UNOFFICIAL Windows98 Second Edition Service Pack 2.1a (Freeware)

You make some valid points but I have to agree with Whiskeyman. In all the years I used 98 I never had one single security related problem. The OS was stable. So much so that I'd put it on a par with the XP system I'm using now. Why would I want to take a chance and install the SP when I have absolutely no problems at all? Let's face it, things can and do go wrong when you do these types of things. MS has problems with their service packs, yes, but I find it hard to believe that nobody that installs this one has any resulting problems. Probably the vast majority have no problems at all but none the less, problems do occur I'm sure, and as I said, given my circumstances with my 98 system, why would I want to take the chance? If I'm not willing to take the chance on my system, I'm not going to recommend it to anybody else either.

Don't take offense at this. It's not meant to be a judgement of you or anybody else involved in this project. It's just my opinion. Somebody asks, I give it.

And, to correct one of the things you said (albeit a minor one) , I don't know whether Write works on XP or not but Cardfile works just fine. I know. I use it all the time.

 

Well, yeah you can get most of the updates offered by the Unofficial Service Pack and install them all manually. I have, just as an experiment. I think if you download all the updates offered by MDGx at his mdgx.com website and all the addons, WMP, Direct X, IE, etc updates then you essentially have manually installed the service pack.

I did that for a couple of systems but found it pointless as the Service Pack would have done a good part of it in minutes instead of hours. Then I just do the addon's, any newer fixes, and the WMP, Direct X and IE updates. Then 98SE2ME and the Maximus Decim MDAC updater.

Maybe a quarter of this stuff is supposed to be installed by Windows Update and some of it isn't really installed.

So, I'd have to agree with clasys and say that I wouldn't take the risk of running a system that depended on Microsoft to provide what it needs through Windows Update. But I do respect all the different opinions and enjoy hearing them.

Heh, heh. I always disagreed with Zander about his opinions regarding Angel and Spike (good thing Buffy did too, or the series wouldn't have had that happy ending) but still thought he was an integral asset to the Scoobies and always wanted to hear his thoughts.

 

In a world where led-by-the-nose-types are using XP until later this year/next year when they then change their noserings in for Vista ones, using 98SE *IS* an "alternate OS.

Lucky you that you haven't stumbled on the hundreds of bugs that MS fixed, but WU failed to give you/no longer does. Do you think the reason you don't have a problem is that after MS issued a fix to WU, they decided that you personally don't need it anymore?

The main point here is NOT security; that you read that into what I posted is indicative of just how bad this group.think here is.

If the SP gives a repeatable and reliable implementation of what you spend manual effort on, and you are perfectly within your rights to define the worth of your skills as "inconsequential" to use your word for it, I think the point is easily made that a package that avoids human error to do what you chose to do is a far better way to do it.

I'll condense a few points to bring them home:

1) All of the SP is 100% MS, that in a more perfect world would be part of WU and the SP wouldn't have ever been needed. But in this world , it *is* needed.

2) The options that are not defaulted in the SP, in some cases are third-party freeware and you are *invited*, not *required* to use them. In general, they uninstall nicely, and/or of such localized consequences as to be ignorable. [How many programs do you scrupulously uninstall and cannot live with the "stain" of any remnant of them still on your system merely because you decided you didn't actually need what it provided?]

3) Some obscurities of the options represent clearly MS "ought-to-have-released" stuff that fell through the cracks, largely because of the fact that WU let's us all down; as it gets "updated" it just plain loses things!

Some of the 98SE SP stuff *was* in WU and no longer is nor is replaced with newer/better replacements; they were just plumb forgotten. In many ways, WU is more like a "popularity contest" or "top 40 patch of the week" sloppy service, and not something to have the implicit faith you place on it.

I resent the use of the word "diatribe" merely because I line up a bunch of facts you cannot refute. More like an expose if you need to label it. Some might prefer to call it a wake-up call.

