I'm planning to upgrade my OS to either NT or 2000. I'm using Win98se now and I can no longer stand having to reboot every day! Does NT support more programs than 2000, or the other way around? Can I have a network between Win98se and NT or 2000? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Windows 2000 is basically a newer version of NT, and it is a big improvement. There is a lot more support for W2K in general, because it supports newer technologies. You can network Win9x and NT/2000 no big deal. There is no reason to consider NT 4.0 at this point. WinME is awful, so if Win98SE isn't good enough then W2K Professional would be the next best thing. If you play a lot of games, check to see if they run in 2000. Also make sure your PC BIOS supports it, and you can get video,audio,modem drivers etc. If you have a newer PC, no problem.

I'd go for 2000, as its got better support for games. If you've got the HD space, consider dual-boot, though this is best done if you can have seperate partitions for '98 and 2000. The latter supports FAT32, so you can access data/progs across partitions. Dual boot setup is no problem with either NT or 2000, installation takes care of that automatically.

Wat's the issue that forces you to "reboot everyday" with your Windows 98 SE machine?

There are several different reasons I need to reboot, acutally: My system usually locks up, or I get a Blue Screen o' Death, or my internet connection stops working. I have a cable modem and sometimes it won't connect until I reboot - then everything's fine. I have a Athlon 600 with 128 mb ram. Plus, I can't run more than a couple of programs without getting bsod's or the system locking up.

I'm stubborn about remaining entrenched in NT 4.0, because I paid a lot of hard earned money to acquire the (licensed) software in the first place. I also believe that the NT engineers invested the "best of their love" in making NT as stable as it is. But Windows 2000 is NT Technology. It includes everything up to Service Pack 6a and much more. It's the new "utility" operating system, the notoriety of which was claimed by Windows 95 for quite a while. Eventually I will purchase a Windows 2000 OS, but it will then coexist on my home network together with NT 4.0, not replace it. Wherever possible I lean toward, rather than away from, heterogeneity in networking. I also, for instance, have an SCO Unix OpenServer box, which I'll tie in using VisionFS in the not too distant future. Since I can't claim to be as much of an expert as some other forum contributors, and since I can't claim to possess ANY special expertise in Windows 98, I would urge you to take that rebooting issue to the Win 9X forum, if you want to resolve that problem. In general I discourage people from running away from troubleshooting by throwing money at another OS. That defeats the purpose of the forum (to draw on expertise that's freely available,) and it just falls into the trap that Microsoft (and others) lays for frustrated consumers. Better to hold Microsoft accountable for supporting their software for life. Having said that, and cognizant that I can't change the corporate culture in Redmond, if you're financially prepared to spend $189.97 to upgrade, and you don't want to spend the major portion of your waking hours troubleshooting, and configuring, and tweaking what you've already got, spend your money on Windows 2000. http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.asp?EDC=196923 Just don't presume that there won't be other issues with that OS some years down the road.

I can't agree more with Dr. Z. There is no guarantee in a good working W2000 if you don't find out why your W98se is giving you a hard time. I use all Window OS-es and W98se as well as NT4.0 and W2000 works fine. There are a few apps ( grafic) that are not stable under NT 4.0 but there are many to choose from If you have problems with BSOD or other strange malfunctions it could be a hardware problem and that will still be there if you install W2000 or NT