Old PC with Windows 98, looking to upgrade. Am I crazy?

wheatln2

OK, so here's the deal. I have an old machine from about 2000 or so that has been lying up for about a year. I want to give it to a mate who will just want it to surf the net and type up documents.

I was considering doing a re-install of 98 as the computer is pretty old and bloated, however I can't find my install disks as it's been so long. I do however have an XP-SP2 install disk that came with my laptop, so I figure I could use that.

My main problem is with drivers. How can I find out all the details of the drivers while in 98 so as I can look online for XP versions of them? I'm not that tech-savvy and any time I've re-installed windows lately, I've been working with a Dell Drivers disk which had everything somewhat set-up. So is there any tool I can use that will generate a document for me that will have a list of drivers?

Any thoughts or feedback on upgrading 98 to XP would be much appreciated. Or if people think 2000 would be a better bet than please say so and I can try and source a copy online. The identifying the necessary drivers problem still exists though...

Cheers!

nava

Hi

It will depend on the system requirements but probably won't be suitable for XP, should be ok for 2000.

2000 Requirements some info on Installing 2000

XP Reuirements

Regards

TerrorFirmer

nava wrote:

Hi

It will depend on the system requirements but probably won't be suitable for XP, should be ok for 2000.
Regards

He said his machine is from about 2000, which would make it probably a Pentium 3 or Celeron decent enough to run XP on without any problems.

Drivers shouldn't be a big deal - if you're using onboard sound and video, XP should pick them up automatically. If they're dedicated cards its a simple matter of having a look in side the case for serials and googling them, if its not obvious from the card itself.

The install though is a different matter. If you use the Xp cd from your laptop, you will be able to install but you will not be able to validate, without illegal means. Win2K is almost as good and a bit more resource friendly - and much easier to source and install.

To answer your basic question though, if you actually bought that machine new in the year 2000, without knowing the specs I'm pretty sure its safe to say either OS will run fine.

wheatln2

Thanks for the responses. It has a 550MHz Pentium III, 128GB of RAM and a Voodoo III graphics card, so I think the spec should be OK. I think the HD has like 15GB on it, so I reckon it should be OK.

I didn't know that my original XP install CD would cause validation problems. I actually was under the impression that with a disk you could install it on a few different machines for personal use like. Without threading on thin ice, if anyone has any suggestions or links about this that may be better suited to PMs, then they'd be welcome too, if you know what I mean...

Many thanks for the responses so far!

Capt'n Midnight

wheatln2 wrote:

Any thoughts or feedback on upgrading 98 to XP would be much appreciated. Or if people think 2000 would be a better bet than please say so and I can try and source a copy online. The identifying the necessary drivers problem still exists though.

ebay is good.
Don't forget that you can't use an OEM license on any other machine than it was shipped with. so you would be looking for a second hand retail license.

2K would be better for a system that old, the main difference with XP is the eye-candy and system restore, on an old machine you would turn off all the eye candy and probably set all desktop settings to classic anyway.

If it's going on broadband have a look at something like ubuntu as well, if all you want is an internet browser and the ability to use word/excel documents, otherwise you would have to spend money on the OS and a lot of time hardening up the windows 2000/xp machine as well as getting the to keep it clean. http://www.bbcworld.com/content/clickonline_archive_14_2005.asp?pageid=665&co_pageid=3

Jacques wanted to show me just how risky it is to connect an unprotected PC to the 'net. We set up a poor Windows XP machine with no firewall or anti-virus software - connecting it to the Internet would be like throwing it into a lion pen with raw meat strapped to its hard drive. How long would it be before we were hit by something nasty on the net? Hours, minutes? As it turned out - eight seconds!

as for dial up - there were still a lot of winmodems back then - drivers for ubuntu/linux would probably be as hard to find as XP drivers for them. An external modem should be no problems

check with the manufacturers site for drivers first.
and only for wordprocessing and internet then have a look at ubuntu or similar,

wheatln2

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

ebay is good.
Don't forget that you can't use an OEM license on any other machine than it was shipped with. so you would be looking for a second hand retail license.

2K would be better for a system that old, the main difference with XP is the eye-candy and system restore, on an old machine you would turn off all the eye candy and probably set all desktop settings to classic anyway.

