A common attitude with Windows users here

[Hammer]

Microsoft changed their driver wizard in Win98 a while ago, and now a lot of Win98 drivers don't work anymore,

The reason for that is simple i.e. Windows 9X's VXD drivers doesn’t work with Windows NT5.x style driver modelling.

Lesson learned: always use FAT for your boot partition and NTFS for other partitions, 'cause if the boot partition dies, you might have to transfer the HD to another machine to read your files on C:.

One could have another cut-down installation of WinXP/Win2K to rescue the main boot drive.

No one has forced you to upgrade to Win2K/XP IF Windows 98 does the work for you.

[Hammer]

Well, I never found out why XP took forever to boot, however, there was nothing else installed on the machine - just XP.

Define "forever"? I have an old Athlon XP 1800+ with an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe**** mobo and 512MB PC2700 for reference. Boot time from BIOS is about 31 seconds for WinXP-SP1/IE6-SP1.  

****nForce II with SPP/MCP-T, BIOS 1007 for 400FSB support.

Other reference/test boxes;
+ Athlon XP 2800**+, Gigabyte GA-7N400Pro2 (nForce II 400 Ultra), 1GB PC3200, CL Audigy 2 ZS. **Multiplier unlocked i.e. 500Mhz(100x5X) to 2200Mhz (200x11X).
+ Athlon XP 1800+, MSI-6330 V3.6 (and MSI-6330 V5)(VIA KT133A), 512MB PC133, CL SBLive 5.1 DE.
And several Pentium II classes…

Please include the brand (or make) who made your motherboard and the chipset in any Windows OS issues.

[Hammer]

vortexau wrote:
From I hate MS
"If you look in the executables in the Windows (XP) directory,  you find internal labels like 'ProductName: Microsoft Windows (TM)  operating system;  ProductVersion:  3.10'.  There's even DOS 5.0 code with a 1981-1991 copyright date.  What a great new product!"

98/ME contains partial 16bit support making things like VXDs (Virtual device drivers) necessary. There is such a performance jump because 2000 and above is completely 32bit.

Define this "executables".

Sure?
" . . . to find the bulk of Windows 3.10 and DOS 5 (all of it 16-bit code) under the hood of Windows XP makes you wonder about the design princibles that have gone into each 'new' version of Windows."
 

Such statement would be very stupid in the light of MS Windows XP AMD64 and AMD K8 architecture i.e. in AMD64 mode, 16bit modes is virtually non-existent.

One should remember the Pentium Pro's relatively poor performance with X86-16 code (e.g. MS-DOS/Windows 9x). To solve the problem one should install Windows NT 4.0 this is due to it's 32bit'ness.

[Hammer]

I seem to recall a product called- Windows for Workgroups!? Do not MS produce EACH successive version of their Operating Systems in a manner similar to a house painter?
 

MS Windows 3.11 for Workgroups is DOS/Win16 OS (minus Win32s add-on) designed for networks and workgroups, which is useless for non-workgroup setups. MS Windows 3.1 only has very basic networking capabilities. This is called product differentiation. Even commercial Linux distro (e.g. Red Hat) uses this product line concept.

With MS Windows 9X; 32bit calls would be serialised into 16bit calls, while Windows NT doesn’t have this translation overhead (the term for that is “thunking” IF I recall correctly).

In modern terms;
+ MS Windows XP Home Edition (NT.5.1) i.e. for home use; has basic networking capabilities. Single processor support.
+ MS Windows XP Pro Edition (NT5.1) i.e. for business workstations, networked home/small office PC setups, dual processor support and offers basic server functions (e.g. IIS, FTP, SMTP services, print-server, file-server, limited Windows terminal server, and ‘etc’).
+ MS Windows 2003 Server X86-32 (NT5.2) i.e. for server use, +2 processor support, 36bit page addressing, extensive server functions (e.g. Streaming server, Terminal server,  dotNET server, FTP, IIS with management tools, NTmail server, domain controllers and ‘etc’). Comes in several sub-editions.

 

Who, each 2-3 years, paints it over in a NEW colour? and, if he does it enough times, the house gets physically larger (even by a paint-application layer) each time - while the underlying structure could just be rotting away?

Not quite, refer to the Pentium Pro’s weakness and workarounds in relation to Windows NT. This issue somewhat related to the major cropping of X86-16 in AMD64 modes.  

MS Windows NT/2K/XP’s kernel is related more to VMS than Windows 9x’s kernel. Linux X86 with WINE/WINEX is not quite an original concept since Windows NT and OS/2 Warp already travelled through this path.    

I have NEVER bought (or built) a Microsoft system!

That figures...

 I have issues with the LACK of integrity of the company - as would I not (knowingly) buy products marketed by mafia or triads!

Note that IBM was guilty of anti-competitive practises(not until ~1996) just like MS.  

[Hammer]

, and now a lot of Win98 drivers don't work anymore, saying that the drivers are not designed for your hardware.

There are two sets of driver models in Win98 i.e. VXD and WDM. IF it's VXDs then this driver model is dead in Windows 2K/XP/2K3.

The reason for the change from VXD to Win32 Driver Model Drivers...

"A Win32 Driver Model (WDM) driver can run under Windows 98 and future versions of Windows NT. WDM uses a layered architecture in which each layer isolates portions of the services required of a device driver. This design also allows hardware vendors to contain all hardware-specific functionality in a single file. Before WDM, device drivers had to include hooks for a particular operating system in addition to the elements necessary to interact with a specific piece of hardware. This nonlayered approach prevented device drivers from being supported across multiple operating systems". - Chapter 28 - Windows 98 Architecture.

"Minidrivers
Minidrivers were implemented under Windows 95 in the classes of small computer system interface (SCSI) and network adapters. With Windows 98, the concept of minidrivers has been widened to include support for USB, the IEEE 1394 bus, digital audio, DVD players, still imaging, and video capture. Minidrivers either communicate directly with hardware or form the "glue" between two class drivers.

Hardware minidrivers have the following attributes:

They are source-compatible and binary-compatible across platforms, allowing the minidriver to be used in Windows 98 as well as Windows NT.
They are dynamically loaded and unloaded.
They contain only hardware-specific functionality.
They can expose multiple class interfaces. This functionality is very important in respect to multifunction (or composite) cards. Audio and video hardware are typical examples of multifunction devices.
Minidrivers that connect class drivers have the following attributes:

They are source-compatible and binary-compatible across platforms, allowing the minidriver to be used in Windows 98 as well as future versions of Windows NT.
They are dynamically loaded and unloaded.
They indirectly control hardware through a specific bus class driver.
An example of a "bridging" minidriver is Hidusb.sys. This Human Interface Device (HID) class minidriver translates HID I/O into request packets that are understood by the USB class driver (Usbd.sys). "  - Chapter 28 - Windows 98 Architecture.

[Hammer]

Win3.11 worked just fine without being on a network. It was the first version of MS Windows I used, and for what it was worth it worked okay. Not great, just okay.

My first Windows I use was MS Windows 3.0 (not including OS/2 which was bundled with IBM PS/2 Model 56). I then went through to Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and ‘etc’.

Or are you saying the networking add-ons were useless for a non-workgroup setup (which kinda goes without saying)?

It’s quite useless due to the dominance of Novell at that time.