W98SE Update Question

[HenriK37]

In August, I inquired about how far back these Forums went as I was trying to get my old Dell Dimension 4100 running with its original W98SE OS. It has been long enough since August that I thought I should start a new thread to answer a question that has arisen.

I now have Win98SE installed and running on the target PC in a clean install on a new hard drive. I want to update W98SE to the point where Microsoft support ceased. I have found what appears to be a consolidated listing of all official Microsoft Win98SE updates on <archive.org> that I was able to download in Zip format to my Win7-Pro PC. I unzipped the file and it appears to be what I am looking for except that the listed items seem to be in random order rather in a release date order. I propose to transfer this set of files to a DVD disc so I can load them to my 'new' W98SE PC.

Q1: Is it reasonably safe to use a file collection obtained as I have described?

Q2: Must Win98SE updates be installed in release date order or can I install the updates in any order?

Thanks, in advance, for advice, cautions, and/or suggestions from anyone familiar with W98SE.

 

[ssokolow]

Q1: Is it reasonably safe to use a file collection obtained as I have described?

Generally, yes. There isn't really any money in making a special effort to go after Windows 98SE users.

Desktop (i.e. non-server) Linux machines are orders of magnitude more common and immeasurably more likely to contain personal information or have enough power to be useful to run a cryptominer and, even there, you only really see the occasional exploit that's just a proof-of-concept or a step in a chain with the end goal being to attack servers running Linux.

Q2: Must Win98SE updates be installed in release date order or can I install the updates in any order?

As far as I know, any that need to be installed in order will tell you that they depend on something else when you try to run them, but a better place to look would be threads on VOGONS.org such as Windows 98SE Update Recommendations.

Among other things, they suggest grabbing the ISO of the Microsoft Windows Security Update CD February 2004 from archive.org. I tracked down a physical copy for my collection and it's basically Microsoft's official roll-up, with install wizard, of all updates for Windows 98, 98SE, 2000 Pro, ME, and XP that had been released at the time the disc went to production, to be given away on "not for resale" terms to people who didn't have Internet access or had dial-up unsuitable for applying a ton of updates (eg. not flat-rate). (They also did something similar for Windows XP, where they gave away Service Pack 2 CDs.)

Any more complex alternative lists they suggest are for if you want an optimal gaming machine or are running 98SE on hardware that's in the low end of what it supports and, thus, don't want to install anything which might waste disk space or increase RAM or CPU consumption for features you don't need for gaming.