W98 Question

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

A recent message on the List reminded me that there are quite a few
W98
users here. The person I sent this to earlier seems to be out of town
for an extended period, so I'm posting it here.

I have a dupe of a W98-SE install disk, the original once having been
installed on a relative's machine. (That relative moved on to W2K
about a year ago, and lost the original W98 CD.) I thought I had the
Product Key s/n, but I didn't. It took a bit of sniffing around on
the 'net, but I managed to find some long lists of -- uhm, shall we
say 'substitute' -- keys, one of which finally worked. So, that's
_not_ my question . . . .

I tried to install this on some relatively current hardware, and
problems cropped up even *before* getting to the Product Key portion
of the install. A good 20 - 40 items had to be skipped, because
install could not find them on the install CD. Some of them included
Netbios, USB, and apparently even CD drive support. The installed W98
boots up, and it works, but various pieces of it are clearly missing.
If you look under Accessories, where Games ought to be, that whole
sub-category isn't there for example, so, NO FreeCell. This factor
makes me wonder if the dupe CD was seriously compromised when it was
made. But I guess my main question is: Have contemporary systems
moved so far beyond W98, that it is pretty hopeless to attempt to
install it and get your critical hardware items recognized and
supported ? If this is the case, there would be little point to my
buying a bona fide original W98 cd, which can be had at local computer
shows for just a few bucks.

I know some of you are using machines of a certain vintage (as am I,
in
my desktop system), so I'm really looking for anyone who has dealt
with
this issue on _recent_ hardware.


Jordan