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Microsoft Stops Supporting Win98 Early

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the cue-taps dept.

Christopher_G_Lewis writes "Today Microsoft announced that it is 'not feasible to make the extensive changes necessary to Windows Explorer on Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), and Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (ME) to eliminate the vulnerability' to fix Security Bulletin MS06-15. Granted, the vulnerability is easily prevented by basic firewalling, but this basically is the first time Microsoft has admitted that Windows 98 is so broken that it's crazy to be running it on today's Internet."

6 of 477 comments (clear)

  1. Quick Question by ndansmith · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How many people still actually run Windows 98?

    1. Re:Quick Question by snuf23 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As someone who still has to support Mac OS 9 - I'd have to say it's a piece of crap. Application failures that take down the whole system are more common than on Windows 98. I just had to fix a machine that was rendered unbootable by an application crash the other day. Nothing like that informative blinking question mark on bootup.
      Anyway, both of these older operating systems are crap so I suppose comparisons are pointless.

      --
      Sometimes my arms bend back.
  2. Liability? by Ophion · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How are Microsoft's commitments to its operating systems structured? Are they a vague "promise" or contractual? If they are the latter, then I sincerely hope that someone will make this a legal issue. After all, does Microsoft offer a laissez-faire response if the other party is the one breaking the terms of a contract?

  3. Hmmm by Procrastin8er · · Score: 5, Interesting

    but this basically is the first time Microsoft has admitted that Windows 98 is so broken that it's crazy to be running it on today's Internet.
    I am not so sure they actually said that, did they? Or did you put words in their mouth?

    --
    Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
  4. I still run Windows 98 at home and not upgrading by Zarhan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've had a single Win'98 installation since about 1999. Never needed to reinstall or anything. I still use it for my gaming - it has DirectX 9, so it runs World of Warcraft, Galciv2, GTA:SA, and so on. I have no need to upgrade to 2000 or XP. (For "real work" I use Linux).

    One of the reasons why I have not upgraded is also that Win'98 is the last Windows that has full, native DOS easily accessible, so that older games work. In the recent years this argument has lost significance due to DosBox, though, but many DOS4GW games did not work properly only some time ago.

    "You're crazy to run Win'98 in todays internet" is not exactly true. Win'98 has only one service that is being offered and that is the samba file/printer sharing. Turn that off and you have no open ports on a Win'98 machine - compared to Win2000 or XP where you have loads of ports active (think of all the RPC worms of the yesteryear). Yes, my Win'98 is behind a firewall, but even if it weren't I wouldn't be too concerned. I'm not using samba sharing (and yes, I've verified this with nmap).

    The only attack that works would be against the TCP/IP stack itself (read: Winnuke), but that has been patched ages ago.

    I'm going to keep running my Win'98 until games will require DirectX 10. Then I'll make a decision on whether I'll upgrade to Vista or check out how Cedega works at that point (Also, Dosbox probably runs everything by then). Why should I pay for intermediate versions (2k, XP, 2003 server) when Win'98 does everything that I want? Win'98 is light (compared to multimedia-laden XP) and secure enough for a single-user environment.

  5. If MS isn't supporting Win98... by one_red_eye · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...Does that mean I can install this illegal copy now?