Win98 Uptime: Looking to Better

Heyz people. This thread is actually sparked from gore's paper in the other thread discussing uptime and how some people feel "prideful" about their uptime (myself being one of them). Now, on my little home network (98/Me and OpenBSD) I usually get somewhat good uptime from all three (with OpenBSD being the best, closely followed by Win98). Now I know that it's difficult to have a stable WinMe and my OpenBSD has been on for age's without a reboot :D but I wanna take more step's toward's making my Win98 box more stable (trust me, it's great right now, but MORE!) and have a better uptime. I wanna get the most outta the machine is basically what I'm trying to say. Now, I'm going to convert to FAT32 in a few day's when I'm ready and I use Disk Cleanup and Maintenence Wizard VERY frequently. But I wanna know what else I could do to keep a good uptime and a nice, stable OS that (as of right now) is as powerful as any linux machine (atleast it seem's that way). Any thought's, comment's, etc are greatly appreciated. :)

One of the first things that pops into my head is, what applications do you have installed? Also, what drivers?

Most crashes are usually caused because of applications, or drivers, being crap. If you watch what you install, and don't over-do it, and make sure all drivers are from a trusted company, then that should itself start helping out.

Anything over 512 MB RAM in 98 is probably to much for it to handle. Well, not like literally, but some people have problems in 98 after 512 MB.

What software do you have installed? What programs do you use daily on it? What hardware do you have? Make sure you also have proper cooling, heat can make any OS unstable. And of course, Defrag as much as possible. The less Windows has to work to find what you need, the better.

Well, on the regular I use AIM, Outpost, Norton A/V, Windows Media 9, and my browser and that's about it basically (software wise). And I mean, I probably have only downloaded about 5-7 application's/program's so I should be good there. All of my driver's are from a trusted company so no worries there.

Cooling's not an issue as I always have my room very cool and at a good tempature. The cooling in the room never was an issue, actually but thanks for pointing that out. As for Defrag, I just did it 15 minutes ago :) So all is well with that. I usually do that twice a week and Maintenence Wizard/Disk Cleanup almost every day. Anybody else have suggestion's, tip's, etc? Thanks, all is appreciated.

What firewall do you use? Another thing you may want to consider, is using a "Security Suite". Like Mcafee AV and Firewall, so that way no clashing happens. I've been very happy with Mcafee.

From the sound of it, you have it down pretty well. You use Ad-Aware right? ;)

Hi Spyder~

This is a very interesting topic..............I must admit that I turn everything off on a daily basis, based on the fact that I have to pay the power bills, and that is a waste of good beer money IMHO :D

I would like to know a bit more about the RAM specs for your setup............I believe that RAM is the key in this area?

I work on the general rule that:

Win98SE........................384-512Mb
WinME............................512Mb

NEVER use more than 512Mb with a Windows domestic product :eek: ...............they become very unstable.

The basic problem is memory leakage.................so an interesting concept might be a memory manager............like a RAM defragmenter?..........we can discuss those a bit later.....

Other problems are likely to come from cache files filling up, so you will need a job scheduler to clear them out?

Please get rid of power saving options, the M$ ones are a typical source of problems

Although I persevere with WinME, I actually prefer Win98SE.............very nice...........but I suppose that I am a Win2K man at heart, having used Win NT4 for so long?

OK, I guess that I had better "come clean" so to speak
:D

Apart from my "museum" I have:

Win95............1
Win98............1
Win98SE........2
WinME............4
WinNT4...........1
Win2K.............5
Win2Kserver...1
WinXPpro........1

*nix boxes are irrelevant here?

Please be gentle with me, and excuse my ignorance...........racing machines, slow machines, YES....total uptime..........NO...............interesting concept?

Cheers

I apologize Spyder because I'm about to go off topic, but Nihil, you have 4 copies of Windows ME? :o

The only copy I have is a restore CD for a machine my ex GF ganked when we broke up. Ah well heh, it would be fun to do some more testing on it though now that I have more knowledge about it.

And Spyder, the RAM thing I was talking about, Nihil pin pointed it. More than 512 MB in 98 = BAD.

I have some Win98 that have extremly high up time. (Counting in Month) They run Ca AntiVirus, a House-In application that 10 years old and office without problem.

Just a question is there any sort of program that can be used to check the uptime of a Win98Se Box??
I know with Linux you can, but i haven't been able to find anything for a Win98 Box..
Anyone got some links i can go check out??

cheers
F2B:.

The information Center part of Hackman shows the uptime.
http://www.technologismiki.com/en/index-h.html > Hackman Hex Editor

Or you can go to Start > Programs > Accesories > System Tools > System Information. That will also tell you your current uptime. Anyways:

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What firewall do you use?

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Outpost Agnitium.

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From the sound of it, you have it down pretty well. You use Ad-Aware right?

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Heh, thanks. Yup, recently installed it and I scan every two day's :).

As for RAM, I have 256MB of RAM and I don't even plan on going close to it (same for drive space).

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I apologize Spyder because I'm about to go off topic, but Nihil, you have 4 copies of Windows ME?

