My Mother has just bought a new VCM Azureus laptop, but with no operating system. She wishes to purchase a copy of windows 98 SE (she's a Pandora's Box Nut and the game doesn't work on later versions of windows) from Amazon which is entirely possible. However I have seen it offered on eBay much cheaper. They are all for Dell and Fujitsu Siemens computers. My question is could i purchase one of these and Legally run it on her computer?

The game says its compatible with windows xp...

Tried that before didn't work, in any case the decision been made on the OEM. I really just need to know about buying win98SE from eBay design for other manufactures.

"They are all for Dell and Fujitsu Siemens computers." The OEM installer will recognize that you are trying to install it on a PC that is not of the same manufacturer and I would suspect that it will not come with a Product Key as it would be found on the OEM's case. Pay the extra from Amazon so you get Product Key with it. Win98x does not know how to properly deal with RAM greater than 500Mb so you will have issues. Additionally Win98x may not run using the newer processors. HTH Bryan

"Win98x does not know how to properly deal with RAM greater than 500Mb so you will have issues. Additionally Win98x may not run using the newer processors" I agree with Bryco & was gonna say something similar. You're not gonna get Win98 to run on that system, not just because of the memory/CPU issues, but also because of lack of driver support. A 10 yr old OS is NOT gonna have drivers for modern hardware & it's doubtful modern hardware/driver developers bothered to create drivers for a 10 yr old OS. The bottomline is, what you're proposing will not work. Get yourself a copy of WinXP & run your older games in Win98 compatibility mode.

Take the advice given above. I would have posted the same.

I agree you'll have nothing but problems trying to run 98 on that. You need to find something no newer than a P-III. But the Dell/whatever OEM disks aren't going to be a problem as long as they are regular 98 OEM cds. Any type of 98 restore disks must match the hardware but not so with the install disks. Brand name PCs would come with a 98 manual saying 'For distribution with a new Compaq (or whatever) PC only' The included OEM disk will say 'For distribution with a new PC only'. All that means nothing. Just make sure it's an OEM disk with a product key and you'll be OK.