Windows 98
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Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
developed by
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
as part of its
Windows 9x Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a line of discontinued Microsoft Windows operating systems released from 1995 to 2000 and supported until 2006, which were based on the kernel introduced in Windows 95 and modified in succeeding version ...
family of
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
operating systems. It was the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to
Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...
. It was released to manufacturing on May 15, 1998, and generally to retail on June 25, 1998. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid
16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...
and
32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...
monolithic product with the boot stage based on
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...
. Windows 98 is
web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
-integrated and bears numerous similarities to its predecessor. Most of its improvements were cosmetic or designed to improve the user experience, but there were also a handful of features introduced to enhance system functionality and capabilities, including improved
USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...
support and accessibility, and support for hardware advancements such as DVD players. Windows 98 was the first edition of Windows to adopt the
Windows Driver Model In computing, the Windows Driver Model (WDM) also known at one point as the Win32 Driver Model is a framework for device drivers that was introduced with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 to replace VxD, which was used on older versions of Windows su ...
, and introduced features that would become standard in future generations of Windows, such as Disk Cleanup,
Windows Update Windows Update is a Microsoft service for the Windows 9x and Windows NT families of the Microsoft Windows operating system, which automates downloading and installing Microsoft Windows software updates over the Internet. The service delivers sof ...
,
multi-monitor Multi-monitor, also called multi-display and multi-head, is the use of multiple physical display devices, such as Computer monitor, monitors, Television set, televisions, and Video projector, projectors, in order to increase the area available fo ...
support, and Internet Connection Sharing. Microsoft had marketed Windows 98 as a "tune-up" to Windows 95, rather than an entirely improved next generation of Windows. Upon release, Windows 98 was generally well-received for its web-integrated interface and ease of use, as well as its addressing of issues present in Windows 95, although some pointed out that it was not significantly more stable than Windows 95. In 2003 Windows 98 had approximately 58 million users. It saw one major update, known as Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), released on June 10, 1999. After the release of its successor,
Windows Me Windows Me (Millennium Edition) is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the successor to Windows 98, and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, and t ...
in 2000, mainstream support for Windows 98 and 98 SE ended on June 30, 2002, followed by extended support on July 11, 2006 along with Windows Me's end of extended support.


Development

Following the success of Windows 95, the development of Windows 98 began, initially under the development codename "Memphis". The first test version, Windows Memphis Developer Release, was released in January 1997. Memphis first entered beta as Windows Memphis Beta 1, released on June 30, 1997. It was followed by Windows 98 Beta 2, which dropped the Memphis name and was released in July. Microsoft had planned a full release of Windows 98 for the first quarter of 1998, along with a Windows 98 upgrade pack for Windows 95, but it also had a similar upgrade for Windows 3.x operating systems planned for the second quarter. Stacey Breyfogle, a product manager for Microsoft, explained that the later release of the upgrade for Windows 3 was because the upgrade required more testing than that for Windows 95 due to the presence of more compatibility issues, and without user objections, Microsoft merged the two upgrade packs into one and set all of their release dates to the second quarter. On December 15, 1997, Microsoft released Windows 98 Beta 3. It was the first build to be able to upgrade from Windows 3.1x, and introduced new startup and shutdown sounds. Near its completion, Windows 98 Release Candidate was released on April 3, 1998, which expired on December 31 of the same year. This coincided with a notable press demonstration at COMDEX that month. Microsoft CEO
Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...
was highlighting the operating system's ease of use and enhanced support for Plug and Play (PnP). However, when presentation assistant Chris Capossela plugged a USB scanner in, the operating system crashed, displaying a
Blue Screen of Death The blue screen of death (BSoD) or blue screen error, blue screen, fatal error, bugcheck, and officially known as a stop erroris a fatal system error, critical error screen displayed by the Microsoft Windows operating systems to indicate a cr ...
. Bill Gates remarked after derisive applause and cheering from the audience, "That must be why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet." Video footage of this event became a popular Internet phenomenon. Build 1998 was compiled as Windows 98 on May 11, 1998, before being fully released to manufacturing on May 15. The company was facing pending legal action for allowing free downloads of, and planning to ship Windows licenses with, Internet Explorer 4.0 in an alleged effort to expand its software monopoly. Microsoft's critics believed the lawsuit would further delay Windows 98's public release; it did not, and the operating system was released on June 25, 1998. A second major version of the operating system called Windows 98 Second Edition was later unveiled in March 1999. Microsoft compiled the final build on April 23, 1999, before being fully released to manufacturing on May 5, and publicly released on June 10, 1999. Windows 98 was to be the final product in the Windows 9x line until Microsoft briefly revived the line to release
Windows Me Windows Me (Millennium Edition) is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the successor to Windows 98, and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, and t ...
in 2000 as the final Windows 9x product before the introduction of
Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
in 2001, which was based on the
Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...
architecture and kernel used in
Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...
.