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Hah, don't worry I said the same thing. I have WinMe installed on one machine and it's bad enough. I'm thinking of getting rid of it for Win2k but dunno. Getting another box in (laptop possibly) pretty soon where I'm going to have SuSe or Slackware. Anyway's.. Thank's for the help and support and everything. So far so good, we're going strong. :)

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Or you can go to Start > Programs > Accesories > System Tools > System Information. That will also tell you your current uptime. Anyways:

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:D forgot that :D

Thanks for that info Spyder..

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Or you can go to Start > Programs > Accesories > System Tools > System Information. That will also tell you your current uptime. Anyways:

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I carn't believe i hadn't came across that yet :( Damn i feel like a n00bie again..

Anyhow just wondering what's the longest uptime anyone's achieved using a win98 Box??
I'm planning on trying to get 1 month of uptime without a Reboot or ShutDown, so it should be interesting..

cheers
F2B:.

Tell me when you succeed at that, my record is only 4 days, then it got slow and fubar'd and a restart was needed.

Heh, no problem.

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I carn't believe i hadn't came across that yet Damn i feel like a n00bie again..

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That's because you are a n00b.

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Anyhow just wondering what's the longest uptime anyone's achieved using a win98 Box??
I'm planning on trying to get 1 month of uptime without a Reboot or ShutDown, so it should be interesting..

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I'm not sure about the longest uptime, but my longest uptime was 43 day's. So BAH to those that say Win98 sucks :D Good luck by the way front2back on getting that month. Shouldn't be hard if yah know wtf your doing.

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Tell me when you succeed at that, my record is only 4 days, then it got slow and fubar'd and a restart was needed.

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:eek: Are you serious? Wow.. what teh hell are you doing?? :p

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That's because you are a n00b.

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I'm not that much of a n00b, i usually learn something but forget it not long after learning it.
That tends to happen when your Dislexic :(

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I'm not sure about the longest uptime, but my longest uptime was 43 day's. So BAH to those that say Win98 sucks Good luck by the way front2back on getting that month. Shouldn't be hard if yah know wtf your doing.

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Ah if i can get my Red Hat box to have a uptime of 4 months then a 98Se Box shouldn't be that much of a challenge, hopefully..

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Tell me when you succeed at that, my record is only 4 days,

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Will do Captain

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Are you serious? Wow.. what teh hell are you doing??

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That's what he get's for looking at pr0n 24/7 the Box is bound to crash from all the excitement of pr0n :D

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Are you serious? Wow.. what teh hell are you doing??

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Intense usage, most likely I can get much longer though, normally I shut down my computer because otherwise I would sort off melt in my room.

Hi,

I run Win ME on four boxes, and my wife uses a fifth one. My experience is as follows:

PII/266MHz/128Mb EDO RAM....................................unstable
PII/333MHz/384Mb PC100 RAM.................................stable
PII/450MHz/384Mb PC100 RAM.................................stable
P4/1.7Ghz/764Mb RAMBUS PC800 RIMMS..................very unstable

I built my wife a box with a 1.3Ghz AMD Duron and 512Mb of PC133 RAM, and that is very stable.

I know other people running Win ME and they seem OK with 256-384Mb of RAM. I have a sneaking suspicion that PII, PIII, Celeron and Duron processors seem to suit Win ME better than Athlons and P4's.........but I have never really investigated that?

The two Win98 boxes are:

Digital Venturis 5133.......PI/133MHz/320Mb EDO RAM...................interesting box, it has a 256Kb cache memory card on the MoBo.

IBM PC300 PIII/533MHz/512Mb PC133 RAM

They are both very stable machines, the maximum memory usage I have seen is around 320Mb on the IBM.

I donated a couple of boxes to a local home for mentally handicapped people one was a Siemens Nixdorf Scenic Pro5 with a PI/133MHz/32Mb EDO RAM, and the other an IBM (Deskpro?) PIII/733MHz/192Mb PC133RAM...........both running Win98SE. They have been going for about 18 months without problems, but they are shut down every night.

I would expect you to get 5 or 6 months with Win98SE...............but it would be nice if you cou;ld find another 128Mb of RAM?

Good luck.

Yeah, I'm aiming for 6 month's then I'm going to manually shut it down. I'll also look for a little more RAM as well.

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Yeah, I'm aiming for 6 month's then I'm going to manually shut it down. I'll also look for a little more RAM as well.

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Rams pretty cheap these days, i'm going down to the Local swap meet because they've been selling for half the price latly so i am going to get what i can while the prices are so low..

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Originally posted here by .:front2back:.
Rams pretty cheap these days, i'm going down to the Local swap meet because they've been selling for half the price latly so i am going to get what i can while the prices are so low..

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Why even go to the swap meet? My lazy @ss can look on http://www.pricewatch.com/ and get 512 MB of ram for $50.

Thanks for the link Jarrod :)

Onto the 6th hour, 7th hour here i come!! :D :D

:p 6 hour's is nothing boy. You'll go crazy once you go into week's, month's, etc

I was just happy that the Box had lasted that long, i thought that it wouldn't have gotten up to the 6 hour mark this easily..
And now it's been 26hrs i stil carn't believe it's still going so damn strong :D
Go the Win98 Box !!!

Heh, yeah. Congrat's (I guess?) but continue to make sure you clean disk space, defrag often, and keep downloads to a minimum. Also make sure that cooling is not an issue. :)