Should I upgrade my operating system?

Here’s the deal: I’m running on Windows 98 on a Gateway computer almost exactly four years old. I recently purchased three times more RAM (from 128 to 384) in the hopes of speeding it up a little because greed has taken over. Well, it didn’t really have an effect. I mean, the system recognizes that it’s there, but you know, it’s not really faster.

So then I heard it’s because Windows 98 can’t recognize much more than 128 in RAM and I need to go to 2000 or XP. So just for kicks, I went to about four different computer places this afternoon, told them the scenario, and asked them what they thought. Their answers ranged from:

“Oh definitely get XP… your computer needs it for the memory to work.” to

“Your operating system doesn’t matter… XP won’t fix it.” to

“Hmm… yeah, maybe it just needs that little extra push for the memory to kick in…” :rolleyes:

So, the bottom line is, I don’t know what the hell to do… I have a 60 GB hard drive and am only using 11 GB of it; I have defragged and run ScanDisk and all that stuff… So did I waste money on more RAM or will springing another $90 on XP do the trick?

Thanks in advance!

Windows may not have automatically changed your pagefile settings to make best use of the new RAM - Google around for advice on this. Likewise about the limit of what 98 can access, because IIRC there’s ways to get it used. I’d suspect that the HD may only be 5400rpm, in which case this could now be the weak point on your system rather than memory, and one that can’t be overcome without a physical upgrade.

Seconding and expanding on what GorillaMan said:

Since you said your computer is damn near 4 years old, I would venture to say that unless you’ve been purchasing new physical upgrades for it regularly, changing your operating system to Windows XP is definitely going to hurt you a lot more than running 98 will. You should probably post the specs on your computer, and those will definitely help in determining whether upgrading your operating system would be best.

For the record, you can find the bare minimum specifications for Windows XP here. However, if your specs are close to this you’re better off staying with 98 and looking around on the net for ways to get your computer to use the RAM optimally.

The first rule of computers: The person at the computer store almost NEVER knows what the hell he/she is talking about. It’s been my experience that they seem to actually know less than the average computer user for some reason.

To really know what to do, you have to tell us what applications you hope to speed up. If you are talking about games, then almost certainly the bottleneck is the graphics card. What graphics card do you have?

I don’t think XP will help much either. If your 98 OS has been installed for 4 years you would benefit with a fresh installation. I also think that 98 will use at least 256 effectively. Back up your data and do a re-installation and see how that helps. Mine systems always ran a lot better afterwards.

So you’re planning on upgrading to Windows 95? :smiley:

My experience with XP, on a similarly dated PC (with a lot less memory) is that it takes at least 10 times as long as Windows NT 4.0 did to do the same tasks on the same system. I have not used Windows 2000, but since it is essentially NT 5.0 and NT has served me well, 2000 would be my first choice for an upgrade. YMMV.

In my experience, Windows 98 seemed to have a half-life of about 9-12 months before becoming doggedly slow without a complete reinstall.

I’m running windows 2000 on a PIII-450mhz desktop, with 384MB RAM and a 40 Gig hard drive. It’s not the fastest thing in the world, but it does what I need it to. Sure, mozilla takes 15 seconds to load initially, but who cares? It’s not like I’m trying to do global weather forecasting on the thing.

If a computer store salesman tells you that you should upgrade to XP, he’s probably just hoping convince you to spend several hundred dollars.

If you’re not using your machine for the latest games (which you probably can’t be with a 4 year-old machine no matter how good your video card is), it’s probably not necessary to upgrade to a new machine either. Web browsing and email require a bare minimum of computing power.

  1. Windows 98 can use as much memory as you can put into a 4 year old machine. However by default , Windows 98 makes the disk cache grow absurdly large if you have more memory than was typical in the day, leaving no memory for programs to run in. There are roughly 140 freeware programs floating around that help you set it to a reasonable value.

  2. I second the recommendation of a clean install of 98, and second the observation that 98 needs cleaning out every year or so.

-lv

It depends. The old Wintel box I have has been humming along quite well for the last 3 years.

jweb, if you’re looking for a faster browser, I invite you to give Mozilla Firefox a try. They’re made by the same people that make Mozilla, and it’s small and fast and has a great number of features.

Disclaimer: I have ties to the group; I help them out occasionally with bug triage.

Thanks for the responses so far! You asked for specs: My current processor speed is 600MHZ but I think it’s only Pentium II (maybe that’s part of the problem?). It’s a Gateway desktop, 60GB of HD space, 384 RAM. The graphics card is a Rage 128 (I think I’m answering that correctly… that’s what you mean, right?)

I’m wanting to make it faster for many reasons… yes, gaming is one of them, but mostly just because I’m used to faster computers, and it seems that when I have only three windows open or playing a not-really-too-fast game it gets really slow.

I’ll take everyone’s advice and reinstall Windows… does that just involve popping in the CD and telling it to reinstall?