New and updated features


Web integration and shell enhancements

The first release of Windows 98 included Internet Explorer 4.01 SP1. This was updated to 5.0 in the Second Edition. Besides Internet Explorer, many other Internet companion applications are included such as Outlook Express, Windows Address Book, FrontPage Express, Microsoft Chat, Personal Web Server and a Web Publishing Wizard, and NetShow. NetMeeting allows multiple users to hold conference calls and work with each other on a document. The Windows 98
shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses Science Biology * Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...
is web-integrated; it contains deskbands,
Active Desktop Active Desktop was a feature of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, Internet Explorer 4.0's optional Windows Desktop Update that allowed users to add Hypertext Markup Language, HTML content to the desktop metaphor, desktop, along with some other featu ...
, Channels, ability to minimize foreground windows by clicking their button on the taskbar, single-click launching, Back and Forward navigation buttons, favorites, and address bar in Windows Explorer, image thumbnails, folder infotips and Web view in folders, and folder customization through
HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...
-based templates. The taskbar supports customizable toolbars designed to speed up access to the Web or the user's desktop; these toolbars include an Address Bar and Quick Launch. With the Address Bar, the user accesses the Web by typing in a URL, and Quick Launch contains shortcuts or buttons that perform system functions such as switching between windows and the desktop with the Show Desktop button. Another feature of this new shell is that dialog boxes show up in the Alt-Tab sequence. Windows 98 also integrates shell enhancements, themes and other features from Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 such as DriveSpace 3, Compression Agent, Dial-Up Networking Server, Dial-Up Scripting Tool and Task Scheduler. Windows 98 had its own separately purchasable Plus! pack, called Plus! 98. Title bars of windows and dialog boxes support two-color gradients, a feature ported from and refined from Microsoft Office 95. Windows menus and tooltips support slide animation. Windows Explorer in Windows 98, as in Windows 95, converts all-uppercase filenames to sentence case for readability purposes; however, it also provides an option ''Allow all uppercase names'' to display them in their original case. Windows Explorer includes support for compressed CAB files. The ''Quick Res'' and ''Telephony Location Manager'' Windows 95 PowerToys are integrated into the core operating system.