If it's going on broadband have a look at something like ubuntu as well, if all you want is an internet browser and the ability to use word/excel documents, otherwise you would have to spend money on the OS and a lot of time hardening up the windows 2000/xp machine as well as getting the to keep it clean. http://www.bbcworld.com/content/clickonline_archive_14_2005.asp?pageid=665&co_pageid=3

as for dial up - there were still a lot of winmodems back then - drivers for ubuntu/linux would probably be as hard to find as XP drivers for them. An external modem should be no problems

check with the manufacturers site for drivers first.
and only for wordprocessing and internet then have a look at ubuntu or similar,

Literally this will ONLY be used for browsing and word docs. Possibly a few mp3s or something, but I doubt it will be pushed too hard.

I have a wireless network set up in the house, and was hoping to use a Dell USB modem http://cgi.ebay.ie/DELL-TRUEMOBILE-1450-WIRELESS-USB-ADAPTER-MODEL-D1450U_W0QQitemZ110055671638QQihZ001QQcategoryZ44997QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem with it and the driver page, http://cgi.ebay.ie/DELL-TRUEMOBILE-1450-WIRELESS-USB-ADAPTER-MODEL-D1450U_W0QQitemZ110055671638QQihZ001QQcategoryZ44997QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem says it works with Windows 2000 and XP...

If I do decide to source that copy of Windows 2000, is the activation process as strict on it, as again it wouldn't be a brand new copy but one that was used on a friend's machine.

edit: and I will add that it was never re-installed, it was an original install disk that came with his computer, and has never been used, so the licence codes and serials would all be legit.

Capt'n Midnight

Reminder - this forum is about software you own.

you can't move OEM windows to another machine (FULL STOP)
if it was preinstalled on that machine , then even if you have shrinked wrapped cd it's no use legally.

you can move retail windows to another machine but you have to remove it from the first one, and only if it didn't upgrade an oem copy and wasn't the basis of an upgrade. Some machines shipped with w98/nt4 and an upgrade copy of windows - if the upgrade was never installed it might be possible to install it but the license would be OEMified if the license on the other machine was OEM
so back to ebay - but looking for retail 98 or retail Nt which should be cheaper than retail 2000

for word processing www.openoffice.org , there are other free word processors out there like abiword

btw - re the Free option
while laptops wifi is fairly well supported in linux, USB support is sparse because the manufacturers don't produce drivers or share info, list https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessCardsSupported

wheatln2

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Reminder - this forum is about software you own.

you can't move OEM windows to another machine (FULL STOP)
if it was preinstalled on that machine , then even if you have shrinked wrapped cd it's no use legally.

you can move retail windows to another machine but you have to remove it from the first one, and only if it didn't upgrade an oem copy and wasn't the basis of an upgrade. Some machines shipped with w98/nt4 and an upgrade copy of windows - if the upgrade was never installed it might be possible to install it but the license would be OEMified if the license on the other machine was OEM
so back to ebay - but looking for retail 98 or retail Nt which should be cheaper than retail 2000

for word processing www.openoffice.org , there are other free word processors out there like abiword

btw - re the Free option
while laptops wifi is fairly well supported in linux, USB support is sparse because the manufacturers don't produce drivers or share info, list https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessCardsSupported

Thats great mate, some nice points to consider there.

A point I never actually raised was that the PC is actually working, it's just riddled with spyware and the windows installation is obviously a bit messed up and bloated as it runs incredibly slow. I would probably just reformat and reinstall Windows 98 if I could. To go back to my original post, is there an equivalent to device manager that I can go into in 98 that will give me all the driver info I need?

Ginger

Fairly sure its right click on My Comp and Properties and there should be a hardware tab.. if not Control Panel and System

Capt'n Midnight

on the win98 CD there may be a utility called hwinfo

old list but...
otherwise http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=47979

WCPUID from http://www.h-oda.com reports details of your chipset, CPU and motherboard. Handy before installing new drivers.

Motherboard Monitor from http://mbm.livewiredev.com monitors system temperature, fan health and warns of failure. Handy if you overclock.

Xteq Systems X-Setup from www.xteq.com/downloads/index.html helps you to change hard to reach games and system settings.

Belarc Advisor from http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html analyses and reports on all details of your system and can identify with serial numbers most of your hardware components. Great if you’ve lost the details of your modem or video card etc.

type hwinfo /ui and press enter