems).
• you can run games

Software Availability

If you are still using Windows 9x/ME and you want to use newer software, you are up a creek without a paddle. The only thing I have seen available is

• antivirus software from ESET.com and *maybe* avast (but I don't think so anymore - go with ESET, they are the last one).
• for programmers,
  • Borland C++ 5.5 command-line compiler (see my software page at the bottom)
  • BASIC-like Auto-It 3.016, which can be set to compile non-unicode code which should be win9x compatible (I am not sure, but it may no longer compile under win9x)
  • mingw and mingw-w64 gnu C++ compilers
• Webroot SpySweeper still has a lower version number win9x/me version you can download from their site once you purchase their anti-spyware software. I do not know about their AV package because that is a new package and hasn't been out as long.
• OpenOffice.org Protivity Suite 2.4.3 from me but you can't get it from openoffice.org ftp mirrors anymore.
• Full Retail (not upgrade or OEM) versions of Office 97 or Office 2000 if you can still get a retail version. I could be wrong, but I think 97 is for win9x and office 2000 is for ME/win2k.
• PDFtypewriter, available from ctdeveloping $50, pdf editor, print->pdf, on 9x requires MDAC 2.5 or better.

I suggest you use your machine as an internet box (mostly) and MAYBE as a word processor (you can email documents, but printing depends on your printer). If you can find an HP Laserjet 4 or 5 or 6 you can probably get it to work with windows 98.

Printer Availability

Don't throw away that printer! it's gold! nobody makes windows 98 printers anymore. list of windows 98 printers (you can probably find one used at a local computer shop or computer recycling shop):

• HP Laserjet 4
• HP Laserjet 4/4m postscript
• HP Laserjet 5l PCL
• HP Laserjet 5/5m Postscript
• HP Laserjet 6l PCL
• HP Laserjet 6p/6mp - postscript
• HP Color Laserjet 5/5m ps
• HP Color Laserjet ps
• Epson Stylus 300 ESC/p 2
• Epson Stylus 800 ESC/p 2
• Epson Stylus 1000 ESC/p 2
• Epson Stylus Color ESC/p 2
• Epson Stylus Pro ESC/p 2
• Epson Stylus Pro XL ESC/p 2
• Epson Stylus Pro XL+ ESC/p 2
• Okidata B4600 series
• Okidata B6100 series
• Okidata B6500 series
• any HP PCL printer

Microsoft Windows Update site

IE6 SP1

Security lockdown: remove NETBIOS (one of several ways)

corruption

512MB Ram Maximum

Win9x/ME: 2²⁹=536,870,912 bytes=512MB RAM Maximum.
Windows Memory Limitations: see MSDN Article.

32GB FAT32 partition limitation

32GB BITSHIFT BIOS limitation

FAT12/FAT16 limitation: 105 files

FAT16 2GB volume limitation

Kaspersky 6.0 16384 files per directory/folder limitation

FAT long filenames length limit

DOS filename character set limitations

Windows Media Player 9

how to get Printer TCP/IP port

wichita computer guy

fixes

MDIE6CU 1.8:

unofficial win9x fixes.