Windows 98 machines "need cleaning up again"

[ajbritton]

I had to reinstall a Win 98 PC for someone recently and I could not believe how much I had forgotten! It took me the best part of a day to do what I could have done on XP in a couple of hours.

[farmerste]

there is an 'unofficial service pack' for windows 98, you can find it on google, change the boot logos, and most people never notice the difference.

I still us win 98, its tons easier to administer than xp and a lot smaller, i can roll an image onto it and have a machine running again in no time.

win 98- 300 mb
win 2k- 800 mb
win xp 1600mb
vista - 15000mb ????

and win 98 is a 32bit OS

we just use it cos we like appleworks, but its gotta go soon

[GrumbleDook]

Nope ... run Virtual PC Express or VMWare player ... you can keep W98 for those things that only work on it and still have Vista / XP.

[witch]

I also have 2 suites of Win 98 machines to administer.
Imaging is really difficult if all the machines are different.(Imaging locally from one to another is possible if a machine is really in a mess and you have an identical one)
I would go with what Dos_box and crt-it said, with the addition of clearing out the profiles as Schoolcare has a habit of holding on to them!
I would endorse CCleaner and adaware as the best way to go

And as for Win98 being unstable etc etc - we have very few issues with the machines - no viruses hardly ever now, and they do what the teachers want, so why would they want to change? Schools have no money, particularly down here in Dorset where we are almost at the bottom of the list when the government hands out money. There definitely hasn't been any large funding for IT - I am a governor of a Middle and Upper School so I know. One of the schools I work for has had to fund a new IT suite by using the buildings fund!
Obviously we would love all XP, and those of you who have got it and lovely shiny new equipement are very lucky, but down here at the Infant, First or Primary School end there is little money and no inclination to spend it on IT!
Rant over

[Quackers]

Do not know how much Deep Freeze costs, but that i think would be the best solution. We use the Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit to do the same kind of thing and it works wonders, but it does not support Windows 98.

[gwendes]

win 98- 300 mb
win 2k- 800 mb
win xp 1600mb
vista - 15000mb ????

XP is bigger than that! Doesn't matter though - an install with software running about 7Gb compressed only takes three minutes to reimage from a partition...

Win98 is sluggish, unsupported and horrible to look at. Anyone still using 9 year old software by choice needs their head checked. Vista is horrible too though, stick with XP!

Reimage the room with a lovely fresh installation or refuse to support it. Mucking around defragging and running scandisk is going to cost you more time than it's worth IMHO...

[SimpleSi]

There definitely hasn't been any large funding for IT - I am a governor of a Middle and Upper School so I know.

Are you sure you know :P

I thought that ICT funding is devolved the same way to most schools (ignoring BSF/Academies etc) e.g non money was ring-fenced last year but "additional" money was split 30/70 approx between school revenue funds and capital spending funds.

One of the schools I work for has had to fund a new IT suite by using the buildings fund!

As in capital funds as above?

Getting back to main argument

Win98 is sluggish, unsupported and horrible to look at. Anyone still using 9 year old software by choice needs their head checked. Vista is horrible too though, stick with XP!

Win98 is not sluggish - the old hardware it mainly runs on is slugish compared to the hardware XP mainly runs on. - Run it in a VM on an XP machine (or native) and see how fast it is (I have 3 "XP" machines downgraded to Win98 acting as file/print servers)

Win98 is only unsupported by MS - a lot of us around here support it

Win98 bad - XP good - Vista bad ...
After you've seen 10 or 20 OS's come and go - you get to be a bit more philosophical about what is good and bad :P

regards
Simon

[witch]

Yes, I DO know thanks very much.
You may 'think' you know something, but believe me the reality of a school budget is very different to what is apparent from outside.
No money was ring fenced for IT, and as in most schools, the money was sorely needed just to keep the places standing and working as well as possible.
We are not supposed to use the money for buildings as it HAS been ring fenced but it is the only way to get anything at all. There is already an issue with the network management software - not a building y'see.

I do like 98 though