Improvements to hardware support


Windows Driver Model

Windows 98 was the first operating system to use the
Windows Driver Model In computing, the Windows Driver Model (WDM) also known at one point as the Win32 Driver Model is a framework for device drivers that was introduced with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 to replace VxD, which was used on older versions of Windows su ...
(WDM). This fact was not well publicized when Windows 98 was released, and most hardware producers continued to develop drivers for the older VxD driver standard, which Windows 98 supported for compatibility's sake. The WDM standard only achieved widespread adoption years later, mostly through
Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...
and
Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
, as they were not compatible with the older VxD standard. With the Windows Driver Model, developers could write drivers that were compatible with other versions of Windows. Device driver access in WDM is implemented through a VxD device driver, NTKERN.VXD, which implements several
Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...
-specific kernel support functions. Support for WDM audio enables digital mixing, routing and processing of simultaneous audio streams, and kernel streaming with high-quality sample rate conversion on Windows 98. WDM Audio allows for software emulation of legacy hardware to support MS-DOS games, DirectSound support, and
MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...
wavetable synthesis. The Windows 95 11-device limitation for MIDI devices is eliminated. A Microsoft GS Wavetable Synthesizer licensed from
Roland Roland (; ; or ''Rotholandus''; or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. The historical Roland was mil ...
shipped with Windows 98 for WDM audio drivers. Windows 98 supports digital playback of audio CDs, and the Second Edition improves WDM audio support by adding DirectSound hardware mixing and DirectSound 3D hardware abstraction, DirectMusic kernel support, KMixer sample-rate conversion for capture streams, and multichannel audio support. All audio is sampled by the Kernel Mixer to a fixed sampling rate, which may result in some audio getting upsampled or downsampled and having a high latency, except when using Kernel Streaming or third-party audio paths like
ASIO ''Asio'' is a genus of typical owls, or true owls, in the family Strigidae. This group has representatives over most of the planet, and the short-eared owl is one of the most widespread of all bird species, breeding in Europe, Asia, North Ameri ...
which allow unmixed audio streams and lower latency. Windows 98 also includes a WDM streaming class driver (''Stream.sys'') to address real time multimedia data stream processing requirements and a WDM kernel-mode video transport for enhanced video playback and capture. Windows Driver Model also includes Broadcast Driver Architecture, the backbone for TV technologies support in Windows. WebTV for Windows utilized BDA to allow viewing television on the computer if a compatible TV tuner card is installed. TV listings could be updated from the Internet and WaveTop Data Broadcasting allowed extra data about broadcasts to be received via regular television signals using an antenna or cable, by embedding data streams into the vertical blanking interval portion of existing broadcast television signals.


Other device support improvements

Windows 98 had more robust USB support than Windows 95, which only had support in OEM versions OSR2.1 and later. Windows 98 supports USB hubs, USB scanners and imaging class devices. Windows 98 also introduced built-in support for some USB Human Interface Device class (USB HID) and PID class devices such as USB mice, keyboards, force feedback joysticks etc. including additional keyboard functions through a certain number of Consumer Page HID controls. Windows 98 also supports UDMA, 3DNow! and SSE. Windows 98 introduced ACPI 1.0 support which enabled ''Standby'' and '' Hibernate'' states. However, hibernation support was extremely limited and vendor-specific. Hibernation was only available if compatible (PnP) hardware and
BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is a type of firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization d ...
are present, and the hardware manufacturer or OEM supplied ACPI-compatible drivers. However, there are hibernation issues with the FAT32 file system, making hibernation problematic and unreliable. Windows 98, in general, provides improved — and a broader range of — support for IDE and SCSI drives and drive controllers, floppy drive controllers and all other classes of hardware as compared to Windows 95. There is integrated Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) support (although the USB Supplement to Windows 95 OSR2 and later releases of Windows 95 did have AGP support). Windows 98 has built-in DVD support and UDF 1.02 read support. The Still imaging architecture (STI) with TWAIN support was introduced for scanners and cameras and Image Color Management 2.0 for devices to perform
color space A color space is a specific organization of colors. In combination with color profiling supported by various physical devices, it supports reproducible representations of colorwhether such representation entails an analog or a digital represe ...
transformations. Multiple monitor support allows using up to nine multiple monitors on a single PC, with the feature requiring one PCI graphics adapter per monitor. Windows 98 shipped with
DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...
5.2, which notably included DirectShow. Windows 98 Second Edition would later ship with DirectX 6.1.


