Name: Kimmykun Date: January 17, 2004 at 14:27:12 Pacific Subject: Windows 95 faster than 98? OS: Windows 98 CPU/Ram: AMD K6-2 450MHz / 256MB
Comment:
Okay, hey all. My computer's getting a little on in years and over the past few months I've noticed the computer getting ever so slightly slower, and the video performance especially has been getting poorer. DivX files that used to play alright are now choppy and same goes with Windows Media files and even Real Player files. So, I was wondering, if I downgrade to Windows 95, can I get ever a little bit of improvement in speed? I can't afford a new computer any time soon, so I don't really have many options. So, thanks for any replies I get.
With your PC's specs, stay with 98. You may need to reinstall, but certainly don't go back to 95. In fact, your PC is capable of handling Win 2000 or XP with no trouble at all. Good Luck raincheck
Well, although your spec isn't that wonderful by modern standards it ought to be quite good enough to run W98 for most ordinary users.
Before you think about W95 have you had a darned good clear up? I'm thinking of the number of icons next to the clock, background programs running, clearing TIF's, defrag and so on. There's a lot of guff about all this if you search this site (top of page).
Take a look at what's showing in the Startup tab (msconfig from Run box).
Hello Kimmy, I doubt you could use DivX codecs with your Win 95, only because of the fact Win 95 last DirectX's is version 7.0, and you need minimum requested DirectX's version 8.0 to run correctly DivX's
I don't know about running XP on that, but 98 or 2000 are definitely good for it. As much as I like Windows 95, I wouldn't recommend it for that system. Windows 98 has considerably better disk caching and memory management than Windows 95 does for a system like that. (keeping in mind that when Win95 was new, 256MB RAM was unheard of!)
I just recently upgraded my secondary system (K6-2 500Mhz, 280MB RAM) from Windows 95 to 98, and I'm definitely noticing an improvment in system performance.
On older systems (Pentiums, 486s, etc), Windows 95 is definitely the better choice, but on a system like that, Windows 98 will utilize the hardware's abilities better.
Instead of win95 try 98lite (it's free). You can install this without having to uninstall 98. It lets you run 98 without IE and without html intergration. This speeds things up. Also there is the option of running 98 using the 95 explorer. This means you get the advantage of the faster 95 explorer but with the better plug and play etc of 98. If you run the 95 explorer you do lose the quick launch bar. I suspect that you are running some software that is slowing your system down. Maybe a virus scanner that scan every file you open ?
Try a clean install of 98 and your pc should be as fast as the day you bought it, providing you are running the same software.
