Win 98--is Win 2000 any better?

[sethfp]

I have Win 98SE. Have noticed that many new programs have Win 98SE as a minimum requirement. Win 95 isn't even supported anymore in many cases. When will minimum requirement be Win 2000? Is Win 2000 better? If Win 2000 has the label "professional" can it be used like Win 98?

[Darkstar]

Windows 2000 is better. Not very good for gaming, imo (get XP for that, if you have good hardware), but absolutely more solid for everything else. Give it a good amount of memory (>256MB) and it does fine. Be sure to get all the Windows Updates and SP3 too.

When I came on-board, everything here was all 9x. Absolutely sh*t in a business/networking environment.

[-Senectus-]

I use win2k for gaming.. no issue onmy machine...

win2k rocks.

[freddy]

when you learn the little "tweaks" in 2k ,,,u will "never" go back to a 9x box,,,

I don,t play games ,,,but i wan,t an o/s that is stable ,and 2k is.

on a non skt7 brd with 256+ memory ,,it rocks!

if u cut back all the crap from xp ,,,u end up with the 2k "heart" ,,,,,so why spend hrs gettin rid of that crap, go 2k!


FtF

[Matridom]

Originally posted by -Senectus-
I use win2k for gaming.. no issue onmy machine...

win2k rocks.

ditto... i used to have a 98 dual boot.. canned 98 months ago, have not missed it once.. all my games run on it properly.

[Dark Millennium]

Have to agree. W2K is much better than 98. Its much more stable than 98.

As to games, just make sure the game says Windows 2000 on it. I have come across some games, that work fine on 2000, that were never meant to support it but others just crap out. So I suggest to do some experimentation to figure out which games will work for you.

[sethfp]

Originally posted by Dark Millennium
Have to agree. W2K is much better than 98. Its much more stable than 98.

As to games, just make sure the game says Windows 2000 on it. I have come across some games, that work fine on 2000, that were never meant to support it but others just crap out. So I suggest to do some experimentation to figure out which games will work for you.

Win98SE can run both 32bit and 16bit(DOS) programs. Does Win 2000 support 16bit programs?

[Chosen One]

I've never had a bluescreen with W2K. Now Win 98 on the other hand...

[Dark Millennium]

It doesn't support any 16 bit apps that I know of. If it does, then I believe they are probably few and far between.

I'll double check to make sure though.

I just checked, and according to Microsoft, 16 bit apps should run so long as you has the following three files:
command.com
autoexec.nt
config.nt

There is also a Knowledge base article on what to do if these files are missing or corrupted HERE

Hope this helps

[Orangeman]

This is what CNET reviewers say about <a href="http://www.cnet.com/software/0-6688749-8-9854920-1.html">XP</a> and <a href="http://www.cnet.com/software/0-806340-1204-1503458.html?tag=txt">Win2k</a>

Good Luck,
Orangeman

[Stalemate]

Originally posted by sethfp
Win 98--is Win 2000 any better?

Yes.

I won't address the issues of 16-bit apps and some older games, but that's the consensus in a nutshell.

If you'd like, you can always setup your system to dual boot Win98 and Win2000, but once you're used to Win2000 you'll probably use it exclusively.

[nytiger73]

I would say most defiinitley yes. You'll never want to run a 9x based OS again once you get used to the rock sold stability of the 2K/XP kernel.

Personally, I prefer XP over 2K. I like the blending in icons (can't remember the "official" term for it) I also like the cleartype feature. I have also found that XP is quicker than 2K is on my machine. Not sure about others though.

Definitley go to 2k or XP, you won't be sorry. If you run into issues with Apps or Games, you can always come here, someone most likely will have seen your problem and can help you.

[Penman]

After a month with XP on my home PC I've wiped it and put 2000 back on. I find it runs games more reliably (GTA3 doesn't even work on XP - or at least for me) and I generally spent my time in XP trying to take the cartoonyness out of it and make it look like W2K!!