Networking enhancements

Windows 98 networking enhancements to
TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...
include built-in support for Winsock 2, SMB signing, a new IP Helper API, Automatic Private IP Addressing (also known as link-local addressing), IP multicasting, and performance enhancements for high-speed high bandwidth networks.
Multihoming Multihoming is the practice of connecting a Host (network), host or a computer network to more than one network. This can be done in order to increase reliability or performance. A typical host or end-user network is connected to just one networ ...
support with TCP/IP is improved and includes RIP listener support. The DHCP client has been enhanced to include address assignment conflict detection and longer timeout intervals. NetBT configuration in the WINS client has been improved to continue persistently querying multiple WINS servers if it failed to establish the initial session until all of the WINS servers specified have been queried or a connection is established.
Network Driver Interface Specification The Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) is an application programming interface (API) for network interface controllers (NICs). Specification It was jointly developed by Microsoft and 3Com Corporation and is mostly used in Microsoft Wi ...
4 support means Windows 98 can support a wide range of network media, including
Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...
, Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Token Ring,
Asynchronous Transfer Mode Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a telecommunications standard defined by the American National Standards Institute and International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T, formerly CCITT) for digital trans ...
(ATM),
ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. ...
, wide area networks,
X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for Packet switched network, packet-switched data communication in wide area network, wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the CCITT, International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Co ...
, and
Frame Relay Frame Relay (FR) is a standardized wide area network (WAN) technology that specifies the Physical layer, physical and data link layers of digital telecommunications channels using a packet switching methodology. Frame Relay was originally devel ...
. Additional features include NDIS power management, support for
quality of service Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitat ...
,
Windows Management Instrumentation Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a set of extensions to the Windows Driver Model that provides an operating system interface through which instrumented components provide information and notification. WMI is Microsoft's implementatio ...
(WMI) and support for a single INF file format across all Windows versions. Windows 98 Dial-Up Networking supports PPTP tunneling, support for ISDN adapters, multilink support, and connection-time scripting to automate non-standard login connections. Multilink channel aggregation enables users to combine all available dial-up lines to achieve higher transfer speeds. PPP connection logs can show actual packets being passed and Windows 98 allows PPP logging per connection. The Dial-Up Networking improvements are also available in Windows 95 OSR2 and are downloadable for earlier Windows 95 releases. For networked computers that have user profiles enabled, Windows 98 introduces Microsoft Family Logon which lists all users that have been configured for that computer, enabling users to simply select their names from a list rather than having to type them in. Windows 98 supports IrDA 3.0 which specifies both Serial Infrared Devices and Fast Infrared devices, which are capable of sending and receiving data at 4 Mbit/s. Infrared Recipient, a new application for transferring files through an infrared connection is included. The IrDA stack in Windows 98 supports networking profiles over the IrCOMM kernel-mode driver. Windows 98 also has built-in support for browsing
Distributed File System A clustered file system (CFS) is a file system which is shared by being simultaneously Mount (computing), mounted on multiple Server (computing), servers. There are several approaches to computer cluster, clustering, most of which do not emplo ...
trees on Server Message Block shares such as Windows NT servers. UPnP and NAT traversal APIs can be installed on Windows 98 by installing the
Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
Network Setup Wizard. An L2TP/IPsec VPN client can also be downloaded. By installing Active Directory Client Extensions, Windows 98 can take advantage of several Windows 2000
Active Directory Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. Windows Server operating systems include it as a set of processes and services. Originally, only centralized domain management used Active Direct ...
features.


Improvements to the system and built-in utilities


Performance improvements

Windows 95 introduced the 32-bit, protected-mode cache driver VCACHE (replacing SMARTDrv) to cache the most recently accessed information from the hard drive in memory, divided into chunks. However, the cache parameters needed manual tuning as it degraded performance by consuming too much memory and not releasing it quickly enough, forcing paging to occur far too early. The Windows 98 VCACHE cache size management for disk and network access, CD-ROM access and paging is more dynamic compared to Windows 95, resulting in no tuning being required for cache parameters. On the FAT32 file system, Windows 98 has a performance feature called MapCache that can run applications from the disk cache itself if the code pages of executable files are aligned/mapped on 4K boundaries, instead of copying them to virtual memory. This results in more memory being available to run applications, and lesser usage of the swap file. Windows 98 registry handling is more robust than Windows 95 to avoid corruption and there are several enhancements to eliminate limitations and improve registry performance. The Windows 95 registry key size limitation of 64 KB is gone. The registry uses less memory and has better caching. Disk Defragmenter has been improved to rearrange program files that are frequently used to a hard disk region optimized for program start. Despite this, the quirk of the hard drive being rescanned if the contents of the hard drive had changed (denoted by the message "Drive contents changed....restarting.") is still present in this version, and remains identical to that of Windows 95. If it gets stuck on the same area too many times, the program would then ask the user to either continue scanning or give up. This quirk was removed with Windows Me's version of Disk Defragmenter, which can also work on Windows 98 or Windows 95 if it is simply copied over. Windows 98 also supports a ''Fast Shutdown'' feature that initiates shutdown without uninitializing device drivers. However, this can cause Windows 98 to hang instead of shutting down the computer if a buggy driver is active, so Microsoft supplied instructions for disabling the feature. Windows 98 supports write-behind caching for removable disk drives. A utility for converting FAT16 partitions to FAT32 without formatting the partition is also included, however it is not compatible with DriveSpace.


