Pvt. Ryan Posted January 15, 2002 Share Posted January 15, 2002 Three of the four computers in my office are still running Win95. Two are PII 260s and one is a PIII 300. Each has about 128MB of RAM. I am thinking of upgrading them to Win98. Is upgrading simply a matter of installing the upgrade, or will I have to reinstall all my programs and drivers? Or should I just leave well enough alone? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 15, 2002 Share Posted January 15, 2002 Win95 is actually a bit faster than Win98, but the loss in speed is barely noticeable. However Win95 lacks native support for AGP and USB, so an upgrade to 98 will give you better support in that regard. You can run the upgrade in place, though a 'rule of thumb' says that it is better to do a clean install than to upgrade over an existing OS. This is particularly true when there is a lot of software installed, some of it basically wasting drive space. Your programs should work as they have before, but on occasion some hardware specific programs, like scanner software, may not work the same (but that should be a rare occurance). Win98 is similar enough to Win95 that there shouldn't be that many differences when it comes to running most software. You may want to check your current hardware and see if there are any updated drivers available. I'd suggest downloading those first before proceeding with the upgrade (but don't install them until after the upgrade). Make note of any network or dial up settings before performing the upgrade, in case something doesn't work as planned and you have to spend too much time trying to recall the info. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pak40 Posted January 15, 2002 Share Posted January 15, 2002 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Pvt. Ryan: Three of the four computers in my office are still running Win95. Two are PII 260s and one is a PIII 300. Each has about 128MB of RAM. I am thinking of upgrading them to Win98. Is upgrading simply a matter of installing the upgrade, or will I have to reinstall all my programs and drivers? Or should I just leave well enough alone?<hr></blockquote> It is worth the time and headache to upgrage to win98SE. Much better stability than 95 as well as a better OS overall. I personally would wipe the hard drives clean with a reformat and then load Win98SE. This will remove lots of clutter that Win95 has accumulated over the years and it will yeild a more stable Win98 than the "Upgrade" version. But, you nead to know which version of Win98SE you have. Do you have the "upgrade" or the full version? Or maybe you have two discs, Win98 and the SE upgrade. Win98 has pretty good driver database and most things should load just fine. You will, of course, have to update Direct X, video drivers(maybe), and any drivers for any component made after 1998. If at all possible, before re-formatting your hard drive, make sure your CD Rom is a bootable drive. You can do this in the system bios. Otherwise you will need some sort of win98 floppy disk to boot from. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted January 15, 2002 Share Posted January 15, 2002 Leave well enough alone. The only real reason to upgrade to Win98 is because forthcoming DirectX will not work. But they are business machines and need no DirectX, at least not DirectX8+. Rule #1: If it ain't broke don't fix it. But if you decide to break it, I highly reccomend doing a clean install. If you are on a network with internet access, then all you really need is the NIC drivers handy and all the rest can be done on the fly. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pvt. Ryan Posted January 15, 2002 Author Share Posted January 15, 2002 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by wwb_99: Rule #1: If it ain't broke don't fix it. WWB<hr></blockquote> I kind of agree with that. None of the machines is really having a problem. There really isn't much software installed on them besides what came pre-installed. The one problem I am having is that one machine won't let me install IE. No matter what I try the installation stops when it tries to access MS's site. I get a message along the lines of "cannot proceed with installation - not able to access the internet." The computer has a DSL connection and works fine otherwise. I even bought an IE disk thinking the whole program would be on it and it wouldn't need to access the net. Aparently even the disk just has an install program that tries to access the net. Netscape won't work with some sites and I really want IE on this computer (it's my boss' computer). I was thinking the upgrade to 98SE would solve this problem. By the way, I would purchase an upgrade version of 98SE for $89 from Staples and use it on all three systems. Hi Bill. Thanks for all the responses. [ 01-14-2002: Message edited by: Pvt. Ryan ]</p> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brooktrout Posted January 16, 2002 Share Posted January 16, 2002 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Pvt. Ryan: ...The one problem I am having is that one machine won't let me install IE. No matter what I try the installation stops when it tries to access MS's site. I get a message along the lines of "cannot proceed with installation - not able to access the internet." The computer has a DSL connection and works fine otherwise. I even bought an IE disk thinking the whole program would be on it and it wouldn't need to access the net. Aparently even the disk just has an install program that tries to access the net. [ 01-14-2002: Message edited by: Pvt. Ryan ]<hr></blockquote> If the computer is having trouble doing an online install of IE, try downloading the full version locally and then install from the harddrive. I realize that is what you were trying to do with the CD but you can download w/o installing IE. Instructions here: http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;q174680 Basically you have to download the ~400kb setup program and then point to it using the Start Menu/Run and adding a couple of switches. I have downloaded IE 5.5SP2 and IE 6.0 for all operating systems this way and just keep them on a CD. If that still will not install IE then try booting in safe mode and try the installation. Remember to place the IE files onto the harddrive before booting to safe mode as you will not have access to a CD. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted January 16, 2002 Share Posted January 16, 2002 Pvt. Ryan, It looks like alot of people were having a similar problem. It seems that someone at MS screwed up big time and made the Windows Update server unavaliable, meaning you would get the exact type of error message you have been getting. Go here for details. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pvt. Ryan Posted January 17, 2002 Author Share Posted January 17, 2002 I wasn't using Windows Update since it doesn't support Win95. Access to Windows Update is one of the reasons I wanted to upgrade. I was too busy at work today to try brooktrout's suggestion, but I will as soon as I get a chance. P.S. wwb, you helped me when one of my computers was hanging during boot up. It turned out to be a fried modem, or so I thought. I took out the modem and the computer worked fine. Then I replaced it with one of those metal thingies that fills in an empty slot space on the back of the PC (what the heck are they called?), and the computer would hang again. I took it out and computer is fine again. It seems very strange to me. [ 01-16-2002: Message edited by: Pvt. Ryan ]</p> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted January 17, 2002 Share Posted January 17, 2002 It was not Windows Update you were using, but that 500kb IE-retriever application uses the same web servers, I would give it another shot before giving up. I am not certain of this, but I think IE6 will not install on win95 anyways, for no good reason other than MS wanting people to pony up dough for XP. Sounds like there is some sort of short in that slot. It will not hurt anything to leave the little delete plate out. If you have not thrown out the modem, it might still be good. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pvt. Ryan Posted January 17, 2002 Author Share Posted January 17, 2002 I saved the modem. I never throw anything away. I was trying to download IE5 and it was a few months ago, so it wasn't related to any recent MS problems. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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