XP is nice though, but personally I feel that it's very bloated and that it's not got anything that I need that 2000 hasnt.

oh and did I mention I couldny play GTA3 on the "game friendly" XP?

both dump on 95/98 from a great height, well worth upgrading if you have the hardware to back them.

[seier]

I avoided Win2K for a long time and was tolerating win98SE. Today, I don't miss it one bit. Windows 98 SE OS crashes so much it's scarry. Out of all my apps I only know of 2 that won't run on Win2K. And come to mention it one of them (Learn to Speak Spanish 7) might work now. It wouldn't run because Windows 2000 wasn't Sp3 or higher. Today you can install an Sp3 so perhaps it will work. Win2K is faster (on a Pentium II or better), the networking code is much better than 98SE (speeds up your web browsing), and it almost never crashes. It's also nice not to feel like you have to save your work every two seconds, because it might crash. The colors are easier on your eyes than Win98. You'll also need more RAM for Windows 2000 128 is only Okay, if you want things to work well consider 256 the minimum.

Win2K is superb for 32-bit gaming. NT was terrible, because the keyboard and mouse responses were slow. NT also didn't go any higher than DirectX 2 for 3D and DirectX 6 for Direct Draw and Media. Win2K is not superb for emulating dos games, but it just depends on what you have. There are a few DirectX functions that aren't available in Win2K that were in Win98, but I think these were fixed in XP. However everything I've tried runs. The best thing to do is check NT Compatible to see if your games will work in Win2K or not. Yes XP is great too, it's fast, it's stable, but it's also new code. Really bad things can happen with new code for example you might have some crazy partition configuration and experience data loss, because nobody tried what you're doing before release. If I were you I'd get 2K today and XP tommorow (1-2 years later). Besides there's trillions of FAQs and experts on Win2K there isn't that much help yet on XP. Also a lot of hardware works on 2K and not on XP. Although a lot of newer hardware will install without needing drivers on XP. However these are like all things, trade-offs.

For the record I worked at MS in the Windows Consumer Hardware Lab at first we were testing Windows 2000 as the next upgrade to Win95/98 and some other group was working on Win98 SP1. However Microsoft chickened out and decided to make a new Windows 98, 98 Special Edition for consumers instead of having them upgrade to Windows 2000. So we dropped testing on Windows 2000 and started testing Win98 which I liked very much, because at the time Windows 2000 was a bloated unstable piece of caca. Also I knew windows 98, how it behaved and how the registry worked. Win2K was a whole new beast. I was very much afraid of adopting Win2K years later, because of my bad testing experiences with it. However, that was while Win2K was under development and unfinished product. Since then it has been finished (no longer a beta) and now they've released 3 service packs all of which have made it a wonderful stable incredible experience. Win2K is so stable that even at release (IE no Service Packs) it still works great. Not as well, but still very decently far, far, far better than Windows 98 SE. You asked about Windows 2000 Professional, yes that's the version that's closest to Windows 98SE. The other versions are for servers, cost more, are more complicated, and install different applications. Server is designed for a specific task, unless that is your primary function, creating a network, web, and or database server then I'd highly reccomend you skip it.
If you have a Pentium class system I'm not sure I'd even upgrade to Windows 2K unless you are lucky enough to have an HX chipset, because they support 128MB of ram. Otherwise don't upgrade. If you have a PII or better you'll be loving life in win2K.

Yes Windows XP is faster on some systems, but you have to have a Pentium IV I belive. Also I think XP has better dual processor support.

If you mean 16-bit windows applications. Yes almost all of them run on Windows 2000 without issue. In fact I can't think of any that don't run without issue. The only problem I've come across is the Windows Entertainment Pack installations. Some give a few errors, but you can still get it to work. I might of had to place the files manually from a backup rather than using the installer.

In terms of dos games, Win2K runs some of them and none of them with sound. If you want sound in dos games install VDMSound It's freeware.

If your dos game still won't work try Virtual PC You can just emulate a dos system. Dosbox will also be good in about a year from now.


Good Luck,
Christian Blackburn

[DocPC]