Other system tools

A number of improvements are made to various other system tools and accessories in Windows 98. Microsoft Backup supports differential backup and
SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...
tape devices in Windows 98. Disk Cleanup, a new tool, enables users to clear their disks of unnecessary files. Cleanup locations are extensible through Disk Cleanup handlers. Disk Cleanup can be automated for regular silent cleanups. Scanreg (DOS) and ScanRegW are Registry Checker tools used to back up, restore or optimize the
Windows registry The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, a ...
. ScanRegW tests the registry's integrity and saves a backup copy each time Windows successfully boots. The maximum number of copies could be customized by the user through "scanreg.ini" file. The restoration of a registry that causes Windows to fail to boot can only be done from DOS mode using ScanReg. System Configuration Utility is a new system utility used to disable programs and services that are not required to run the computer. A Maintenance Wizard is included that schedules and automates ScanDisk, Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup. Windows Script Host, with VBScript and JScript engines is built-in and upgradeable to version 5.6. System File Checker checks installed versions of system files to ensure they were the same version as the one installed with Windows 98 or newer. Corrupt or older versions are replaced by the correct versions. This tool was introduced to resolve the DLL hell issue and was replaced in Windows Me by System File Protection. Windows 98 Setup simplifies installation, reducing the bulk of user input required. The Windows 98 Startup Disk contains generic, real-mode ATAPI and
SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...
CD-ROM drivers that can be used instead in the event that the specific driver for a CD-ROM is unavailable. The system could be updated using Windows Update. A utility to automatically notify the user of critical updates was later released. Windows 98 includes an improved version of the Dr. Watson utility that collects and lists comprehensive information such as running tasks, startup programs with their command line switches, system patches, kernel driver, user drivers, DOS drivers and 16-bit modules. With Dr. Watson loaded in the system tray, whenever a software fault occurs (general protection fault, hang, etc.), Dr. Watson will intercept it and indicate what software crashed and its cause. Windows Report Tool takes a snapshot of system configuration and lets users submit a manual problem report along with system information to technicians. It has e-mail confirmation for submitted reports.


Accessories

Windows 98 includes Microsoft Magnifier, Accessibility Wizard and Microsoft Active Accessibility 1.1 API (upgradeable to MSAA 2.0.) A new HTML Help system with 15 Troubleshooting Wizards was introduced to replace WinHelp. Users can configure the font in Notepad. Microsoft Paint supports GIF transparency. HyperTerminal supports a TCP/IP connection method, which allows it to be used as a Telnet client. Imaging for Windows is updated. System Monitor—used to track the performance of hardware and software—supports output to a log file.


Miscellaneous improvements

* Telephony API (TAPI) 2.1 * DCOM version 1.2 * Ability to list fonts by similarity determined using PANOSE information. * Tools to automate setup, such as Batch 98 and INFInst.exe, support error-checking, gathering information automatically to create an INF file directly from a machine's registry, customizing IE4, shell and desktop settings and adding custom drivers. * Several other Resource Kit tools are included on the Windows 98 CD. * Windows 98 has new system event sounds for ''Low Battery Alarm'' and ''Critical Battery Alarm''. * Windows 98 also introduced new and updated system sounds. The new startup sound for Windows 98 was composed by Microsoft sound engineer Ken Kato, who considered it to be a "tough act to follow", while the new shutdown sound was composed by Stan LePard. The newly updated system sounds were created by another Microsoft sound engineer, Bill Wolford. * Windows 98 shipped with Flash Player and Shockwave Player preinstalled.


