Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA hard drives?

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Thu Feb 4 07:08:28 CST 2016


On 31 January 2016 at 17:19, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> BTW, are you indicating that Win 98SE _in general_ should only be used for
> retro-computing, or only Win 98SE _in the particular configration you
> described_ should only be used that way?


AFAICS:

At all. Ever.

It's a nearly 20y old piece of code which was notoriously unstable and
insecure when it was new.

Look, I built, installed, ran, maintained & supported MS-DOS-based PCs
for over 20y. I am not biased against DOS. But it's one of the
feeblest OSes ever to sell well.

DOS-based Windows was a bodge, a kludge, a temporary fix because OS/2
bombed and NT took a while to get ready. But NT is a better OS in
every important or material way.

I don't run MS OSes any more. I've moved on. Life's too short. I'm a
domain expert in them: this is why I no longer use them.

I'm typing under Mac OS X (on a 30y old keyboard) and my laptops run
Linux. All require vastly less maintenance and are more stable and
reliable -- as well as much cheaper -- than MS solutions.

But anyone with an ounce of technical knowledge should know better
than to run an old, unmaintained, out-of-support MS OS on any live
Internet-facing machine. Even if it exchanges media with
Internet-facing machines, *no*. Don't do it.

Move on.

Retro computing is a great hobby, even a way of life, but whereas a
decades-old copy of anything from Linux to Multics is as safe today as
it ever was, OSes of the Internet era *cannot* be used safely once
they're well out of date. Old viruses are still out there, waiting to
pounce.

It's enough work fixing up old machines without fighting old malware too.

Don't do it.

Nothing older than Win7 on any Windows PC that accesses the Internet.

This includes email. Yes, Jerome Fine, I'm talking to you, among others.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) • +420 702 829 053 (ČR)


More information about the cctech mailing list