Unless you going to be claiming an arrogance as the one-in-a-million who never had a reason to re-install 98SE, thus you have "all" the updates because you happened to have been to WU when the no-longer-available updates *were* there, and as such will "never" need to have them re-issued, your position is rather laughable. What's the advantage of providing *less* support to end users? MS wants you to dump 98SE and buy the latest and greatest[-profit]; making WU as broken as it is is an obvious ploy to push you there even harder/faster.

USB support in 98SE sans the updates is pitiful. It's so bad that routinely *some* vendors silently install some of the updates found in the 98SE SP. They know that literally their hardware won't work without these patches, and will install the bare minimum to get the things to work, etc. After all, it's the job of WU to get you "updated" isn't it? Yet, WU has nothing nada nyet zilch about this set of fixes today. The SP has *all* of them! It even incorporates a feature borrowed from XP with regard to SP implementation:

Suppose you install a new USB 2.0 card into a 98SE system, and you never had that hardware before. Something will inevitably ask for the 98SE CD-ROM for new driver-related files. But in many if not all of the USB-related files' cases, these files are obsolete and perhaps even dangerous to add.

The SP imposes itself into the process, just as in XP, so that where appropriate, the SP2.CAB file is the first-choice for the relevant update files, to prevent you from using hopelessly obsolete **** written at this point nearly 7 years ago or perhaps more!

But today, not one of these updates comes from WU, so unless you get lucky enough with regard to that smart third-party vendor doing his little subset of the SP [and many don't do anything!], I wouldn't want to be so high-and-mighty about just how "stable" or "secure" my system was. You are one USB plugging in from potential disaster!

Your notions about Opera and Panda are laughable. Panda is a malware subject, not WU. Opera cannot be used for many of the anti-malware scans today nor is FireFox; you gotta have IE 6 SP1 and up-to-date as a general precaution. It's ludicrous to believe that a single product can protect against what's out there.

The *only* way to protect a system is to use the "ten little indians" approach and use a variety of programs; no one gets all of the invaders; the ones that get through some of these tools are so good you don't even know the invaders are there, until it's too late.

So, unless you are willing to buy redundantly to available free scans, you have to abide by these vendors' requirements, which is an up-to-date IE; you might be shocked after actually letting a suite of these check your system out to see what Panda missed. [I am not knocking Panda; I use their free scan as one of many. Try using Avast! and Trend Micro to name a couple.]

All of the malware stuff is beyond the point of the SP; your attitude of self-delusion regarding the right to feel "secure" in the midst of wide-spread potential harm merely because you did a "little somthing" is the problem here.

A good watch word for today really is that what you don't know *will* harm you.

cjl

 

If I made some valid points as you say, and you agree with W'man, then you have a split personality, since he does not.

And I'll say to you what I said to him; the SP is NOT a security issue. Few, if any patches have ever been issued as a security issue per se, and amazingly enough, the majority of these few actually are in WU, but not necessarily is working order.

In WU there are updates that on a freshly installed system [well, any system that currently never had the relevant updates!], depending on your choice of installation order, the updates literally do not work. They do work in *some* installation order of installs, but not in all. This is because said installers are broken as well as being in WU, also broken in many other ways.

The SP is NOT merely a "clumping" of the installation executables provided [or *should* be, but are not now, or perhaps never were, depending, etc.] by WU. Instead, it is truly an SP, as defined by MS's own methods, many of which are actually used. As such, the file updates are effected correctly; the SP is immune to the mistakes of the past such as are found in WU [or aren't even found there anymore in some cases!]

The point here is that WU lets you down because you can unknowingly shoot yourself in the foot for not applying dark grey magic to end-run around the unintended interactions of updates of WU. Even loading in one per WU session and rebooting doesn't help. The root cause is the installation program that brings you the updates is itself broken; unless installed in a "correct" order, the installation program of the MS updates just bails and fails to perform its intended mission. Yet, WU claims it is "installed" which can easily be proven wrong using the QFECHECK program [generally provided by WU, which is no big deal since virtually every update redundantly has the ability to install it, etc. WU merely has to be right one out of hundreds of times to get that one ok, etc.]

