Windows 98

george tichbourne

george tichbourne

Joined
Apr 19, 1999
Messages
3,560
We have been working with Windows 98 for about 10 years with off and on problems but now that the newest and hottest Microsoft products are available support of 98 is not available.

That doesn't seem to be much of a problem except that there appears to be no way to move 98 data to new programs like Vista from my backup hard drive....or am I wrong?

Tell me I am wrong, please.
 
George,

I haven't had problems reading older data from 98 to vista. Although there are a few programs that refuse to cooperatate with vista and if the program doesn't run you might have a hard to reading proprietary file types. Fortunately, it seems you can still get new computers (buisness ended) with windows XP that is much more 98-friendly. My experience tells me that Microsoft peaked at XP and vista came in only in order to make some more retail sales.

Having bought a new vista computer myself I can say that this one comes with a lot more bugs than it does fixes. I was happy with XP and if my hard drive didn't crash I would have still been happy with XP. Good luck with your compatibility issues!
 
Let’s see if we can find the right forum …
attachment.php
 
my understanding of the windows operating system is that each one is just changed and tweaked off the same primary platform. so bringing stuff from older
to newer is almost always possible. But as always one cant be 100%

in my opinion Xp is still the operating system to go with. Vista was kinda weird
to me and i spend allot of time playing with my computer and fixing friends computers.

Good luck
 
windows did kill of support for some legacy file formats, so while your file may transfer, the formatting (in the case of text) may get lost. XP is the last build in the WIN95 line. also depening on the format of the drive, Vista (especially the crippled editions) may decide to not like it. I'd upgrade to XP (probably involving an new machine) backup all files to a new drive formated for NTFS and make sure that you convert all files from the Pre-98 days to XP standards (.doc, instead of .wsd and such) microsoft has made it known quietly that they have no desire to maintain legacy support for file types, so keep that in mind for important digital docs, they are no good if the new software can't translate them. ran into the same problem going from WIN 3.1 to WIN98
 
Jumping from Win98 to Vista is too big a jump boss. Vista is not a well-liked program anyway, and I would suggest you use Windows XP, which is simply the most stable version of Windows ever. I hade a brand new, unused copy, (in retail box), of Windows XP Home if you would like it. There is no problem transferring Win 98 data to XP and the NTFS file system in XP is more robust and takes less space than Win98..
 
Well it is running for the time being but I think I will look into the reformatting part over the next while.

Thanks
 
What Andrew said. :thumbup: (When I bought a new laptop last year I had to go to several stores to find one that still had Windows XP pre-installed on it! And listen to this: several salespeople told me they were forced to send back any unsold laptops with W-XP - they were not allowed to "discount sale" them next to the new Vista machines. :barf:
 
gadgetgeek said:
windows did kill of support for some legacy file formats, so while your file may transfer, the formatting (in the case of text) may get lost. XP is the last build in the WIN95 line. also depening on the format of the drive, Vista (especially the crippled editions) may decide to not like it. I'd upgrade to XP (probably involving an new machine) backup all files to a new drive formated for NTFS and make sure that you convert all files from the Pre-98 days to XP standards (.doc, instead of .wsd and such) microsoft has made it known quietly that they have no desire to maintain legacy support for file types, so keep that in mind for important digital docs, they are no good if the new software can't translate them. ran into the same problem going from WIN 3.1 to WIN98
Click to expand...


Interesting Gadgetgeek, I've converted win3.1 (16bit) text files to Open Office 2.0 files and haven't had a problem, can the same thing be done with the end being converting them to Win64 files fron Open Office?
 
I'm not sure, I use open office, and I've noticed that the Open Office team are very keen on maintaining "digital legacy" so I would expect so. I've had no problems using open office to generate files for use in Word, Exel and the like. the hardest part, I think, is making sure that you are converting into the right version for the intended program, not all of the formatting is compatible between different versions of the same program in windows. I have had that problem, I solved it by having many different versions of the same file, not pretty, but it worked at the time. am I making sense? I'm not always sure that I'm still in english.
 
gadgetgeek said:
I'm not sure, I use open office, and I've noticed that the Open Office team are very keen on maintaining "digital legacy" so I would expect so. I've had no problems using open office to generate files for use in Word, Exel and the like. the hardest part, I think, is making sure that you are converting into the right version for the intended program, not all of the formatting is compatible between different versions of the same program in windows. I have had that problem, I solved it by having many different versions of the same file, not pretty, but it worked at the time. am I making sense? I'm not always sure that I'm still in english.
Click to expand...

Makes sense to me...:thumbup:

I went from win95 (a 16 bit) to a zip drive to open office to Word in XP, worked fine.

didn't try excel though.
 
the biggest problem I had was with word doc formatting, I'm guessing because word wasn't really built for networks, where as exel is a business program with a longer history of being a networked program (multiple users, multiple machines, same file).
random thought for long term storage, if a file was in HTML, it is very likely that you would be able to read it many years from now on any hardware (useful for a digital backup of important docs kept safe away from home in the event of an emergency) even if it was forgotten about for a long time, HTML is not going to be replaced any time soon, so as long as the media itself did not deteriorate, it could be very useful as a long term archive.
 
Andrew Taylor said:
Jumping from Win98 to Vista is too big a jump boss. Vista is not a well-liked program anyway, and I would suggest you use Windows XP, which is simply the most stable version of Windows ever. I hade a brand new, unused copy, (in retail box), of Windows XP Home if you would like it. There is no problem transferring Win 98 data to XP and the NTFS file system in XP is more robust and takes less space than Win98..
Click to expand...

I have found that jumping from XP to Vista was a big jump, of course, I learned on 98 and 2000 Pro- so I have a natural inclination toward the more traditional Windows OS's. I don't enjoy using Macs for the same reason. I don't do anything hypercool- just usual stuff- and XP is my favorite OS so far.
 
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