Originally posted by: josphII
well the primary reason was compadibility. when 2k first came out there were several programs that didnt run on it, partition magic for example. eventually newer versions of the program were released and this wasnt an issue. i never bothered to 'upgrade' to 2k because of this. i did however dual boot with winxp when that finally came out figuring one day i would eventually no longer need win98, which always ran beautifully for me i might add. so after a couple of months of dual booting (mostly into windows 98) i had upgraded my software to thd poitn where dual booting wasnt really necessary, however i came to realize that the defacto winxp drivers for my modem didnt work!! (at this particular time i was in the process of moving and needed to use a dial up connection for a few weeks) i searched the web vastly but the company that made my POS win modem was taken over/merged with another company and support had stopped for my modem. so basically i couldnt get on the net with windows xp! when my dsl connection was finally up i went to windows update and, sure enough, ms released updated drives for my modem which actually worked - not that they were needed at this point. months have past since and at this point I havnt wiped my hd of the win98 partition mostly because of time/effort and mostly because of sentiment - that os worked beautifully for me for so long, kinda sad to see it go. i basically never boot into win98 anymore.
I also feel pretty much the same as you do. I really don't play games much but when I do, most
clearly run faster in Win98, especially with a minimal Win98 install that I never use and optimize specifically for gaming. As does yours, my Win98 partition carries sentimental value and I don't see any point in deleting it if I have the extra hard-drive space for it. Yes, there are many ways to recover from a Win2k problem, there are boot disks, rescue disks, ghost images, bootable CDs, and Partition Magic rescue disks, but sometimes you just need a second OS
to get your work done - that means no time for fun and games with restore disks and other goodies. One could argue the Win2k almost never fails and that has been my experience, but on one occasion a power failure caused the loss of some files needed for boot up and successful startup I got into Win98, finished my business and then repaired Win2k using the recovery console later when I had the time to do so. In case the Win2k partition needs an emergency reinstall, I prefer to get the few data files I keep (and haven?t recently backed up on a non-OS partition) on an OS partition out of there using Windows over using DOS since I can be more sure of getting everything (including ?favorites? and other knick knacks). Maybe having 2 Win2k partitions may serve my purposes better and I am considering that option, but my system will dual-boot 2 OSes for the foreseeable future, whatever my choice of those OSes may be.
P.S. No one has yet offered any evidence that games run as fast in Win2k as they do in Win98. There are many factors in play here, if someone has only 256MB RAM, then they might be constrained by the amount of RAM in their system and may be better playing games in an OS that has lower memory requirements (and don?t give me the usual Win2k manages memory 100 times better than Win98 reason ? I already know that. The real issue is whether it makes enough of a difference in an OS that will be running for maybe 2 hours while I am playing a game, that extra raw memory requirement of Win2k stills has an advantage). Although I know Win98 also runs processes similar to many Win2k services (just without the ability to manage them), there can be no denying that even the most pared down installation/configuration of Win2k will still run more things in the background than Win98. If I need to play a game that is not demanding of my system or I if don?t care to ?max out? one that is demanding, I just play them in Win2k. However, when I want to get the absolute most out of my video card and computer for games (this means pushing the limits of AA, Aniso, Resolution etc. possible on my system), I still boot into my Win98 partition. My Win98 partition has no programs that are not absolutely necessary to play games; it has the minimal windows installation - to make games run faster on it. I can't do the same with my main 'business' OS, so I keep a specially optimized Win98 partition around for that one time in 6 months I want to play a game and I feel like making sure it is running as fast as my computer can possibly make it run. When someone can offer a convincing argument that this role can be better handled by a specially optimized, minimal Win2k installation then I'll be the first to dual boot to such a Win2k installation. Personal characterizations do not count as convincing arguments or compelling reasons.
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