And then there are the various fell-through-various cracks problems, such as the update some MS bigot decided isn't for you, just for ME because he says 98SE is obsolete "today" when in fact, that "today" was a valid support date *before* MS recommitted support to June this year. [Yes, the bigot said 98SE doesn't get the updates because he decided that it was obsolete nearly three years ago when in fact it never was on that date, and later still support was extended for several more years; WU lets you down because WU cannot provide it as an update to 98SE, just to ME, which it *does* do. But even getting it from WU for an ME system won't install it unless you know the "innards" of the updates so affected; and yes, there are several. The *only* way to readily get these updates is from the 98SE SP. This class of WU problem is more of a "political" one than a technical one, but hammers home the main point -- WU lets you down! Bigtime! Some of these are current security updates for Media Player -- to fix problems which have been shown through proof-of-concept on websites and are on known security sites as major weaknesses already fixed - but not on *your* system if you depend on WU!

I find it amusing that you use the excuse that MS ******* up some unrelated updates as why to definitely not use the SP. Unlike a "real" MS update, the 98SE SP is far more tested. Feedback on the MSFN forum is taken quite seriously. Invariably, the complainant is the problem, such as using a broken download or other violation of the clear installation guidelines.

A few do have problems, but I have a totally different take on it: Just about all of these cases fall into one of two ultimate categories:

1) The computer's BIOS is broken. Probably XP will also fail on these machines. Maybe someone is adding in hardware that could be fine, but isn't able to be configured well in that explicit configuration. Some machines have problems with memory upgraded past some old bug's effective upper limit. Pull the memory out and the problem goes away. Tweaking the system settings exacerbates the problem. This is not the SP's "fault" but rather it elucidates the machine itself isn't up to snuff and needs to possibly be replaced, or a new motherboard, or perhaps a BIOS upgrade, etc.

This category is the minority.

2) The copy of 98SE is really, really corrupt. The 98SE SP is not a fix tool. These users are loath to admit they were having many other problems before the application of the SP. For most users with a problem, the best thing is a clean install followed by the SP at an appropriate point in the install [there are recommendations as to order of events].

In any case, *any* system should be backed up *before* you do anything, much less the SP. I have heard it all; I upgraded to the new Adobe and now nothing works, etc.

Don't trust *any* program to not have interaction with what you have. That's just plain common sense. These days, no excuse considering how cheap it is to get a backup disk and a USB 2.0 card and USB disk box interface, etc. And all of that runs from DOS, so you don't have any excuse about how that might not work, since you never even boot your hard disk, etc. [You can also use things like Windows XP pre-install environment, known as Windows PE, which is XP on a CD-ROM stripped down. You can get it for example with either Norton Ghost 9 or 10. Again, your hard disk is never booted, so no excuses!]

So, implement a sane backup procedure, and stop playing the game if it might happen, therefore it will. Try it and see if you actually a member of the majority. Likely you are and your fraidy-cat manners are self-defeating. By all means use a safety net; 98SE SP recommends it!

Turning to a slightly different factoid:

Here's a great *actual* example of how WU kills an actual computer:

Sony Vaio Laptop; I think the model is PCG-FX-220 or something like that w/512 MB and 30 GB hard disk; O/S is XP. Uses Wireless 802.11b PC-card from Linksys.

Linksys driver is already installed and running; Internet access wireless allows you to run WU.

WU recommends a driver upgrade for the network card; you let it happen; as it installs, the driver is actually defective at WU! The installation hard hangs XP!!!

The only way to get out of it is to shut the machine off, suffer a CHKDSK cycle, etc. Fortunately, the driver update didn't finish.

But you can repeat cycle indefinitely. Courtesy of your friend [and not mine!] WU.

cjl

ps: Thanks for the info about the .CRD program, which does demand SFN's though!

 

WOW

What a lovely discussion. Stumbled on it by chance & loving it. Keep it up.

For the record, have been using this 'Unofficial' Service Pack since last 1 year and had no problems whatsoever.