Windows 98 Second Edition

Windows 98 Second Edition (often shortened to Windows 98 SE and sometimes to Win98 SE or 98 SE) is an updated version of Windows 98 released on June 10, 1999, about eight months before the release of the business-oriented
Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...
. It includes many bug fixes, improved WDM audio and modem support, improved USB support, added
SSE2 SSE2 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 2) is one of the Intel SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) processor supplementary instruction sets introduced by Intel with the initial version of the Pentium 4 in 2000. SSE2 instructions allow the use of ...
support, the replacement of Internet Explorer 4.0 with Internet Explorer 5.0, ''Web Folders'' (
WebDAV WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for conc ...
namespace extension for Windows Explorer), and related shell updates. Also included is basic OHCI-compliant
FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony a ...
DV camcorder support (MSDV class driver) and SBP-2 support for mass storage class devices. Wake-On-LAN reenables suspended networked computers due to network activity, and Internet Connection Sharing allows multiple networked client computers to share an Internet connection via a single host computer. Other features in the update include DirectX 6.1 which introduced major improvements to DirectSound and the introduction of DirectMusic, improvements to
Asynchronous Transfer Mode Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a telecommunications standard defined by the American National Standards Institute and International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T, formerly CCITT) for digital trans ...
support ( IP/ATM, PPP/ATM and WinSock 2/ATM support), Windows Media Player 6.1 replacing the older Media Player 4.1, Microsoft NetMeeting 3.0, MDAC 2.1 and WMI. A memory overflow issue was resolved in which earlier versions of Windows 98 would crash most systems if left running for 49.7 days (equal to 232 milliseconds); this bug was also present on its predecessor, Windows 95. Windows 98 SE could be obtained as retail upgrade and full version packages, as well as OEM and a Second Edition Updates Disc for existing Windows 98 users. USB audio device class support is present from Windows 98 SE onwards. Windows 98 Second Edition improved WDM support in general for all devices, and it introduced support for WDM for modems (and therefore USB modems and virtual COM ports). However, Microsoft driver support for both USB printers and USB mass-storage device class is not available for Windows 98.


Removed features

The Active Channels Channel bar from the original release of Windows 98 is not installed upon first boot, however it is retained when upgrading from the original release of Windows 98 to Windows 98 Second Edition. Windows 98 Second Edition did not ship with the
WinG A wing is a type of fin that produces both Lift (force), lift and drag while moving through air. Wings are defined by two shape characteristics, an airfoil section and a planform (aeronautics), planform. Wing efficiency is expressed as lift-to-d ...
API or
RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player (software), media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimed ...
4.0, unlike the original release of Windows 98, due to both of these having been superseded by DirectX and Windows Media Player, respectively. On the other hand,
ActiveMovie ActiveMovie was the immediate ancestor of Windows Media Player 6.x, and was a streaming media technology now known as DirectShow, developed by Microsoft to replace Video for Windows. ActiveMovie allows users to view media streams, whether distribu ...
still exists in Windows 98 Second Edition despite having been superseded by Windows Media Player.


Upgradeability

Several components of Windows 98 can be updated to newer versions. These include: * Internet Explorer 6 SP1 and Outlook Express 6 SP1 * Windows Media Format Runtime and Windows Media Player 9 Series *
Windows Media Encoder Windows Media Encoder (WME) is a discontinued, freeware Multimedia, media codec, encoder developed by Microsoft which enables content developers to convert or capture both live and prerecorded audio, video, and computer screen images to Windows Me ...
7.1 and Windows Media 8 Encoding Utility * DirectX 9.0c (the latest compatible runtime is from October 2007.) * MSN Messenger 7.0 * Significant features from newer Microsoft operating systems can be installed on Windows 98. Chief among them are .NET Framework version 2.0, the Visual C++ 2005 runtime, Windows Installer 2.0, the GDI+ redistributable library, Remote Desktop Connection client 5.2 and the Text Services Framework. * Several other components such as MSXML 3.0 SP7, Microsoft Agent 2.0, NetMeeting 3.01, MSAA 2.0, ActiveSync 3.8, WSH 5.6, Microsoft Data Access Components 2.81 SP1, WMI 1.5 and Speech API 4.0. * Office XP SP3 * Although Windows 98 does not fully support
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
, certain Unicode applications can run if the Microsoft Layer for Unicode is installed.