In all fairness, XP is only $89.99 (I don’t need Professional), so I don’t think anyone was trying to unnecessarily sell me anything, but it’s stupid to get it if I don’t need it.

Thanks again!

      • You do not need XP to run anything on a computer that old, and I dual-booted both 98SE and XP on the same machine for a while, and found XP somewhat slower for many tasks and clearly faster for nothing. I was using a P2P copy, but it appeared to function fully (had all updates, etc). Lots of people insist that WinXP runs faster, because “they bought a new computer and XP just works so much faster, , ,” ----> but most do not try to dual-boot 98 and XP on the same machine, which is the only way to really know.
  • Win98 can most certainly use up to 512 megs of RAM, mine has 384 megs and I can load programs that I know reside in RAM and use 350+ megs, but beyond that it gets questionable. I remember a lot of people having problems (particularly with running games that used hardware accelleration) if they went above 512 megs.
  • If your hard drive is a 5400 and not a 7200 RPM, that can make quite a difference. Most any 3.5-inch HD you buy now is 7200, the minimum size many retailers carry is 80-100 gigs, and they cost about a dollar a gig.
  • Also a videocard with more onboard RAM will help things along in the video hardware accelleration department. A Rage 128 only has 32 megs of RAM, where you can now spend about $30 and get one with 64 megs, some around that price level will even have DDR ram. Get a full-version card, don’t buy any “lite” version (that will be missing features). You have an ATI card but cards that use NVidia chips have better Linux support than ATI cards do, if you think you may choose to try that in the future.

  • But really, keep the cost of upgrades in perspective: you can get a whole new 2Ghz computer now with XP and 17" CRT monitor included for only $400 or so. Some at that price level are refurbs but that doesn’t make any difference in preformance, and there’s no way you can buy comparable pieces separately and come anywhere near that price.
    ~

Firefox renders pages absurdly fast.

You should try Cacheman before reinstalling the OS, it can reconfigure and optimize the memory settings of Windows. It has several presets for user types, so it’s really easy to use it.

Oops, forgot the LINK. :o

A PII at 600MHz wouldn’t be much, if any, slower than a PIII at 600 MHz, which is what my backup computer runs adequately (although my PIII has a faster memory bus, which can make a bit of a difference depending on the usage).

The Rage 128 is a dog. Like others have said, you can get a good upgrade for less than $50. But you can also get a completely new computer that’ll be much faster in every single way for $500, so be careful how much money you spend on upgrades.

A new video card won’t make non-gaming faster, however, so I think you should probably go for the reinstall as well.

Cacheman is one of those 120 programs that I mentioned before. Download it from jatfield’s link and use it.

-lv

Ah! Windows 98. I just spent the day wrestling with setting up a printer on that beast of a platform today. I gave up, which is beside the point.

For the hardware that you’re running you should definitely stick with Win 98 and look into the optimization techniques mentioned. I think the extra memory was a wise move. If, once optimized, you still find your system to be annoyingly slow, then it’s time to look at upgrading the whole system.

Over the years I’ve gone the route of upgrading this part and that part to squeeze a litle more speed on a budget. The upside is that you learn quite a bit about the workings of your PC. The down side is that there is always some part of your system that needs to be upgraded. I get a fast video card and sooner or later I need a faster processor. Then I get the faster CPU and now the video card is out-dated, and so on and so on.

The moral of the story is, save up, go get a new system, one with Windows XP and acres of hard drive space and mounds of memory and wicked awsome graphics and hifi sound, all at the same time, all for probably $800 (monitor sold seperately) and you’ll be all set for another 4 or 5 years.

It’s too late for me. Save yourself.

At 600 MHz, that’ll be a P3. A P3-600 with 384 MB is plenty for Windows XP and you will see real benefits in stability and ease of use. I’ve run W2K on a Celeron 400. XP’s just nicer. As for games, you’re well behind the curve, but a Geforce 4 4200 would be just peachy.

I’ve got an old Dell—700 MHz PIII, 256 megs of RAM. I’ve got an old PCI video card in it (nVidia something—16 MBs, anyway) and two hard drives. One hard drive has Windows 98, the other has XP Pro.

I think both run tolerably well, and I do like XP A LOT more than Windows 98. But I think that 98 “feels” faster, at least to me.

However, I am not a gamer and I don’t have a lot loaded onto this PC, so it’s not getting bogged down with a lot of programs.

You might want to try the dual boot thing. You can have the “best of both worlds” that way, so to speak. You can still “visit” 98 when the need arises, but you can use XP for everything else. I do prefer it so much more to 98. But maybe that’s just me.

In my experience, installing newer versions of Windows on older PCs is not worth the trouble. Newer versions of Windows tend to come with more features and more cruff, which is fine for the latest-n-greatest computer available at the time, but will drag down older systems and make them feel less responsive.