25 Facts About Windows 98

Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Windows 98 is a web-integrated operating system that bears numerous similarities to its predecessor.

Windows 98 was the first edition of Windows to adopt the Windows Driver Model, and introduced features that would become standard in future generations of Windows, such as Disk Cleanup, Windows Update, multi-monitor support, and Internet Connection Sharing.

Windows 98 sold an estimated 58 million licenses, and saw one major update, known as Windows 98 Second Edition, released on May 5, 1999.

Stacey Breyfogle, a product manager for Microsoft, explained that the later release of the upgrade for Windows 98 3 was because the upgrade required more testing than that for Windows 98 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.

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Near its completion, Windows 98 was released as Windows 98 Release Candidate on April 3, 1998, which expired on December 31.

Windows 98 was facing pending legal action for allowing free downloads of, and planning to ship Windows licenses with, Internet Explorer 4.

Windows 98 was to be the final product in the Windows 9x line until Microsoft briefly revived the line to release Windows Me in 2000 as the final Windows 9x product before the introduction of Windows XP in 2001, which was based on the Windows NT architecture and kernel used in Windows 2000.

Windows 98 shell is web-integrated; it contains deskbands, Active Desktop, 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-based templates.

Windows 98 was the first operating system to use the Windows Driver Model.

WebTV for Windows 98 utilized BDA to allow viewing television on the computer if a compatible TV tuner card is installed.

Windows 98 had more robust USB support than Windows 95, which only had support in OEM versions OSR2.

Windows 98 introduced built-in support for some USB Human Interface Device class and PID class devices such as USB mice, keyboards, force feedback joysticks etc.

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 has built-in support for browsing Distributed File System trees on Server Message Block shares such as Windows NT servers.

Windows 98 95 introduced the 32-bit, protected-mode cache driver VCACHE to cache the most recently accessed information from the hard drive in memory, divided into chunks.

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 restoration of a registry that causes Windows 98 to fail to boot can only be done from DOS mode using ScanReg.

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.

Windows 98 includes Microsoft Magnifier, Accessibility Wizard and Microsoft Active Accessibility 1.

Windows 98 Second Edition is an updated version of Windows 98, released on May 5, 1999, nine months before the release of Windows 2000.

Retail availability for Windows 98 ended on June 30, 2002, and later became completely unavailable from Microsoft in any form due to the terms of Java-related settlements Microsoft made with Sun Microsystems.

Windows 98 was released to generally favorable 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.

Windows 98 sold 530, 000 licenses in its first four days of availability, overtaking Windows 95's 510, 000.

Meanwhile, the two operating systems continued to observe a trend whereby Windows 98 improved in sales performance, whereas Windows 95 dwindled.

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