System requirements

The majority of copies of Windows 98 were distributed in
CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...
. A -inch floppy disk version was available for older machines, albeit only via mail order. The floppy disk version of Windows 98 came on 39 DMF formatted floppy disks and excluded some additional software components that the CD-ROM version might have featured. The original release of Windows 98 was the last version of Windows to be available on floppy disks, as Windows 98 Second Edition was only available on CD-ROMs. Microsoft Plus! for Windows 98 was also only available on CD-ROMs. The two major versions of Windows 98 have minimum requirements needed to be run. Users can bypass processor requirement checks with the undocumented /NM setup switch. This allows installation on computers with processors as old as the
Intel 80386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit computing, 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in ...
.


Limitations

The original release of Windows 98 may fail to boot on computers with a processor faster than 2.1 GHz. The Active Channels Channel bar will also not set up properly on computers with a processor faster than 1.5 GHz. Windows 98 is only designed to handle up to 512  MB of RAM without changes; the maximum amount of RAM the operating system is designed to use is up to 1  GB of RAM. Systems with more than 1.5 GB of RAM may continuously reboot during startup. Windows 98 may have problems running on hard drives of capacities larger than 32 GB in systems with certain Phoenix BIOS configurations. A software update fixed this shortcoming.


Support lifecycle

Computers running Windows 98 can be directly upgraded to Windows XP, providing they meet the requirements for Windows XP. Support for Windows 98 under Microsoft's consumer product life cycle policy was originally planned to end on June 30, 2003, however, in December 2002, Microsoft extended the support window to January 16, 2004. This date would then be extended again to June 30, 2006 on January 13, 2004 up to a final end of support date of July 11, 2006, citing support volumes in emerging markets as the reason for the extension. Retail availability for Windows 98 ended on June 30, 2002, and later became completely unavailable from Microsoft in any form (through
MSDN Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) was the division of Microsoft responsible for managing the firm's relationship with developers and testers, such as hardware developers interested in the operating system (OS), and software developers developing ...
or otherwise) due to the terms of Java-related settlements Microsoft made with Sun Microsystems. In 2011, Microsoft retired the Windows Update v4 website. An independent project named Windows Update Restored aims to restore the Windows Update websites for older versions of Windows, including Windows 98.


Reception

Windows 98 was released to positive reviews, with praise directed to its improved graphical user interface and customizability, ease of use, and the degree to which it addressed complaints that users and critics had with Windows 95. Michael Sweet of '' Smart Computing'' characterized it as heavily integrating features of the web browser, and found file and folder navigation easier. Ed Bott of '' PC Computing'' lauded the bug fixes, easier troubleshooting, and support for hardware advances such as DVD players and USB. However, he also found that the operating system crashed only slightly less frequently, and criticized the high upgrade price and system requirements. He rated it four stars out of five.


Sales

Windows 98 sold 530,000 licenses in its first four days of availability, overtaking Windows 95's 510,000. It later sold a total of 580,000 and 350,000 licenses in the first and second months of availability, respectively. In the first year of its release, Windows 98 sold a total of 15 million licenses – 2 million more than its predecessor. However, International Data Corporation estimated that of the roughly 89 million shipped computers in the desktop market, the operating system had a market share of 17.2 percent, compared to Windows 95's 57.4 percent. Meanwhile, the two operating systems continued to observe a trend whereby Windows 98 improved in sales performance, whereas Windows 95 dwindled. After a legal dispute and subsequent settlement with
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
over the former's
Java Virtual Machine A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally descr ...
, Microsoft ceased distributing the operating system on December 15, 2003, and IDC estimated that a total of 58 million copies were installed worldwide by then.


References

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Further reading

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External links

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Windows 98
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