go for 98SE. It works.

Alot of issues got fixed in 98SE, when I went to it from 98 I never had any regrets. Win2k, I had some issues with, and the disadvantages outweighed the advantages, so I never updated my DAW to Win2k. Most of those disadvantages was with driver support for my sound cards, CDR burners, and midi interfaces. The thing is, I recently went to WinXP from win98se, for my DAW and it is leaps and bounds more solid than 98se and driver support is up to date. So I guess my question is, if you're going to upgrade, why don't just go to XP?

Red, I trust your advice based on the wealth of info you have posted herein. I guess my only concern is that I know I can get 98SE as a cheap upgrade. I haven't explored the costs associated with getting XP. I use the PC with Vegas almost exclusively for just recording, and don't have it configd for more than small home studio projects (30 gig drive, PII, 600 w/256meg ram; 4 inputs, etc.) If the cost difference is nominal, or more importantly, the performance difference considerable for my applications, then XP it is. Thanks again.

Make sure to check to see if all your hardware is compatible with XP. It cost me alot more than just XP when I switched from WinMe.

M

SSari said "Go for Win98SE - it works".

I say "Go for XP, it works best" ! That is unless you have unsupported devices....

geoff

larryo,

While it works well, Win98SE is also 5 years old and sooner or later, support for current apps and support in general will be non-existant. You will have to make a choice soon. But judging by your posted machine specs....XP will probably be too much for that box anyway.

XP is real sweet if your machine can handle it.

Cuzin B

"But judging by your posted machine specs....XP will probably be too much for that box anyway."

Nahhhhh.....shouldn't be too much of a problem for audio only. I went to XP on my Athlon 700Mhz with 128 Meg of RAM. The nice thing was that I was now able to bump that RAM up to 1.1Gig with XP.

XP DOES work better than 98SE. It's just that not all hardware or software is supported.
Right now, I can't shut down my PC because I get an error when I start it up again. It goes to a black screen asking me to insert the CD to repair Windows because the file: system/drivers/ntfs (I think) is missing or corrupt. The PC tech I deal with thinks it might be my SCSI card for my Yamaha burner.
Also, my home design software(hey, it's a family PC) refuses to start after a successful install.
My 3Dfx Voodoo card was no longer optimized for XP. It only worked with the XP drivers since 3Dfx no longer existed. My Turtle Beach Montego, which was my MIDI interface to go along with my Echo Mia no longer worked.

But, it is stable, and I wouldn't go back.

M

The only problem I'm having with it, is that in Windows 98se, the automatic shutdown worked when I went to the "Start Menu" and selected "Shutdown". Now, it doesn't do that anymore....it's goes to the screen, that says "It is now safe to turn your computer off"....I know automatic shutdown is enabled in the Bias, I just don't know how to make this happen in XP now. So basically it's a two step process..where I have to do the "shut down" and then wait to hit my computer power button off....just a minor anoyance...Anyone know how to change this in XP?

Check out the MS Knowledge base. Most oddities are well catalogued there. Or if not that, check out the MS newsgroup for a quick "MVP' response.

geoff

Thanks Geoff, I'll do that. Actually I tried before but ended up going around in circles. I'll try again. Would you have a link? Thanks if you do!

Another thing to consider about switching to 98SE is the fact that Microsoft isn't putting too many(if any) resources into that OS anymore. So as far as security updates and such...
Wouldn't it be kind of like switching from SuperNintendo to Nintendo 64 instead of Gamecube? :)

M

Can't remeber the exact URL for Knowledge Base home ( it moves occasionally) but if you go to www.microsoft.com and click anything to do with 'support', it steers you to the KB pretty directly. They prefer poeple to look there before encumbering their helplines with needless calls, I guess.

geoff

So I decided to go the $14.00 route and do the 98 to 98SE upgrade and, eye-ya-yie, it's been 4 days, 2 hours of microsoft support and still no luck. I locked up on 65% files copied and had to do a hard reboot. It came back with oodles of corrupt files, and long story short could only get back to square one by re-installing win 98 from start up disk/with cd rom support. I can't launch the 98SE upgrade from the startup disk because it must be started through windows. Subsequent attempts get to 65% and lockup again. I did successfully load the 98SE upgrade on another PC with no problems, so I know it's not the disk. Any others out there with similar experiences and solution?? I'm hoping I don't have to go down the fdisk route since I'll spend 2 weeks backing up my files first...

I would also suggest that if you hardware is supported, move to XP rather than 98SE.

But if not, and you don't feel inclined to change system components, 98SE works very well for me on one system - better than 98-straight did, not that I had any chronic problems there either.

Keeping internet, games, and office stuff off a PC does wonders for stability. Keep well clear of WinMe, and there really would seem no point whatsoever in going to W2K.

geoff

Knowledge base at Microsoft: support.microsoft.com

More specifically for rednroll's problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810903

Doug